Mandi Gould is a St. Catharines resident and a regular Hair Today Gone Tomorrow etc. client
I’ve been so impressed by Stephanie’s “pain machine” that I just had to write about it!
I’ve been seeing Stephanie and Hair Today Gone Tomorrow etc. in St. Catharines for a lot of services for a long time. Usually I see her for things like laser hair removal and acne treatment (both excellent) and she is definitely a woman who knows what she’s doing and really cares about people. She had told me about the pain machine a few times, but I only recently tried it and WOW.
I sit at a desk all day and I get a lot of tension in the upper part of my hips. It’s something I’ve struggled with for years. It comes and goes but when it’s bad, it’s really tight and tense. I stretch and try to be active, but sometimes it’s so awful, and it got really bad after a recent road trip. I go for a lot of massages and I’ve had acupuncture for it in the past, but it’s never totally gone away.
Stephanie suggested that I try the machine and I have never experienced anything so effective! It’s an interesting machine. It pulses into the muscles with a repeated pulse. It got really deep inside the muscle. She explained that the way it works is that it stimulates blood flow to the area which helps it to relax and heal. Whatever it does, it absolutely works. It released so much tension that it was quite uncomfortable for the next couple of hours while my body let go of all of the stress. My muscles felt very worked and I had a hot soak that evening to help it to heal. Since then (it’s been more than a week) it’s been better than I’ve ever felt!
If you’re looking for pain relief or pain treatment in St. Catharines then you have got to call Stephanie and try this thing. Seriously.
I wanted to learn more about the machine so Stephanie gave me some information about it.
The therapy is actually called Radial Pulsed Wave Therapy and often also known as “shock wave” therapy. It’s still relatively new but it’s proven to be one of the most effective treatments for a lot conditions. Some examples include:
- Heel spurs
- Shoulder tendinitis
- Chronic inflammation
- Bursitis
- Shin splints
- Morton’s Neuroma
- Stress fractures
- Osteoarthritis
- Jumper’s knee
- Tennis elbow
- Golfer’s elbow
- Thumb base joint arthritis
If you’ve heard about kidney stones being broken up by shock waves, this is similar. Except that the version used for kidney stones is meant to be destructive to a specific point of contact; thus used to obliterate painful kidney stones. In the case of this machine, there’s definitely no “destruction”. There’s a sort of wand that sends a therapeutic and controlled sonic pulse. Stephanie uses it to focus shock waves to target specific pain points. The radial pulsed waves flow through the region, which results in a biological reaction within the cells of that tissue. This triggers the body to accelerate its natural healing response by increasing the blood flow to the area.
Oh and funnily enough, the same machine and therapy is actually used to get rid of cellulite! I’ve never tried that treatment but it makes sense. I can see that the way that it pulses through to treat the tissue would also help to break up and soothe extra deposits and get the blood to flow through the area. It’s pretty interesting.
It doesn’t take long, just about 5 minutes to a small area or more time if it’s a larger area so that the waves can be targeted to the whole region. Since Stephanie was treating my hips, we probably spent about 20 minutes to get everything covered. The treatment does trigger an inflammatory response, which is the body’s natural response to healing. That might mean some discomfort in the first 2-4 hours (I had this), but it’s part of the healing process and boy will you feel great afterward!
I highly recommend this for anyone who has pain. If you have any questions about it, Stephanie is so nice and helpful and will definitely discuss it with you to see if it’s right for your condition. You can contact her at
905-688-3111 or using the contact form. Best of luck with pulsing your pain away!
