Learn more about Sports medicine and recovery for athletic injuries at Mend Health & Wellness

Game Ready Recovery
Recovery is an integral part of every athlete’s training, whether it’s recovery from an injury or recovery between workouts. This is why our Chiropractors in Portland Maine use Game Ready to aid in our patients recovery and everyday wellness routines.

What happens when a muscle is injured or strained?
Immediately after suffering a musculoskeletal injury, the body initiates a series of physiological responses to defend surrounding tissues and begin to repair the damage. This is known as the inflammatory response. While inflammation is a natural and necessary mechanism in this process, controlling it effectively can actually allow the body to enter the later stages of healing faster. Whether you are a surgery patient in post-op rehab or an elite athlete with a sports injury, you want to get back into action as quickly as possible. You want to proactively accelerate your recovery. Mend Health of Maine is dedicated to non-surgical chiropractic management of Sports and Musculoskeletal injuries in the surrounding Portland Maine area.

How Does Game Ready Help?
Game Ready’s innovative ACCEL® Technology (Active Compression and Cold Exchange Loop) sets a new standard in injury and post-op treatment, integrating active pneumatic compression and cold therapies in one revolutionary system. The system progressively increases and releases pressure while also rapidly circulating ice water through separate wrap chambers. Until now, the RICE (Rest–Ice–Compression–Elevation) principles have been used only to passively control symptoms, moderating pain and swelling. But Game Ready® does more. Going beyond static cold and compression applications, ACCEL Technology mimics natural muscle contractions while cooling the tissue, helping the body to proactively aid lymphatic function, encourage cellular oxygen supply, and stimulate tissue repair. That is, it helps accelerate and enhance recovery.

Who can benefit from Game Ready Recovery sessions?
Recovery is an integral part of every athlete’s training, whether it’s recovery from an injury or recovery between workouts. From Triathletes, cyclists, runners, bodybuilders, UFC fighters, footballers, rugby, Maine Mariners Hockey and baseball players have all used Game Ready. Recovery to help improve their performance and intensify their training. This is why our Chiropractors in Portland Maine use Game Ready to aid in our patient’s recovery and everyday wellness routines.

If you are surgery patient in post-op rehab, an athlete with a sports injury, or just interested in obtaining more information regarding Game Ready’s ACCEL® Technology, please contact Dr St John at Mend Health & Wellness in Scarborough Maine.

Air Relax compression sessions
At Mend Health & Wellness believe recovery is just as important as training and nutrition, and should be an integral part of every athlete’s training program. The Air Relax Compression system is designed to help athletes recover faster and perform better. When you exercise, you “stress” your muscles, causing minor tears to your muscle fibers. These tears are what will later cause you to improve, but initially they result in muscle inflammation and the accumulation of metabolic waste (lactate, pyruvate, ammonia, bicarbonate and pH). The small muscle injuries result in a combination of soreness, fatigue and reduced muscle strength, which limit your ability to train at full strength and get the most benefit from your workout. That’s why the ability to recover rapidly is so important.

Most athletes and patients are interested in reducing their recovery time following intense exercise or post-surgical procedures. Recent scientific studies have shown that lymphatic therapy provides physiological changes that indicate improved muscular recovery. The lymphatic system does not have a pump like the heart does. Air Relax delivers that natural sequential compression and flushes metabolic waste, which causes soreness and fatigue in the muscles.

Who can use it?
Compression devices were once only for the exclusive use of patients with serious muscular and circulatory disorders such as lymphedema, venous insufficiency and P.A.D. Today compression sleeves are used by major sports teams, universities, physical therapists and professional athletes to improve recovery time and enhance their training.

We offer Air relax compression to all our Scarborough Maine patients to help rejuvenate muscle tissue and dramatically reduces tightness and soreness with our soft tissue treatments. When used as part of a rehab protocol, it helps to speed recovery, improve outcomes, and increase patient satisfaction.

If you are interested in trying out compression therapy please call our chiropractic office near Portland Maine to experience it for yourself. contact

Kinesiotape
Kinesio taping in Portland Maine is becoming very popular after gaining notoriety at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Kinesio tape is a hypoallergenic, latex free, highly elastic form of sports tape. First used by acupuncturists and chiropractors in Japan, today kinesiology tape is used by practitioners throughout the world to treat injuries and improve sports performance.

The primary purpose of kinesio taping is to give support and stability to the muscles and joints without restricting circulation or movement. In addition to providing support for joints and muscles, it also aids in the elimination of pain and encourages lymphatic drainage and blood flow throughout the tissues.

How does it help?
Kinesio tape is unique in the way it both supports an affected area while also rehabilitating it. It is very light and comfortable on the skin causing no compression or alteration of normal circulatory flow. Kinesio tape has an elasticity of about 140% of its original length thus allowing full motion, while preventing over stretching of the muscles. Muscles are constantly contracting and extending within a normal range of motion. Healthy muscles have natural spacing between the skin and the muscle allowing for the normal circulation. When a muscle is inflamed, injured, or swollen, the space between it and the skin lessens and the muscle becomes compressed. This pressure causes the person to experience pain.

How is it different?
Normal sports taping of an affected joint or muscle supports the area, but also further compresses it causing a decrease in circulation. Through the alleviation of compression affecting the musculature, pressure is relived from nearby nerves, blood, and lymph vessels. As these systems begin to function properly, inflammation and pain begin to decrease, and the restoration of full range of motion is accomplished. While the use of kinesiology tape is often associated with athletes, medical professionals have been using kinesiology tape to alleviate a wide variety of ailments, not just sports injuries. It can be used to treat sports and non-sports injuries, including shin splints, plantar fasciitis, runner’s knee and back pain.

Our chiropractors at Mend Health and Wellness have been properly trained in the application of kinesio tape to help correct abnormal muscle function. If you are suffering from any of these conditions or are interested in obtaining more information regarding kinesio taping, please contact our team in Southern Maine.

What is Percussion Therapy?
Neuromuscular Percussive Therapy, utilizes 16 mm amplitude with a scientifically-calibrated speed of 40 percussions per second on the body - the essential pairing required to relieve pain, enhance athletic performance, improve range of motion, and accelerate recovery

Whether you’re an athlete, personal trainer, fitness enthusiast, or you have muscle tension, minor aches, and pains, percussive therapy provides a natural approach to improving your physical health and whole-body wellness.

Neuromuscular Percussive Therapy helps with the following:

• Accelerates recovery & muscle repair
• Increases blood and lymphatic flow
• Relieves muscle spasms and stiffness
• Breaks up scar tissue
• Improves lactic acid clearance
• Activates the nervous system and muscles
• Muscle fatigue, pain, tightness, soreness, and knots
• Natural stress relief

How does it work?
Tension is the root cause of most body aches and pains. The breakthrough treatment of Theragun Percussive Therapy relieves the tension in our soft tissue effectively and efficiently.

Theragun Percussive Therapy overrides the pain signals to the brain, increases heat in the tissue, and releases tension. It does this through a combination of 16 mm amplitude at a scientifically-calibrated frequency. Theragun uses these two principles of depth and speed to speak to your body in a language it can understand, and provide a deeper and more effective experience than any other consumer device.

Soft Tissue Mobilzation
Our doctors have been trained in a very specialized form of hands-on soft tissue therapy unique to our office called Instrumented Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (IASM) and Myofascial Release Technique protocols (MRT). Soft tissue mobilization is a manual method of treatment. The thumbs, fingers, hands and elbows of the provider may be used to apply pressure to the various muscles. This often occurs with the patient actively involved in some form of motion.

How does massage help?
With most soft tissue and joint-related injuries there is inflammation, scar tissue formation and a resulting loss in range of motion. Our treatments, encourages the joints and soft tissue structures of the body to reach there complete end-range position. This eliminates adhesions and blockages in the soft tissue structures and joints and returns the body to a pain-free status. Soft tissue therapy helps restore normal joint range of motion, relieves painful trigger points and improves muscle strength and function.

By applying hand pressure into and around damaged soft tissue, your Southern Maine chiropractor can release restrictions created by scar tissue formation. This soft tissue therapy also brings oxygen and other healing nutrients to the scar tissue site.The amount of pressure that is provided varies with the diagnosis, age of the patient, overall health of the patient, and consideration of the patient’s goals and the provider’s goals. The method of treatment performed at Mend Health of Maine addresses all the soft tissues surrounding the involved joint or region.

If you are interested in obtaining more information regarding our many soft tissue mobilization techniques in Maine, please contact our Mend Health and Wellness team in Scarborough Maine.

"From turf to the ice we get you back in the game"