00:00
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Hey there. This is Julie. Welcome to tissue talk where we talk about every day, everything soft tissue. All right. Welcome. Today’s topic is IASTM it is to scrape or not to scrape.
00:17
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Oh, scrape. It had no idea. That’s a lot of letters.
What is Scraping for Mild Fascia Restriction?
00:24
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
It is. It is. It is. Okay. Today scraping is a new buzz word, right? Everybody is talking about grasping or scraping or the wash Shaw or what this is it falls into a subject called.
What that is called instant instrument assisted soft tissue mobilization. What that is, is a bunch of tools to create soft tissue.
00:53
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Also a really long way of saying scraping.
00:56
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Or cross friction with tools. They just wanted to make it sound really cool. Today we’re going to talk about scraping because a lot of people are very interested in it, intimidated by it. Don’t really understand it. We wanted to break it down for you.
01:12
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Put our spin on our, take on it.
01:14
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Tell you kind of what it is, what the background is, what the history is. And then what we think about it. IASTM is a really popular treatment for mild fascial restriction.
What mild fascial is, that’s your muscle and your fascia. When everything binds together, all scar tissue, adhesions, knots, dysfunctional injury, as far as overuse injury or dehydration of the tissue.
01:40
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
A lot of people do their shoulder, their elbow, their knees, get the beauty, the hips get the,
01:45
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Yeah. It’s based on the principle of James Syria. Now James CREX, he is the inventor of cross friction.
What cross friction is, let’s say your muscle fibers are running this way. Cross friction would be going across it. The goal of that is let’s say our muscles could track in and out like this. Our muscle fibers are laying on top of each other like this.
We get a buildup in between these muscle fibers from either overuse, dehydration injury. What.
02:19
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Else?
02:20
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Cross friction then comes along.
02:23
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Well, if you’re going to be bound, you’re probably going to be bound more admirably, cross weed, or the pattern rather than night. Nice parallel alignment across streets is going to come in there.
02:33
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Open it up. His goal is to open up those tissues. So now we move better in movement. Now our range of motion moves better.
The muscle will now shorten and lengthen appropriately. This is based on cross friction massage, and what was going on is he needed something to help him out because for whatever reason, he wasn’t able to get into the scar tissue or tissue damage that was going on and he couldn’t get in with his hands.
He needed to adapt and use a different tool. What it is, it’s using instruments that are usually made of stainless steel or ones that have beveled edges or plastic that actually conform to different parts of the body so that we can actually go in and create a cross friction without it just being a big square and moving into areas.
It’s allowing us to get into certain areas.
03:35
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
That’s why we have tools that are all different types of shapes.
03:40
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
It’s different styles and shapes and points and are blunt. A blunt ends or more pointed ends, depending on what little area you’re trying to or bigger area you’re trying to get.
Scraping Tools
03:52
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
I actually have a washout tool that’s made from Jade, which is my first foray into scraping. And I love that tool. Everybody has their own that they particularly gravitate towards. I like this piece of jade because there’s a cool piece of jade.
04:06
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Sure. Now wash Shaw is a method that was used in traditional Chinese medicine, which is all about scraping the skin. The idea is that you’re bringing blood flow up to the area.
04:21
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Because of that irritant of scraping that skin it makes the body feel. Respondent is always having a small trauma under that.
04:28
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Skin. Is it painful?
04:30
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
No. What I’ve found the best result is that it doesn’t have to be painful at all. It can have a minor discomfort,
04:37
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Right? The thing is with Washoe, with scraping, when you’re putting anything against the skin, and you’re starting to scrape against it, when you’re bringing blood flow into the area, it’s going to have the appearance of redness, and it’s going to have the appearance of irritation.
It’s going to have the appearance of potential bruising this, in my opinion. In our opinion, it should not be painful. It’s not, it wasn’t meant to be painful. It has been adapted by other.
05:09
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Well, as in most things, if something is good at a certain dose, doing more is better.
In this case, in a lot of cases with working with the body, that’s not true. In fact, you’re doing less is more,
05:20
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Right. Well, I think people have this Rite of passage where they feel like they need to go into something and it doesn’t work unless you can see it on the skin.
Right? How do I know it’s actually working? If I don’t see all the redness, bruising and believe potential bleeding and irritation.
05:37
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
And pain turn purple and what did.
05:39
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
You do? Right. So here’s how it works.
The instruments heal effectively break down the fascial restrictions, which are like your scar tissue, your adhesive adhesions. You’re not where you have where everything is bound or dehydrated tissue, where it’s just not moving the way it is.
Anything that is facially restricted or scar tissue, the ergonomic design of these instruments provides the person that’s using it, therapist, the clinician, with the ability to locate the restrictions.
It allows them to treat the affected area with the appropriate amount of pressure.
06:18
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Now you can actually feel it screaming over that little area, you can feel that source of restriction in there.
06:23
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Yeah. What happens is a lot of therapists that are using their hands can’t, don’t seem to know how to apply the correct pressure and or they can’t do it in an acute space where they can’t pinpoint the area that they’re wanting there.
Everything is going to be more broad. What these do is allow you to use the tools in a space where it can give you more pressure. What happens is the introduction of controlled microtrauma.
As you’re scraping the fibers, you’re actually creating microtrauma to the fibers, which means small tire, small little tears. It would be the same as if you’re lifting weights and you overload your body.
You’re feeling that soreness, it’s the same kind of thing. It’s so it’s micro trauma to the affected structure and that causes stimulation of the local inflammatory response. Now your body goes into like, oh, there’s a PR there’s something going on with the body.
Regenerative Factors
07:23
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
All of the hormones and all of the growth hormones and all of the regenerative factors come in and start to help heal the area that’s now been affected.
The microtrauma initiates the reabsorption of all of the inappropriate fibrosis or excessive scar tissue and facilitates a cascade of healing abilities.
Now your body has come in, it hurts your body’s going to go in and charge it with all this new healing property. That’ll help regenerate the area. Right.
08:02
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Fantastic. Actually we actually can work very well if applied appropriately.
08:07
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
100%. And, and so they’ve done studies on this and they found that it addresses it at the cellular level.
Not only is it just superficial, but the inflammatory response initiated through microtrauma to treat the affected areas. It actually results in fibroblasts.
Plural proliferation Is a big word, but what that means is a fibroblasts is actually, what’s creating, it’s a build yourself. It’s actually building new muscle, new bone, new tissue it’s building.
Yeah. It sounds like it’s a bad thing, but it’s actually a good thing. And it’s increasing the proliferation of fibroblasts. I know more collagen, your collagen comes in. There’s remodeling that happens. There’s.
08:58
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Fibro fibroblasts, proliferation.
09:03
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
That’s a big word. What’ll happen is now your collagen matrix will start to like regrow. You’re actually healing and putting new stuff in the area, which is so important.
That results in a breakdown of all of the tissues, scar tissue, adhesions, the knots, all of the stuff that you’re going in there for, which is super awesome. It’s the body’s opportunity to help make you better.
09:32
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
These bodies are absolutely amazing that we’re in and what we want as a manual therapist, our job is to help that body do what he can do. So amazing. Well,
09:41
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Exactly. Now it also, not only does it work on a cellular level, but it also has a neurophysiological effect.
So here’s what it does. It stimulates a mechanical, sensitive neuron response, right. It’s through skin deformation with the instrument. What mechanical sensitive neurons do is they include the mechanical receptors, which are your sensory receptors that are responsible for pain perception.
It’ll cut down on all of the potential pain issues that we’re having, and that’s why you feel it drives everything up and then it goes ha and it calms it all down. It really is. Now also affects the vascular response to the injured soft tissue.
It increases the vascular response to the injured soft tissue. And that’s by increasing the blood.
10:37
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Flow. That’s what everything’s all about is blood flow in the.
10:40
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Body. Yeah. There’ve been studies that have done out on MCLs in the rats, and they found that an increase in tissue proliferation was an increase in the proportion of the atrial size blood vessels in the treated legs.
10:56
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
How big is that meniscus in a, I mean, it’s.
Scraping Promotes Blood Flow And Healing
10:59
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Probably tiny, but the blood flow as the blood flow goes up, everything gets better. So, there’s a lot of really good stuff to this.
So here’s the issue that we have. A lot of people ask us if we use these. And I say, yes, we do.
Do we use them in a space where we’re going to create pain and dysfunction potentially in order to get it better? No.
11:24
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Well, one little caveat to that. There is one spot on the, in the body where pain is just not avoidable it’s on the bottom of the foot, working with the boats for plantar fasciitis.
That’s one way or what is very effective, but extremely painful. That’s our Western one spot and I’ve been doing this for years. It’s like, I can’t do it without causing a little discomfort by this forum, short, short amount of time.
11:47
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Sure. Now this is also, if you have, we had a client that got kicked by a horse and she had this big indent into her quad.
This would be perfect for it because what it does is we go through and we scrape it out. In doing so, I don’t mean scraped. I’m not talking I’m talking about going in and working the wrong side of the tissue, working against that, the micro fibers.
In doing that, creating a healing response to where you can actually take the indent and pull it out of the tissue. I have another client who decided to jump into a pool and miss the pool and fell into the side of the pool and got an indent in her leg.
12:32
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Why that was,
12:33
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
I mean, she was misjudging by all accounts, but that’s what she told me, but stuff like that, these really work well for the knots in your back. I’d be careful with all that.
12:46
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
We have better ways. Where are we think they’re better ways of getting, releasing those knots without having to necessarily use tools for that? Yeah.
12:54
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Tools, here’s the one downside of the tool of a tool. You’re using a tool, the tools don’t have any kind of nerve endings in them to tell you where you’re at.
What happens is we tend to use tools and go too deep, too fast, too soon, because we can’t actually feel what’s on the other end of this, because this is not attached to us.
13:24
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
You can feel the vibration coming through, which you.
13:26
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Can’t feel what they’re feeling though. The thing is these contain nerve endings. The cool thing about these as these connect us directly to our clients, our sensory receptors, connect to your sensory receptors, these we’re missing a little.
We want to make sure that if you’re doing this, that the person is really checking in with the client all the time, because you can actually do more damage than good if you’re not paying attention to these.
Scraping the ins and outs, should you get scraped maybe? Yeah. It really depends on the situation. It depends on who’s working with you. Can you scrape yourself? Yeah.
Will you probably not to the area that you want it to or to the intensity level that you wanted to, but you can do it. The beautiful thing about that is our body is constantly remodeling itself and it wants to get better.
14:18
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
We’re helping it get better that way. So there you go. Now, the ins and outs, should you do it maybe? Should you not?
I don’t know. Make sure though, if you do it, you work with a qualified professional.
14:31
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
You’re going to use the tool, any kind of tool. You learn how to use it properly. It’s like anything in life you’re gonna use something. Use it before you use it. Yeah.
14:38
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Yeah. I hope you guys enjoyed our little talk on the scraping tools and the soft tissue mobilization tools.
If you have any questions, comments, please put them in and send it to us. We would love to be able to help you out with any way, shape or form.
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14:57
Speaker 3
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