5 significant benefits of breaking up scar tissue

If you’re dealing with scar tissue, it can be annoying at best and downright painful at worst. Scar tissue is fibrous tissue on and inside your body that forms after normal tissue is destroyed. This can happen due to disease, injury or even surgery and can be painful. Scar tissue can even limit mobility in your muscles, joints and tendons.

While scar tissue may not seem like a serious problem, over 100 million people per year acquire scars from surgery, and that doesn’t account for nonsurgical injuries or diseases. Breaking up that damaged tissue can improve your daily life. Let’s explore the ways breaking up scar tissue can benefit you and how to go about it.

The benefits of breaking up scar tissue

Scarring is your body’s way of protecting itself during the healing process, but long-term scar tissue isn’t as functional as healthy tissue. This can cause pain and discomfort, but when you break up existing scar tissue, you can address those issues. Here are a few benefits to dealing with your scar tissue:

• Decreasing pain — Did you know that scar tissue has more pain receptors than healthy tissue? This means you feel pain more deeply in scar tissue even if the injury isn’t severe. If your body produces an excessive amount of scar tissue, this can cause fibrosis. Fibrosis causes adhesions that can lead to ongoing pain and inflammation even after the original injury has healed. By breaking up scar tissue, you allow healthy tissue to take its place, which can decrease sensitivity and pain in and around your injury.

• Increasing mobility — Scar tissue weaves a protective layer over your injury to aid healing. But unlike healthy tissue, scar tissue is stiffer and more rigid, which restricts your movement. When you break up scar tissue, you allow those muscles and joints to move more freely, which will help you heal better in the long run.

• Improving circulation — Due to its rigid and protective structure, scar tissue tends to have poorer circulation than healthy tissue. This limits the supply of fresh oxygen and nutrients to other parts of your body. By breaking up scar tissue, you’ll increase blood flow, which can speed up healing in the injured area and help your body in its overall recovery process.

• Protecting muscle fibers — Unlike healthy tissue, scar tissue forms in a random crisscross pattern. While this is helpful to protect your injury while it’s healing, scar tissue can also cause your muscle fibers to adhere to each other irregularly. Breaking up scar tissue separates those clumped muscle fibers, which can reduce pain and increase flexibility.

• Preventing re-injury — Although scar tissue helps protect your injury while it’s healing, scar tissue is stiffer and weaker than healthy tissue. So, in the long term, scar tissue can actually increase your chances of injuring yourself again. To prevent that, you need to break up that injured tissue. This will allow stronger, healthier tissue to grow in its place and protect your body against further injury.

Scar tissue is your body’s natural defense when you get injured, but it isn’t a long-term solution for healing. If you break up scar tissue, you can get back to your former self faster and with less pain.

How to break up scar tissue

Now that you know why you need to break up scar tissue, let’s take a look at how to do that. There are several methods for either preventing scar tissue from forming or helping to break it up once it has occurred. Here’s a list of some ways that you and your physical therapist can break up scar tissue:

• Increased movement — Most people try to take it easy after an injury. While it’s important not to re-strain your injury, if you don’t move at all, more scar tissue will form. This makes your joints and muscles stiffer and ends up restricting your movement. If you keep your body moving, you can decrease the amount of scar tissue that your body forms. This will make it easier to get rid of whatever scar tissue your body does create and can decrease the amount of pain you’ll have to deal with. Talk to your physical therapist about how soon after your injury you should start moving again and what kind of exercises are appropriate for your body.

• Manual therapy — Manual therapy is a great way for your physical therapist to help break up scar tissue. For manual therapy, your physical therapist will touch and move your body using their hands to try to mobilize the injured area and break up the scarred tissue. The goal of this treatment is to break up scar tissue, improve range of motion, and decrease pain in and around your injury. Methods such as soft tissue mobilization and dry needling can be helpful ways to break up scar tissue and help you get moving again.

• Instrument-assisted soft tissue mobilization — Instrument-assisted soft tissue mobilization (IASTM) is a technique your physical therapist may use for your scar tissue in addition to manual therapy. With this treatment, your physical therapist will use a set of stainless steel instruments to address scar tissue in the connective tissue, muscles, neurological tissue and skin. Using tools, your physical therapist may apply gentle friction over your scar tissue to help break it up. The goal of this treatment is to break up damaged tissue and stimulate the connective tissue to encourage healing and the growth of healthy tissue.

There are many ways to help break up scar tissue, and your therapist may use one or more of these treatments depending on your condition and needs. The most important thing to remember is that scar tissue doesn’t have to be a lifelong issue. The right treatment can help you get your mobility back.

How to break up scar tissue after a knee replacement

Arthrofibrosis, also known as stiff knee syndrome, occurs when too much scar tissue develops around the knee. This condition develops in approximately 3% to 10% of patients who have undergone a total knee arthroplasty. Some signs and symptoms that you may be developing arthrofibrosis include:

• Increased pain — Pain is normal after knee surgery, but it should decrease over time. If your pain gets worse as you heal, you may be dealing with an excess of scar tissue.

• Bent knee — As you heal from your knee surgery, you should be able to straighten your knee. However, if you are walking with a bent knee or cannot fully straighten your knee, you may be developing arthrofibrosis.

• Swelling — Some swelling is normal after surgery, but if it doesn’t get better, seek medical attention. It may be an early sign of arthrofibrosis or other issues.

• A hot feeling — Feeling heat in and around the knee after surgery is common. But if it persists or worsens, you may be developing excess scar tissue.

You may experience all of these things to some degree after a knee replacement. Gentle physical exercise such as walking on a treadmill and wearing a compression brace to provide extra support may help you avoid excessive scar tissue. But if you’re experiencing these signs and symptoms for an extended period of time, you should talk to your doctor about it. Here are a few courses of action they may suggest to help you deal with your arthrofibrosis:

• Physical therapy — Treatments such as manual therapy and IASTM that were discussed above may break up scar tissue after your knee replacement. Your physical therapist will work with you to determine the right course of action for you.

• Surgery — If your condition is severe enough, it may require additional surgery. There are several types of surgery depending on how severe your condition is. Your surgeon will discuss your options with you.

Whether you need physical therapy or surgery to address your arthrofibrosis, there are solutions to your pain. If you’re experiencing any of the signs and symptoms above for an extended period of time, don’t wait until it gets worse. The sooner you address your pain, the sooner you can get help.

Advent Physical Therapy can address your scar tissue

Scar tissue can be a frustrating condition to deal with, but you don’t have to go through it alone. Our licensed physical therapists can help you find a path forward to a life with less pain. 

Call us or request an appointment today to learn how we can help you get rid of your scar tissue.