A new addition to the office!

In my neverending quest to fully realize total wellness for my patients, I am proud to introduce a new member to my office.  Dr. Nina Elshiekh, Ph.D., LMBT #1474 is a prominent massage therapist with over ten years experience.  Her knowledge of the human body through her clinical research studies gives her a special insight, along with her massage therapy training.  In addition to this knowledge, Dr. Elshiekh has supplemented it by becoming certified in Bowen Therapy/Neurostructural Integration, Z-Phase R-Health and Neuromuscular Reprogramming.  She is also has knowledge of muscle release, medical and orthopedic massage and kinesiotaping. Dr. Elshiekh’s experience includes working with professional actors, professional and collegiate athletes, paralympic athletes and everyday people.  I am glad I have met her as she will not only help my patients but also help me become a better practitioner.

Happiness and good health!

Fascial Manipulation

I had the pleasure to make a quick trip up to New York City for a day to interact and broaden my knowledge about a fascinating technique called Fascial Manipulation.  Created by Mr. Luigi Stecco, a physiotherapist from Vicenza, Italy, it is the result of over thirty years of case studies and human anatomical dissection.  The premise of the technique is that the fascia is the unit that needs repair during injury.  The fascia has an origin and insertion with most muscles, so they are linked, but the fascia is much more vast in area than a muscle.  During injury, the fascia becomes dense (increased collagen tissue) and loses its natural movement properties.  Fascial Manipulation focuses on treatment of the dense fascial areas, which involves examining therapeutic points within the fascia called “Centres of Coordination” which is related to a particular movement or action. So treatment is not only directly at the site of pain, but may involve a previous injury which started the cascade of the present problem.  For more information and detail about Fascial Manipulation, please go to their website.

Mr. Stecco and Dr. Antonio Stecco (his son) were gracious in their time in helping us learn this technique.  Mr. Stecco, unfortunately, has a limited vocabulary in English, so an interpreter was used during his presentation which always loses some of the flavor and tone of the presentation. But his demonstration of his technique was quite fascinating and informative.  Dr. Stecco speaks English well (better than I speak Italian!) and was excellent during his part of the presentation.

All and all, I was overjoyed that I spent twenty hours of my day to make my journey to this workshop.  Several things about the day were noteworthy to me personally:

1. I have the feeling that this way of treatment will be the way of the future and should be at least understood by all health care professionals.  Where were the allopathic physicians?  Where were the podiatrists (except for me, of course)?
2. I talked to several massage therapists at the workshop and one was telling me that she was able to treat patients quicker and more effectively with this technique for the past four years. I am always learning on how to integrate treatment techniques in my practice in order to get my patients better quicker and cheaper. Shouldn’t that be the goal, especially with the present U.S healthcare system?
3. During the demonstration, I was struck about how much detail they went into in regards to past injury history and physical examination of all body parts. I will like to think I do a fairly complete examination, especially with the usage of Matscan technology.  But it serves to notice that you can not treat a body part in isolation, the whole body must be taken in consideration.

Hope that was helpful!  As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Happiness and good health!