PRIME PHYSIOBLADE, 1 pc

The tool has a Double Beveled (40° and 60°) edge with and multiple shapes to enable easy use for most areas of treatment. Dimensions: 19 cm length, 12 cm wide, 3mm thick, 180g.

Attention: The product is not CE certified.

Prime Physioblade – FAQ

1. Why Does The Tool Feel Sharp?

The tool has a double beveled edge. One side of the tool as an angle of 40° and the other has an angle of 60°. This allows the practitioner to target superficial and deep tissues using the different edges. When felt in the practitioner’s hands, the edges may feel sharp, but when the tool is used the edges feel smooth and comfortable to the patient.

2. Is it easy to clean?

Yes! – Made out of 100% Stainless Steel which makes it resilient and easy to clean as well as being hygienic to use with any number of patients.

3. A Handy pouch is supplied that both protects the tool and can be attached to a belt to make sure it is always on hand when treating patients.

How To Use Soft Tissue Instruments

One must have a detailed knowledge of anatomy to locate nerves, ligaments, tendons, retinaculum, bursa, lymph and blood vessels to know where to look for myofascial adhesions and scar tissue.Assessing the stage of inflammation and the functional status of the patient and area of treatment helps to develop treatment goals and rehabilitation strategy. Finding the right area to treat can be difficult to locate because it can be too subtle to feel or be beyond the reach of the fingers of the practitioner, that’s why we suggest using stainless steel instruments as part of the assessment protocol. Instruments, such as the Prime Physioblade can provide increased level of sensitivity to feel tissues, which were too deep or subtle to palpate with the hands of the practitioner. The tools seem to act as an amplifier to the soft tissue restrictions to anyone holding them. It is common for the patient to say they feel the sore spot while the practitioner feels vibration in the instruments like “grittiness” over the soft tissue being assessed and/or treated. Someone who is not trained in manual therapy can put their finger on the instrument and feel this vibration transmitted as the tool works on the soft tissue.

Why Do We Care About Fascia?

Muscles have stolen the limelight for far too long. They get all the best placements in magazines.

So, what’s the big deal about fascia? Fascia is “smart tissue,” meaning it’s intricately connected with your internal wiring – your nervous system. Proprioception is your body’s own sense of self in space. It’s what keeps you from walking into doorways or sticking your fork in your eye. It’s how you know when you’re going to bump into stuff without directly looking at it.

Proprioception can exist because your muscles have little tiny cells inside them that sense changes in length as you move around. This is why you get that pain when you stretch your muscles – it’s those proprioceptors sending a signal to the brain that you might be stretching too far and putting yourself in danger of a torn muscle.

So, back to fascia…you know how muscle-bound, iron-pumping, mirror gazing men are sometimes called meat heads? Well, there might be something to that. In the race for intelligence, fascia has muscle beat, hands down. Fascia has ten times the sensory perception that muscle does. Ten times!

That means that fascia can sense different kinds of movement, not just stretching. It feels twisting, shearing, vibration and other types of movement. Additionally, it’s fascia that gives muscle its shape. Without fascia, muscle would be one big lump of undifferentiated tissue.

Fascia divides out the muscle groups, giving you additional function and flexibility. And where we used to think muscle did all the heavy lifting, research is showing us that fascia’s pretty good at that, too. Fascia has contractile ability, meaning that it can shorten, just like muscles.

Fascia makes up the tendons that attach muscle to bone. We used to think these were just static ropes and that a muscle would contract, pulling the bones closer together to produce locomotion. Now we know that the muscle holds isometrically while the fascia contracts. In fact, fascial spring (a type of contraction produced during plyometric movement such as jumping and bouncing) is responsible for the bounciness of some animals, like kangaroos. If they had to depend on muscle density alone, they wouldn’t be able to jump nearly as far.

Fascial Adhesions

Imagine two pieces of paper laying on each other sliding back and forth with very little resistance. Now imagine that these two pieces of paper are crumpled up and when the paper tries to slide back and forth, the creases and folds catch on each other and restrict the amount of movement. This is comparable to what happens to muscle, fascia and skin in the presence of an adhesion or restriction.

This occurs because fascia has plasticity. The Plasticity allows fascia to be a responsive and versatile matrix, responding to the demands placed on it through rearrangement capability.

Fascia responds to an electric charge which then creates a stress on the structure and produces an electric current which signals either an augmented (greater or larger) or reductive response.

When strain or stress is placed on a muscle, an electric charge is induced not only within and around the muscle tissue, but along the myofascial meridian as well. When stretched, the muscle is capable of recoiling back to its initial resting length while fascia on the other hand, does not have recoil capabilities and will stay in its lengthened state

To adapt to these lines of pull, collagen molecules, secreted by fibroblasts, become polarized and orient themselves along the electric charge. These collagen fibers then bind together with hydrogen bonds via the ground substance in order to form a new cellular matrix

In all, strain causes lines of electricity, which causes fascia to respond by laying down more collagen oriented in patterns of strain to ameliorate or make the resistance – which is the myofascial adhesion.

To adapt to lines of pull, collagen molecules, secreted by fibroblasts, become polarized and orient themselves along the piezo-electric charge. These collagen fibers then bind together with hydrogen bonds via the ground substance in order to form a new matrix. In all, strain causes lines of piezo-electricity, which causes fascia to respond by laying down more collagen oriented in patterns of strain to ameliorate the resistance.

How We Can Treat A Myofascial Adhesions

Severe, recurring, or chronic pain is often a sign of underlying soft tissue adhesions that restrict muscle contraction, and entrap blood vessels and nerve fibers. Technique utilizing stainless steel instruments are designed specifically to detect and effectively treat areas with soft tissue fibrosis or chronic inflammation. Stainless Steel Instruments or IASTM (Instrument-Assisted Soft-Tissue Manipulation) is effective because it provides controlled micro- trauma to the affected soft tissue structures. The Technique stimulates a local inflammatory response, which leads to remodeling and repair of affected soft tissues. The instruments allow doctors to identify and treat specific areas. This stimulation accelerates the body's natural response to soft tissue repair by causing a cascade effect, in which it increases the amount of blood, nutrients, and fibroblasts to the area.

Treatment with the IASTM is conducted in association with a rehabilitation program designed to restore patients to their pre-injury level of activity. This is accomplished by implementing a functional progression program, which focuses on imbalances throughout the kinetic chain. Flexibility, strengthening, and muscle re-education are employed to provide optimal results within a minimal number of treatment sessions.

Provider Health – IASTM Takes Pressure Off Your Hands!

Treatment must be applied deep enough to be effective, but must be performed without causing injury to the clinicians or providers. Repetitive strain injuries from over use is a risk that increases as a provider performs mores sessions of deep tissue work with methods similar to cross friction massage.

Many therapists like massage therapist or chiropractors may experience pain and irritation in their hands from over treating patients. Methods like the Prime Physioblade approach help prolong practitioners career and create a more successful practice.

With the ergonomic handle, and easy to use grips, the Prime Physioblade prevents excess joint stress in the practitioner’s hand.

Provider Health – IASTM Takes Pressure Off Your Hands!

Treatment must be applied deep enough to be effective, but must be performed without causing injury to the clinicians or providers. Repetitive strain injuries from over use is a risk that increases as a provider performs mores sessions of deep tissue work with methods similar to cross friction massage.

Many therapists like massage therapist or chiropractors may experience pain and irritation in their hands from over treating patients. Methods like the Prime Physioblade approach help prolong practitioners career and create a more successful practice.

With the ergonomic handle, and easy to use grips, the Prime Physioblade prevents excess joint stress in the practitioner’s hand.

Treatment Protocol

You should always use a cream to assist with the glide of the tool over the skin, we have found that a cream with a cooling effect is a nice little bonus, use any cream that you are happy with.

Warm-up is important both for increasing blood flow to the area and preparing the tissue for treatment.

With the Prime Physioblade, the one side of the tool can be used for superficial analysis and to warm up the tissue, and detect myofascial adhesions.

The instruments are made of stainless steel. The purpose of stainless steel is to provide easy cleaning for the instrument and detect adhesions by transmitting vibration rather than absorbing it like plastic or aluminum tools. The Instrument is designed with various surface areas of the body in mind.

The treatment edges of the instruments are double beveled. One side of the double beveled edges is more comfortable, but produces less pressure, and are used early in the series of treatments or at the beginning of a treatment. As more pressure is desired, the practitioner can flip over the tool and use the other edge of the tool, we have made it easy to decide which side you are using by adding the word DEEPto one side, if you can read this while treating the patient, YOU ARE USING THE edge designed for Deeper tissue treatment!

For the practitioner the instruments are ergonomically designed to reduce strain and fatigue.

The feel of the instrument is comfortable, and provides mechanical advantage for soft tissue techniques. The Prime Physioblade is designed to with multiple shapes and edges for a multitude of applications all in one device.

Initial Superficial work in the assessment phase, looking for myofascial adhesions and scar tissue that could be causing pain and weakness in the muscle.

The Myofascial Adhesion or “grittiness” must be found while applying the instruments. The instruments only enhance effectiveness if the treatment is correct.

Using the instruments in a cookbook technique in which you just “rub where it hurts” is of little use.

Bruising is common and occurs in some patients even with light to moderate pressure. The history must include questioning about how easily the patient has bruised to help determine how deep to apply pressure. Before treatment, patients should be informed that bruising is common and consent should be obtained. Practicing with self-treatment will quickly teach you the difference between traumatizing the tissue and extraversion of fluids that occurs from use the instruments on soft tissues.

For more information and videos showing the use of the Product please check out our Facebook page which we will be loading with material as soon as possible.

How To Hold The PRIME PHYSIOBLADE

Please refer to the enclosed photos.

Remark:

Using the tool in combination with Taping (kinesiology tapes) and other methods provides for a fuller treatment of your patients.