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Sports Medicine Thermography

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Sports Medicine Thermography helps diagnose injuries and track your recovery


People who incur an acute or chronic sports injury benefit from a thermogram. 

The procedure helps our practitioners confirm the diagnosis of an injury or chronic problem. It can also help our Functional Medicine staff clinically assess your progress and treatment response.

photo of two legs and hands holding the left leg that is swollen in pain

Full body Thermography can detect pain and inflammation caused by an injury

Infrared imaging technology can map the location of bleeding, inflammation, and muscle strains. 

The color image of your body is usually symmetrical. Healthy limbs and organs have the same skin temperature on both sides equally usually.

Temperature differences indicate trauma, which helps your Serenity provider pinpoint the degree of your injury. 

If you are serious about your sports training, start an athletic thermal training profile

Regular thermography scans help athletes calibrate optimal training goals by tracking weaknesses to decrease the chances of injury and overload that will take you out of the game.

Infrared technology allows sports professionals to examine local temperature variations to assess how training sessions affect joints and muscles. They can also see the changes that take place during the recovery process after an injury.

What types of sports injuries can Thermography detect?

Both soft tissue & nerve damage are visible in medical thermal imaging. 

Soft tissue injuries affect ligaments, muscles, and tendons. These are the most common injuries during sports and exercise, but sometimes simple everyday activities can also cause damage. 

If you are an active individual or have been an athlete in the past, you have likely endured tendinitis, sprains, bursitis, strains, and bruises at some point. 

A broken bone often heals more successfully because a cast completely immobilizes the body part. In contrast, people often lack patience with soft tissue injuries, so there is only partial healing or reinjury, which causes future pain or reduces movement range.

Tracking your recuperation progress 

a thermogram of the right thigh. Serenity health care center for thermography

If your Thermography results continue to show a higher skin temperature, you are probably still undergoing an internal recovery process. With this in mind, you can avoid reinjury by not returning to regular activity until your healing process has completely finished. 

Thermography offers essential feedback for you to responsibly manage your expectations about your mobility and training goals.

To track your sports injury recovery book a Thermography scan here.

Debilitating Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) and Thermography

Thermography detects pain. CRPS can be continuous generalized pain, but it is usually in just one limb. 

An injury usually triggers CRPS symptoms that include: inexplicable stinging, fiery, penetrating, and severe pain. The syndrome will ebb and flow with intense painful episodes. 

One telltale sign of CRPS is that you may be particularly sensitive to accidental touch and be overly responsive to gentle pressure or temperatures. 

The symptoms spiral into difficulty sleeping, reduced mobility, and strange changes to the appearance and functionality of the affected limb. 

Serenity Health Care Center uses Thermography to help determine the focal point of the injury to get to the root cause of the CRPS.

Detecting nerve dysfunction with Thermography

Cool areas on a scan can indicate nerve damage, and the technology documents spinal injury caused by disc compression. 

Back issues, for example, can be misleading. 

The strain felt in one area might be caused by overcompensating for the actual target area, which can be on the opposite side of the pain point or higher or lower. Again, heat patterns can help us determine what is really going on with regard to your back pain.

Also, tracking your disability level over time caused by neuro-muscular-skeletal issues can help you to avoid invasive surgery because improvements are visible.

9 benefits of Sports Medicine Thermography

Thermography imaging is: 

1. Non-invasive

The device captures the external heat emanating from your body; nothing touches your skin or penetrates your system. Therefore, there is no need to ingest dye or any substance.

2. Painless

Thermography is like a photo session. We will ask you to stay still, but the procedure does not require numbing or anaesthesia. 

3. Accurate

To ensure accurate results, you will be asked to refrain from exercise, hot showers, shaving, stimulants including caffeine and nicotine, and using a bra 4 hours before your testing.

4. Radiation-free

Many data points can be gathered in a healthy individual using medical thermal imaging. However, repeated x-ray radiation damages cells, while Thermography offers an alternative diagnostic and prognostic imaging option to monitor your body’s injury.

5. Economical

Although Thermography is conducted by certified professionals only and results interpretations require ten years of training, the technology is accessible to a larger population than many other medical imaging options.

6. Safe and FDA-approved

Major universities such as Duke University and scientific teams continue to conduct studies that Thermography is safe and provides essential diagnostic and prognostic data points. 

7. A complementary diagnostic tool to x-rays, MRI, etc.

While x-rays show structural injuries, Thermography can complete the diagnostic process by showing the real-time functional process.

8. A useful prognostic technology to assist recovery

Thermography can be repeated as there are no harmful side effects. As a result, the first session sets a baseline, while recovery subsequent Thermography scans track positive or negative changes.  

9. A tool for preventative medicine

The inflammation detected by a scan will alert your provider of weakness or excess blood flow, indicating an imbalance in your system that may be asymptomatic.  

Our experienced Functional Medicine staff know the signs of disease in the making and will prescribe preventative lifestyle changes, including diet, supplementation, exercise, herbs, or the need for further testing.

Book your full body Sports Medicine Thermography Scan today

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