#86: Injury-Related Pain? Here's How Smart TENS Can Help

#86: Injury-Related Pain? Here's How Smart TENS Can Help

Whether you’re a sporadic gym-goer or a professional athlete, soft tissue injuries and sports injuries are almost inevitable. What’s worse, they can pop up at just about any time – and even without warning.

To be clear, soft tissue injuries can occur while playing sports, training in the gym, or doing everyday activities, even doing something as simple as bending over to tie your shoe. Being overworked or lacking recovery can cause damages in the ligaments, muscles, and tendons that then lead to this kind of injury.

On the other hand, sports injuries can come from any athletic activity. When the body is continuously put under extreme stress, it acquires strains or full-blown breaks and tears.

When you’re experiencing pain, rest is in order. You might also find that active recovery (think yoga or going for a brisk walk) helps you heal in a low-impact way. However, don’t stop there. Whichever type of injury you’re experiencing, PowerDot’s Smart TENS can help you address it.

 

Wait, What’s TENS?

Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is a method of easing pain using mild electrical impulses to stimulate sensory nerves and provide relief in the affected area. The electrical impulses help reduce the pain signals that travel through the brain and spinal cord, thus soothing your discomfort and relaxing your muscles.

A TENS device is a portable tool with pads (called electrodes) that you attach directly to your skin or pain points. Once turned on, you begin to feel impulses and tingling sensations on the affected area of the body.

TENS has been around for decades now, commonly used in physical therapy offices, sports centers, training rooms, and as a home remedy. It’s known to reduce pain and muscle spasms that come from arthritis, endometriosis, labor pains, period cramps, soft tissue injuries, and sports injuries.

 

How Does Smart TENS Help With Pain?

There are two theories that explain how TENS technology can decrease pain.

According to the Gate Theory, there is a series of gates in our spinal cord that receives messages about pain from all parts of the body. When these gates are open, a lot of pain messages pass through, causing you to feel high-level pain. In contrast, when the gates are closed, the flow of pain signals gets shut down, so you’re more likely to experience less pain.

When you use TENS while recovering from or relieving a sports injury like back, knee, or neck pain, the electrical pulses block the transmission of pain messages to your brain. Essentially, the stimulus from TENS can close the gates, preventing your brain from receiving pain signals and you from feeling any pain. Your mind simply can’t process that pain is trying to occur.

Another theory posits that the impulses from TENS stimulate the production and release of endorphins, known as the body’s natural painkillers and feel-good hormones. These then stop the pain messages from reaching the body, making you feel good and improving your pain management.

In truth, when you use TENS, it’s a combination of both of these processes happening. 

 

How It Works With PowerDot

Using a device like PowerDot is extremely helpful when healing from a soft tissue injury or sports injury. With our revolutionary Smart TENS programming, you can easily send electrical impulses into the affected tissues or muscles. 

From there, the electrical currents help reduce the swelling and release locked up trigger points that are causing your pain. They block your brain from receiving pain signals, thus relieving some of your discomfort. Smart TENS also stimulates the production and release of endorphins, leading to a quicker healing process and improved performance. 

What makes PowerDot extra effective is that it takes an individualized approach to pain management. You get to control the intensity of the session and your individual pain points, to adjust for comfort and effectiveness. No two people experience pain the same, so why should your approach to pain relief be a cookie-cutter approach? It shouldn’t.

The journey is made very much straightforward. Simply select the area where you’re experiencing pain. Then, confirm what type of pain it is (acute, chronic, sports injury-related, etc). Finally, choose your pain score or tolerance. PowerDot then uses proprietary algorithms to take your information and create a specialized program within the app itself.

Additionally, you can track your individual pain score for each body part. With easy-to-read graphs, you can monitor and analyze your progress over time. You can also see how your body reacts to the program, as well as how your lifestyle can affect your pain levels.


A Note About Quality

You might find TENS units available at your local drugstore as an over-the-counter purchase. Proceed with caution. Most TENS devices on the market are not approved by the FDA, but PowerDot is. We’ve been tested and proven to be both safe and effective.

While any kind of sports injury or soft tissue injury can cause you discomfort, it doesn’t mean you should completely stop moving. (In fact, this can make things worse.) It simply means you need to adapt and change your approach to pain and healing. And that’s where PowerDot can help.

By using PowerDot’s Smart TENS program, you can fight pain, speed up your recovery, and ultimately improve your performance over time. Plus, you can safely ease back to your regular training and lifestyle.

Remember that recovery is just as important to your progress as training. It’s okay to need a little extra help. Things like electric muscle stimulation, mobility exercises, and foam rolling can work wonders for your recovery — of course, along with proper nutrition and plenty of quality sleep.

With the right strategy, you can overcome pain and injury faster and get back to your normal routine.

Dealing with discomfort on a regular basis? Learn more about how to manage chronic pain. 

Shop PowerDot’s collections today and experience the power of healing for yourself.

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