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Stroke
Traumatic or Repetitive Injuries
Anxiety Disorders
Gait and Mobility Disorders
The Holistic Rehabilitation Unit at Chi NeuroHealth focuses on a unique
treatment procedure to restore the natural balance in the mind and body and regain the lost
functions in a holistic and personalized way. Our therapies includes acpuncture, Tuina massage (Chinese
physical therapy, herbal medicine and Chinese therapeutic exercises. Our treatment is designed
to mobilize patients' innate abilities and healing capacities. We focus on the specific needs of
patients struggling with disabilities due to stroke, traumatic and repetitive injuries,
anxiety disorders, and mobility disorders.
A stroke occurs when the blood supply to part of the brain is suddenly interrupted
(the ischemic type) or when a blood vessel in the brain bursts, spilling blood
into the spaces surrounding brain cells (the hemorrhagic type). The symptoms
of a stroke include sudden numbness or weakness, especially on one side of the
body; sudden confusion or trouble speaking or understanding speech; sudden
trouble seeing in one or both eyes; sudden trouble with walking, dizziness, or
loss of balance or coordination; or sudden severe headache with no known cause.
We focus on treating chronic disabilities that result from stroke. They include
hemiplegia (complete paralysis on one side of the body), hemiparesis (one-sided
weakness), impaired movement, impaired motor coordination and balance, impaired
reflexes, speech impairment, depression, numbness, pains, and other strange
sensations. In addition, our treatment is to prevent future strokes.
We provide treatment for disabilities casued by a broad range of soft tissue and
joint conditions including the shoulder, hip, knee, ankle/foot and spine,
acute and chronic injuries, muscle imbalance, overuse injuries, post surgical,
post traumatic injuries, sports injuries, repetitive injuries such as "tennis elbow",
work-related injuries.
Our personalized treatment helps pateints to restore normal functions as well as
develop compensatory strategies so their disabilities are minimized.
Anxiety disorders are conditions that fill people's lives with
overwhelming anxiety and fear that are chronic, unremitting, and can grow
progressively worse. Tormented by panic attacks, obsessive thoughts, flashbacks
of traumatic events, nightmares, or countless frightening physical symptoms,
some people with anxiety disorders even become housebound.
We provide holistic treament that helps patients to re-connect their mind, body
and emotion. We focus on alleviating disabilities:
Panic Disorder: Physical symptoms include chest pain, heart palpitations,
shortness of breath, dizziness, abdominal distress, feelings of unreality,
and fear of dying;
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Repeated, unwanted thoughts or compulsive behaviors
that seem impossible to stop or control;
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Persistent symptoms that occur after experiencing
or witnessing a traumatic event such as rape or other criminal assault, war,
child abuse, natural or human-caused disasters, or crashes. Nightmares, flashbacks,
numbing of emotions, depression, and feeling angry, irritable or distracted and
being easily startled are common;
Phobias (social phobia or specific): Symptoms include overwhelming and disabling
fear of scrutiny, embarrassment, or humiliation in social situations; avoidance
of normal activities; extreme, disabling, and irrational fear of something that
poses little or no actual danger; the fear leads to avoidance of objects or
situations and can cause people to limit their lives unnecessarily;
Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Symptoms include constant, exaggerated worrisome thoughts and tension
about everyday routine life events and activities; always anticipating the worst
even though there is little reason to expect it; constant experience of fatigue,
trembling, muscle tension, headache, or nausea.
Gait is a series of patterned movements of the limbs and trunk that move a
person across the ground or floor. An adult pattern (although not the stride length) has
developed at least by age six, possibly as early as age four. The normal gait,
at the individual’s self-selected walking speed (SSWS) on smooth, level ground,
is highly efficient and effortless, such that it can be sustained for minutes to
hours.
Requirements for normal gait include normal muscle strength, joint and muscle
flexibility and motor control, as well as freedom from pain.
Certain deviations from these requirements produce predictable alterations in
the patterns, which are referred to as limps. For
example, mild weakness of the gluteus medius, the prime abductor of the hip,
produces an "uncompensated gluteus medius limp." Severe weakness of that muscle
produces a "compensated gluteus medius limp." Some conditions, such as
depression, do not produce a limp, but do decrease the SSWS. In fact, SSWS has
been shown, in numerous independent studies, to be highly sensitive to changes
in the mechanical, physiological, cognitive and emotional condition of subjects.
Some conditions, such as cerebellar
disorders and others, affect not only walking, but also the movement and usage
of the hands and entire upper limbs. A high degree of spatial-temporal
resolution is needed to determine small, but functionally important, changes in
movement of the upper limbs.
Spasticity and contracture are complications that often result from neurological
injury. They occur when electrical messages from the brain don't coordinate
muscles correctly. Muscles move joints; for each muscle, there is a “gas pedal”
and a “brake” on each side to extend or contract. Sometimes with brain injury,
the messages are disrupted and cause one side of the muscle to be over stimulated.
This “frayed wire” interrupts the “electrical conduction” and affects the control of muscle
movement. If the correct neurological message isn't given to them, muscles can
overreact. Spasticity is an increase in the normal reactivity of muscles,
leading to unequal forces on the joints. It can create contracture–fixed
muscle shortening. When this happens, arms and legs stiffen and “freeze” in one
position.
We provide holistic treatment of spasticity and contracture with Tuina massage and
acupuncture in term of whole body motor coordination. The treament allows to
modify neuromuscular responses at major joints.
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