Blood Flow Restriction!

Blood flow restriction is an incredibly safe and useful tool to prevent the atrophy of muscle under any circumstance where resistance training is not appropriate or possible.  The most useful application is seen post surgically or after injury when the body is not able to provide a strong muscular contraction.  

The premise is eloquent in its simplicity; you restrict blood flow to an area in order to stimulate the release of hormones that will aid in strength, recovery, and pain modulation.  When you restrict blood, you restrict oxygen flow to the muscle tissue.  This causes a build-up of lactate and hydronium ion (from lactic acid which is the more mainstream precursor) giving that familiar ‘burning’ sensation in the muscle tissue.  The effect of this is the release of human growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor-1.  Normally this is experienced under high load or burnout sets or some sort of extreme muscle exertion.  Blood flow restriction makes it possible to experience this biological phenomenon under low load or no-load conditions making it the ideal add-on for injured or recovering tissue.   Body builders have been doing this for decades already and maybe as such, it’s taken longer to become accepted by the mainstream community.   The 4-inch cuffs are by far the safest on the vascular system (thank you physics) but the optimum frequency usage rate is still up for debate.  Currently the most researched format is 30:15:15:15 in terms of reps and sets with an identical amount of rest between each set.  

The chief concern as justification for not using blood flow restriction is from development of a venous thromboembolism.  There is a nice write-up in the Journal of Orthopedic and Sports Therapy on this exact issue taking the summaries of 4 experts reviews of the literature.  The conclusion was there is no increased risk over high weight training in the normal person.  

However, for the post-surgical candidate there isn’t any science to show a negative effect but, also nothing to show it is positive without increased risk.  The trick of it all, is what has been shown to be true is the longer you don’t use a muscle the faster it will atrophy.  In the case of surgery that is often unavoidable over multiple weeks!  But blood flow restriction, as noted above, can be an excellent way of exposing the body to stress without weight or heavy weight thus, severely shortening the negative outlook for this lack of use.   Due to the unique nature of each surgery and each patient, clearly let the surgeon and therapist recommendations drive the usage of such a modality.  But the upside is potentially huge, and you should absolutely ask you it if you aren’t doing it yet!   

In conclusion: this is a very exciting and safe (when implemented correctly) method of preventing the atrophy of muscle while it is injured or recovering.  If you haven’t tried it reach out and get educated today!