Shockwave Therapy in Noosa, as Part of Your Chiropractic Care

Noosa Life Chiropractic offers shockwave therapy in Noosa at our clinic in The Atrium, Poinciana Avenue, Tewantin. We use radial shockwave, a hands-on treatment for musculoskeletal pain that has settled into a tendon or the tissue around it and hasn’t improved enough with appropriate conservative (non-surgical) care. Think heel pain, a sore Achilles, tennis or golfer’s elbow, or a shoulder that has grumbled for months.

How we use shockwave at Noosa Life

Shockwave is never a one-size-fits-all treatment here. It’s one tool inside a full chiropractic assessment and plan, and we only use it where your assessment shows it’s appropriate. It does not suit everyone and it does not work for everyone, so where it’s appropriate for your problem, we record your pain score and an appropriate objective measure, such as joint range of motion or functional movement, before and after treatment, and we tell you straight whether it’s helping.

Your treatment is with Dr Roberto De Souza (Chiropractor), who is trained and certified in the clinical use of shockwave therapy. No needles, no drugs, a few minutes a session.

What we use shockwave therapy for

Shockwave is used for pain that has settled into a tendon, where it attaches to bone, or the soft tissue around it, and has not improved enough with appropriate conservative care. Tendons are the tough, fibrous bands that attach your muscles to your bones. The problems we most often assess for shockwave are:

• Plantar fasciitis and heel pain. The plantar fascia is the thick band of tissue under your foot that runs from your heel bone to your toes. When it becomes sore, the pain is usually under your heel, and it is often worse in the morning as you take your first steps. It is often seen alongside a heel spur, although plenty of people have a heel spur with no pain at all.
• Achilles pain. Pain in the Achilles, the tendon at the back of your ankle that joins your calf to your heel.
• Tennis elbow and golfer’s elbow. Tennis elbow is soreness on the outside of the elbow, in the tendons that attach your forearm muscles to the bone. It tends to build up over time with repeated use. Golfer’s elbow is soreness on the inside of the elbow.
• Rotator cuff and shoulder pain. The rotator cuff is the group of four muscles and their tendons that hold your shoulder joint stable and help it move. Rotator cuff problems are common in active people and as we get older, and they can make it painful to sleep on that side.
• Hip and glute tendon pain. Pain on the outside of the hip.
• Shin splints. Pain along the shinbone from repeated stress on it, common in runners.
• Jumper’s knee. Pain in the tendon just below the kneecap.

A list like this can’t tell you whether shockwave suits your problem. The evidence behind it is stronger for some of these than others, and we’ll tell you where yours sits after your assessment, before you commit to anything.

How a course of treatment runs

Where we use shockwave, the course follows the same shape:

1. Assess. We work out what’s going on and whether shockwave is the right tool for it.
2. Treat. The shockwave session itself, alongside the rest of your chiropractic care where that’s what you need.
3. Rehabilitate. Simple exercises between sessions to back up the treatment.
4. Follow up. We check how you’re responding and adjust the plan from there.

Where we use shockwave, we usually plan a course of around three to six sessions. That is a planning figure, not a prediction about your result. It varies with the person, how long the problem has been there and how you respond, and some people improve while some do not. We reassess your progress throughout, not just at the end, and decide together whether to continue, change the approach or stop.

No packages, no lock-in. We don’t sell a fixed number of sessions upfront, because how many you need depends on your presentation and how you respond.

We measure how you’re responding

Where it’s appropriate for your problem, we record two things before and after treatment: your pain, scored from 0 to 10, and an appropriate objective measure such as joint range of motion or functional movement.

That means you’re not taking our word for it, and you’re not taking a machine’s word for it either. You can see, in your own numbers, how you are responding to this particular treatment on your particular problem. If it isn’t moving after a few sessions, we’ll tell you honestly and talk about what happens next.