Tulsa Spine and Rehab

As our year winds down, it’s time to look back and take stock over your year, the things you’ve accomplished. Dr. Sean Riley joins us today with a look back at some of the things that have been added to spine rehab this year that may have slipped your notice and are important to you. Dr. Riley, what are some of the things you’ve added this year at Tulsa Spine and Rehab?

Yeah, Charlie. Tulsa Spine and Rehab, our model is integrated care. What that means is we have multiple providers providing different types of service lines, whether it’s chiropractic, physical therapy. We have different modalities, whether it’s muscle stem, or massage therapy, whatever the case would be. The goal is to create that comprehensive model and most importantly, it’s to give patients options. Many times chiropractic or physical therapy might not be indicated or be the best option for a patient. That’s why if we can point them in the direction of massage therapy or yoga, it’s great. Then what’s even better is when we could start combining some of those services to provide really effective care that gets the patient better as quickly as we can and more importantly, keeping them better. But each year, I’m really interested in technology and what’s working, doing my research on other services that we bringing in to provide that patient experience, to increase that patient experience, to increase patient outcomes. I’m proud to visit about two technologies that we added this past year. First off, is the Curewave laser, and the second is cryotherapy.

Now cryotherapy, that’s where we go in and put you in a whole body chamber and lower your temperature. It’s one of the big benefits of it is it aids in muscle recovery?

Absolutely. It is a chamber that you actually get into. Your head is unexposed. Your head’s obviously outside the chamber; very, very safe technology. Our staff has gone through many, many hours of training and so forth, so able to provide safe treatment. But the goal of that therapy is just like you said, Charlie, to reduce inflammation, to promote recovery. Research has shown it improves sleep. I see a lot of athletes that have started utilize it. It enhances performance, but generally speaking for the bulk of my patient base, it’s folks over the age of 35 that are just very active and want to remain active, have general stiffness or soreness. It’s been just a great tool to add to the clinic.

Then many times, these patients will come in independent of me, independent of therapist or a treatment plan and just get on a regimen of cryotherapy. I have patients that come in two to three times a week to utilize the therapy and the results have been fantastic. I’m really excited and it’s one of those things that we all like technology, but there’s the research behind the technology that it got me excited about it. I just felt like it was a no brainer to plug into this comprehensive model here at the clinic.

It is one of the most advanced cryotherapy chambers available today. It has many safety features on it. One of the other benefits of CryoTulsa is that visits to the chamber will actually lift your mood.

One of the things also that I’ve noticed, many of the patients report that just emotionally they’re feeling better with more energy, they feel energized, they’re able to get through their days a little bit. It’s easier. Then like I’d mentioned, the sleep is improved. So I think it kind of just lends itself to that. When we’re sleeping better, obviously I’m going to feel better when I’m wake up and it allows us to do more. We’ve talked about that in the past. That’s kind of our motto here at Tulsa, Spinal Rehab; get moving. We want to do what we can that will allow our patients to do what they want to do. Cryo has been just such a great piece of technology that we’ve added that allow those patients to continue to move.

I know the cryo wave, high-intensity laser therapy is another piece of technology you’ve brought in.

Yeah. Around the same time as the cryotherapy, we added Curewave laser. So laser therapy’s been around for quite some time, a lot of good research on the technology out there. This is a high intensity laser or high intensity laser treatment or therapy. Like many surgeons will use a hot laser to cut, this is not a hot laser. Obviously, the laser heats up a little bit, but it’s obviously not cutting; very, very safe technology once again. That’s so important here at the clinic is that we’re providing conservative treatment options for patients. Obviously, nonsurgical options, we’re not using medications, we’re not using needles. As I’m looking for these new technologies, that’s obviously very important to me is that it’s very safe and there’s limited side effects. What’s behind this technology, Charlie, is it’s essentially reducing inflammation, promoting healing.

That’s it and that kind of dumbs it down, but reducing pain, inflammation, promotion of healing. What it does is that it actually gets down to at the cellular level and changes the mitochondria. The mitochondria is kind of like the powerhouse of the cell and it allows that cell to heal itself. I’ve had fantastic results with a multitude of various conditions. We’re on month eight or so of having the high intensity laser and I would say that we treat probably 15 to 20 patients a day using the laser therapy.

What is the outcomes for these?

Fantastic. Now like most treatments, it’s very specific to the condition, meaning I’ve had better response with some conditions as opposed to others, but I always tell patients there’s limited downside to this thing, meaning there’s zero side effects. The treatment times may last anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes. Fantastic results with a lot of soft tissue injuries, lateral epicondylitis, medial epicondylitis, tennis elbow golfer’s elbow, plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinopathy. A lot of those repetitive stress type injuries where the tissue gets very inflamed and symptomatic and uncomfortable, the laser’s been a very effective tool to manage those conditions along with general low back types of cases.

Had some good response with shoulder cases and osteoarthritis or arthritis in the knee. Any area that is inflamed or uncomfortable or painful, the laser may potentially be a very good treatment option to use to reduce the inflammation and make the patient feel better. It’s a great adjunct to other things that we’re doing here in the clinic and many times, we will use that laser in association with chiropractic care, physical therapy, massage therapy, whatever the case may be. Once again, it kind of goes back to providing that comprehensive office visit to promote healing, get them better as quickly as we can.

It’s kind of a yin and yang kind of thing where the cryo is using cool and chilling the body to trigger natural reactions and the laser is using a pinpointed heat to trigger healing.

Yeah. Obviously, very different technologies trying to accomplish two different things. The laser, it is heating up a little bit and like I said, altering the mitochondria a little bit, some ATP synthesis so forth, to promote healing. As opposed to the cryotherapy, that chamber can get down to up to minus 220 degrees Fahrenheit. Obviously reduction of blood flow, reducing inflammation. Just like we’ve talked in the past about ice versus teat, any time there’s acute injury, something swollen, we have diffuse or systemic inflammation throughout a lot of arthritic conditions, we want to slow down the blood flow to reduce the inflammation. Yeah. Two different technologies.

But we’re not talking laser-like in gold finger. It’s not that kind of laser. It’s whole different technology, much say a real technology, not a movie technology. Now we’ve added a lot of technology at Tulsa Spine and Rehab, but I know you’ve added a person who, if anything, is going counter technology and going back to very early healing methodologies.

One of the voids that we’ve had, and I try to listen, ask patients, “What is it that we need? What is it that you need? Where is the void?” And nutrition has been one of those areas that we’ve not really had the right person, the right physician or provider to provide that service line. I’m proud to talk about Lisa Bracken. Lisa is an Ayurveda specialist and what that means is she essentially uses food to help manage different types of condition. She has been just fantastic to have here at the clinic; super, super smart. Not only she’s doing the nutritional, the Ayurveda type stuff, she’s also involved with yoga. She’s extensive yoga training. I can speak from experience that I’ve been working with her and I’ve been really impressed with her thus far.

She really brings the idea of, “you are what you eat,” and I think it’d be great to have her on a future one of these spine casts so we can talk to her about it.

Absolutely.

All right, well we’ll work on getting that. So just to wrap up this year, you’ve brought the new technology of cryotherapy to Tulsa Spine and Rehab, the Curewave high intensity laser therapy, and you brought Lisa with her Ayurveda medicine. It sounds like a much richer mix added to a mix that was already pretty rich.

Yeah, and we’re constantly looking for additional treatments and providers to really round out the clinic because here at the clinic, we’re committed to comprehensive treatment, integrated care. It’s all about the patient here at Tulsa Spine and Rehab.

We look forward to seeing what that brings in 2020. Sean, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks, Charlie.

You can learn more about everything that Sean talked about and even more about what’s offered by exploring our website here at tulsaspineandrehab.com.

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