I'll start by saying that I know Tdub has great skepticism of alternative medicine so I expect negative reactions here. I am/was skeptical of this stuff too but I know it worked for me. The Graston technique is basically having someone use various instruments to apply pressure and induce bruising to an area in order to break up unseen soft tissue/scar tissue around a muscle. It sounds, uhh, weird painful and a little kooky. Here's my experience with it.

There have been a few weird nagging injuries that I had been dealing with. About 7 years ago I strained the muscles in the bottom of my right foot. It got better mostly but since then it had been hurting me to drive long distances without using cruise control. Two years ago I sprained my right ankle and even though it mostly healed I couldn't run distances without encountering pain. Back in April I strained muscles in my shoulder and was getting pain and weakness in my right arm and hand (another weird injury).

To make a long story short, my mom kept bugging me to try going to her physical therapist/chiropractor. The guy has a background in sports medicine and message therapy and then went to school for chiropractic medicine. I kept telling her no, that there is nothing he can do for me and it is a waste of time because it's just a bunch of BS and he's just going to try and sell me something.

Finally it got to the point where the shoulder was really bothering me. Like a lot of other broke asses I have basically no health insurance (very high deductible plan). I went to a "real doctor" and he gave me an anti-inflamatory drug but all the tests they wanted to run were going to be $Texas. So I decided to go see this chiropractor because if it did work (in a reasonable number of visits) it would be way cheaper. One chiropractor visit is about 1/3 the cost of a regular doctor office visit fee for me.

He ended up doing this Graston scraping technique on my ankle, foot, and shoulder. The ankle had a lump of soft tissue since I injured it. He took a flat piece of plastic with handle, shaped kind of like an iron for clothes. I don't think this is an official Graston instrument which appear to be metal. After applying some lotion he started grinding on my ankle in the most sensitive area. And let me tell you, that shit hurt. It was pretty painful. I had bruising in the affected areas. Over the span of maybe 4 or 5 visits he did that on my ankle and foot.

The shoulder has been improving steadily but for the ankle and foot the scar tissue removal made a huge difference in a short period of time. The lump of soft tissue in my ankle was gone in two weeks. After scraping the scar tissue on my foot I can do calf raises and drive long distances without cruise control again. I ask the guy a lot of questions constantly trying to understand the reasoning for his methods so I can determine whether I believe in them or not. He said the scar tissue inhibits healing and can put pressure on the muscle and nerve. When the scar tissue has been broken up that area is less likely to bruise.

I don't know if this Graston technique is the best way of going about scar tissue removal. A little bit of Googling reveals that it is very commercialized and they're trying to make a lot of money off selling the instruments and training in the technique. But I can say from firsthand experience that at least for me the scar tissue thing is real... it really does cause lingering pain and problems and removing it does help. The medical field hasn't really examined this idea much, and the fact that mostly chiropractors do it has created a lot of justifiable suspicion.

[Edited on September 10, 2011 at 11:19 AM. Reason : .]

9/10/2011 11:14:40 AM

I've had 3 different types of laser treatment done to reduce scaring. The laser basically does the same thing. It bruises the area to get blood flowing to help reduce the discoloration and one type of laser removes the raised edge of a scar. It was a pretty nasty looking bruise for a week or so but has seem to reduce the discoloration and swelling of the scar.


Never heard of this technique though.

9/10/2011 11:35:21 AM

On my ankle rehab, I often pushed pretty hard (harder than the pt lady probably wanted) and showed no pain on my face... but I could feel the scar tissue tearing and shit like that on ankle rolls. I ended up having the best recovery for that type of fracture the Dr or pt had ever seen. I think there's merit to it... I also had to do scar massage to help break up the scar tissue on my hand when i had that done.

[Edited on September 10, 2011 at 3:47 PM. Reason : .]

9/10/2011 3:38:54 PM

I've heard of something similar before.

9/10/2011 5:39:17 PM