Originally Posted by Sigmoid
I don’t think it’s safe to use ultrasound regularly. On the histological level ultrasound is damaging. If there’s not a period of time for the tissues to reorganize themselves, they will eventually lose their developmentally determined shape and become a blob of tissue. When a human body develops molecular markers are placed in the extracellular matrix as guide posts for what types of cells go where and things like connective tissues are organized in a scaffold that enzymes attach new polymer fragments to. If you have repetitive injury, these molecular markers can get lost through degradation before they are replaced and scaffolds can be so disrupted that polymers don’t know where they should bind to contribute to correct orientation fibers, macrophages don’t know what is correctly oriented scaffolds or disoriented fragments, and the tissue goes from an organ to a simple vascularized tumor blob.
I don’t know the period of time necessary for tissues to reorganize themselves, so using ultrasound for heating regularly might be safe. But I wouldn’t apply ultrasound regularly myself. I’m reminded of kung fu practitioners that would punch trees repetitively until their fists turned into blobs of flesh and bone with unmoving fingers cemented in place somewhere in those tumors.
Your concerns are appreciated, but it really sounds like you are talking about focused high-intensity applications which we are not using here.
There are no reported cases of such a dramatic tissue formations developed and, neither there are no reported cases of properly executed US therapy causing significant damages whatsoever with low-intensity ultrasound applications. And this not my opinion.
About the fiber orientation. There are in vivo studies available low-intensity ultrasound doing exact opposite you suggested.
The fiber alignment with the direction of the force increases during the US exposure applied under tensile stress , the better the organization the longer the exposure.
If we are about to use shock waves( ESWT) or such as high energy applications regularly the disorganization similar you described should happen.
There are no actual recommendations of the low-intensity ultrasound treatment maximal exposure duration or exposure frequency.
There should be if the application were that dangerous you described as these applications have been in use for decades.
So we are relying on common sense not doing it every day, not using excessive intensity, not using stationary application.
START 18/13.15 cm Jul 24th 18 (7.09/5.18") NOW 22.5/15.2 cm Fer 12th 20 (8.86/5.98") GOAL 8.5"/ 6"
When connective tissue is stretched within therapeutic temperatures ranging 102 to 110 F (38.9- 43.3 C), the amount of structural weakening produced by a given amount of tissue elongation varies inversely with the temperature. This is apparently related to the progressive increase in the viscous flow properties of the collagenous tissue when it is heated. (Warren et al (1971,1976)