Tag Archive for: pt

Got a Pain in Your Butt? Here’s what to do first.

/in , , /by

Nobody likes a “pain in the butt.” But what do you do when you’re dealing with literal pain in your butt versus the figurative kind?

It starts with figuring out where it’s coming from. Understanding the origin of your pain is necessary if you really want to solve it! One of our Pilates regulars (“Stacy”) has a story that illustrates this concept perfectly.

Stacy had been doing all the right things. She keeps active, does Pilates with us, and walks regularly. But still, she ended up with that dreaded pain in her butt that so many of us deal with on a regular basis. She tried to work through it herself by foam rolling and stretching – but none of that worked to completely eliminate her pain. Plus, her symptoms were starting to limit her Pilates and walking. This made her nervous because staying active and mobile is one of the most important things to Stacy, and the idea of being stuck at home and in pain this winter season made her want to take action now. She did the right thing by going to see our PT team.

Their first course of action was to accurately determine the root cause of Stacy’s butt pain. It could be a few different things.

Most often, symptoms like Stacy’s will get “labeled” generically as any one of the following:

1. Bursitis

They’ll call it this if you’re feeling the pain more in the side of your hip versus center of your butt.

2. Piriformis syndrome

This refers to a pain in the center of your butt. You might feel some tightness as well.

3. Back problem/Sciatica

They’ll call it this if your pain is more diffuse and achy, and perhaps even running into your thigh. This last diagnosis will be more common if you’ve got back pain along with the hip or butt pain.

As I mentioned, any one of these things could be the source of Stacy’s symptoms, and getting it right is critical. The correct diagnosis is the determining factor of whether Stacy’s problem gets resolved for good, or becomes something she deals with for the rest of her life. The problem with diagnosing your butt pain (or any problem for that matter) based on the location of your symptoms alone is that it’s not a reliable diagnosis.

The location of your pain alone does not tell you where your problem is really coming from.

For example, I’ve seen people with pain in their hip and butt that is actually coming from their back – even when they’ve never had a back problem. If your butt pain is coming from your back, and you think it’s “piriformis syndrome,” you’re going to be really disappointed in a few weeks when your pain is still there (or perhaps even worse) because you’ve been going about treating it the wrong way. In order to accurately determine what was really going on with Stacy’s butt pain, we needed to do some specialized movement screens and tests.

Research has shown that your pain’s response to movement, and how it behaves, is a much more reliable way to figure out the source of your problem versus relying on the symptom location alone.

In Stacy’s case, some quick movement tests revealed that her butt pain was indeed coming from her back – even though she did not have any back pain. How did we know? Pretty simple actually. When we asked Stacy to move and bend her back in specific directions, it triggered her butt pain! Her piriformis muscle was also tight – and may still need to be stretched – but it’s very possible that the tightness she is experiencing is also being caused by whatever is going on in her back. It’s possible for nerves to refer both pain and a feeling of “tightness.” We’ll know for sure in a few weeks, because we prescribed Stacy a corrective exercise designed to target the problem in her back and take pressure off the nerve that was triggering her butt pain. In fact, if she had not come to see us and kept stretching what she thought was a tight piriformis, she likely would have aggravated her nerve and made her condition worse. Nerves don’t like to be stretched. This is a great example of why it’s critical to know the true source of your problem before you start treating it.

Hopefully Stacy’s story helped you understand that the first step in getting rid of a pain in your butt, is to accurately determine where it’s coming from! If you’re experiencing unexplained pain in your butt that isn’t going away with stretching or general exercise, perhaps you’re going after the wrong problem. Try paying closer attention to how your symptoms behave. Do you notice they get worse after you’ve been sitting for a while, raking leaves, or driving? Do they move around on you – and go from your butt, to your hip, to the back of your thigh?

Signs like this could mean you’re dealing with a back problem, not a butt problem. Click here for access to our FREE back pain guide! This guide contains our best tips and advice on how to start easing back pain and stiffness right away — and get on the road to pain-free movement just like Stacy did.

Is Shoulder Pain “Impinging” on Your Lifestyle?

/in , /by

If you’ve ever had pain in your shoulders when you try to raise your arms overhead, pull off a sweatshirt, grab a gallon of milk from the fridge, or place grocery bags on the counter, you were likely dealing with shoulder “impingement syndrome…” otherwise known as “rotator cuff impingement” or “rotator cuff tendonitis.”

They call it “impingement” because your rotator cuff tendons get pinched between the round head of your shoulder bone and a hook-shaped bone in your shoulder blade called the acromion.

The pinching tends to happens every time you raise your arm above ninety degrees. After a while, the pinching eventually irritates your tendon, resulting in pain and inflammation. These symptoms are exacerbated and pronounced with any arm movements above shoulder height. Most of the time, the root cause of this problem has been there for a long time, but it’s only just now manifesting itself as pain — and this so-called “impingement syndrome.”

So what causes your rotator cuff tendon to get pinched or impinged in the first place?

Most of the time, the answer is POSTURE.

If your upper back is stiff, curved, and lacks adequate mobility, it’s going to impact how your shoulder blades move and position themselves. With a stiff and curved upper back, your shoulder blades will respond by moving out and up. This scenario makes that hook-like bone (the acromion) sit more forward and more down than it should. When this happens, there isn’t enough room for your tendon when you lift your arms above shoulder height. The bony surfaces above and below your tendon create friction, and this eventually turns into pain and inflammation.

The tempting and easy “fix” is to get a cortisone shot or attack the inflammation more conservatively with ice and topical anti-inflammatory agents.

But what you need to understand is that in most cases, “impingement syndrome” is actually the SYMPTOM. The root cause is usually coming from immobility and poor movement patterns in the upper back or neck. If you really want to get rid of your shoulder pain, get back to lifting and carrying things without any worry, and have full and free mobility of your arms, it’s essential that you identify and address the root cause and not just the symptoms. Since there is an 80% chance your shoulder pain is a mechanical or movement problem — the best people to examine and address this FIRST are movement experts like us.

So moral of the story… next time you go to the doctor complaining of shoulder pain and you hear the words “impingement syndrome” or “rotator cuff tendonitis” — don’t assume you need a cortisone shot or surgery to fix it.

Neither of these solutions will likely give you the long-term solution you’re looking for. The very last thing you want to do is get some kind of procedure or surgery that either masks the pain or corrects the wrong problem. You want to do everything possible to preserve the integrity of your tendon, and the best way to do that is by optimizing mobility and using natural movement and strength training prescribed by movement experts.

Interested in seeing if physical therapy could resolve your shoulder pain? Try a FREE Discovery Session on us. This is a chance for you to speak with one of our specialists, tell us everything that’s been going on with you, and determine for yourself if we’re the best people to help you. It’s a completely free, no-obligation appointment that will give you all the information you need to make the BEST decision for YOUR health – whether that’s working with us or not!

Holding Knee with Arthritis

When Traditional Physical Therapy Fails…

/in /by

I’ve been a physical therapist for a very long time — 20 years to be exact — and I’ve seen a lot of changes in healthcare over the course of my career. One of the biggest (and saddest) changes I’ve seen in my field is the overcrowding of clinics. As reimbursements from insurance companies go down, traditional physical therapy clinics have been forced to increase their patient volume. That means you rarely get to spend time with your therapist, and your treatment sessions consist of repetitive exercise sets that you typically can do at the gym or on your own.

If you do manage to get some one-on-one time with your therapist, whether it be for hands-on-care or actual consultation about what’s going on with you, it’s often just a quick 20 minutes. The rest of the time, your poor therapist is usually held hostage by a computer because of all the documentation requirements placed on them, and you’re left on your own doing all those exercises.

Has this happened to you?

With this model of care, it’s impossible for the quality of your treatment NOT to suffer. Many folks I speak with say that traditional physical therapy is a “waste of time.” 

Why bother going when they can do everything on their own at home?

Worse, when traditional physical therapy does fail, most people go back to their doctors hoping for a different solution. Many times, the next step for these folks involves unwanted procedures, pain pills, or surgery.

So what do you do if you don’t want to go down the medical route of procedures or surgery, but the “physical therapy” didn’t work?

Well first, you need to understand what physical therapy actually is, seek that out, and don’t settle for anything less.

Physical therapy is NOT just a bunch of general exercises or ultrasound — at least it’s not supposed to be. After your pain is gone and your problem has been resolved, the role of general exercise is to keep your pain gone, and to continue optimizing your strength, performance, and mobility. That’s what we use our Pilates program for.

When you receive proper physical therapy in the way it was intended, it looks something like this…

Your therapist will first give you a proper examination and an actual diagnosis. Your physical therapy diagnosis might be different than your medical diagnosis. In fact, it should be. For example, you may come to us with a diagnosis of “bulging disc,” but our job is to figure out WHY your disc is bulging. Our diagnosis is going to be related to the specific movements, habits, and musculoskeletal deficiencies that led you to having that problem in the first place (discs don’t just bulge spontaneously). Once we know that, we can come up with a plan for you.

Here’s an example…

Let’s say your bulging disc is due to poor sitting posture, a weak core, and poor mobility in your spine. When your spine doesn’t move well and you sit too much, compensations like bulging discs can occur. Your plan might then consist of strategies for better, less painful sitting postures, as well as some help getting your spine back to full mobility again — so that your bulging disc no longer irritates you.

At this stage in your treatment, any “exercises” given to you should be corrective, very specific to your problem, and should be prescribed specifically to you.

There should be nothing cookie-cutter or general about them — and they should be working!

When you have the right “movement prescription” and when your exercises are corrective versus general — your pain goes away, your problem gets resolved, and most importantly, you’ll know exactly why and can even replicate this on your own in the future.

Once this has all been achieved, THEN we can get you back to the fun stuff like exercises at the gym, Pilates, or yoga — the stuff that is designed to keep you feeling healthy, active, and mobile.

Getting rid of something like back, knee, or neck pain doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to involve pills, procedures, or surgery. But it may require you to be a bit open-minded about HOW you receive physical therapy.

If you’ve had a frustrating experience with physical therapy in the past, don’t just give up!

Consider working with a specialist practice like ours that operates differently from traditional clinics.

Click here to request a Discovery Visit.

It’s completely FREE! A discovery session serves as an opportunity for you to “discover” what’s going on with your body and what we do in our practice. You’ll speak with one of my specialists, find out if we’re a good fit for you, and then get started on a path to natural recovery!

Should You Heat or Ice an Injury?

/in , , /by

Earlier this week, we put on a free Zoom workshop all about preventing and overcoming knee pain – and one of the questions that came up was if you should apply heat or ice when something is hurting. This is a VERY common question in our office, so we wanted to share the same advice we give to clients right here!

When to apply ice:

Generally speaking, the best time to apply ice is within 24 to 48 hours immediately following an injury. Application of ice during this stage has been shown to reduce the formation of edema and “secondary injury.” After that, it really becomes a personal choice. If you’re in pain, and ice makes you feel better, go for it! Some research has claimed that icing an injury after 48 hours is “bad” for you. But if you really dig into the research, it’s inconclusive on this topic. What I tell my clients is that if something feels irritated or inflamed – go for ice. It’s a much better and more natural alternative to pain pills!

When to apply heat:

Once you’re into the chronic stages of injury or pain, I’m generally a fan of heat. But the term “heat” is relative – and doesn’t necessarily refer to the application of a heating pad only. In fact, research has shown that heating pads are not able to penetrate deeply enough to actually have an effect on the injured muscle or soft tissue. But it does feel good… which can be beneficial in and of itself because when you “feel” better – your nervous system relaxes. If the superficial heat can relax the nervous system enough so that you can actually tolerate the movements or exercises that WILL actually heal you – then I can see a benefit.

The BEST way to provide “heat” as a way to promote healing to an injury is through movement – but you need the right prescription. The mistakes I often see, especially around 2-4 weeks post injury, is that people aren’t moving enough (if at all), or they are overloading the tissue and moving too much.

Movement truly is medicine, and it’s one of the best and most natural ways to properly heal from an injury – but you MUST get the prescription right.

So there you have it. You can’t really go wrong with either modality. The general rule is that if it’s an acute injury – ice up to 48 hours. For anything else, we typically recommend heat.

If you’re presently healing from an injury and not satisfied with your progress – perhaps you’re just missing the correct prescription. If you’re wondering what that magical movement is, or you’re wondering if the current movement you’re doing is safe, get in touch!

Speaking of movement as a way to heal…

Our Pilates 101: Get Your Back to Health is back!

This is our signature program and it’s designed to help those dealing with lingering back problems learn to move and heal the RIGHT way – from the inside out with proper core strengthening. It’s also ideal for those that had recent back surgery and you’ve already been through your initial stages of general physical therapy.

Interested in learning more or getting on the VIP waitlist for the program? Click here!

Knee Pain while Running? Don’t Blame Arthritis

/in , , , /by

Knee Pain while Running? Don’t Blame Arthritis

Is running bad for your knees? Does it cause arthritis?

We get asked these questions a lot, especially by clients who are in their 50s and 60’s and wondering if it’s safe to keep running.

The short answer is no — running is NOT bad for your knees! If you experience knee pain while running, it’s not that you’ve “aged out” of the sport or that it’s causing arthritis in your knees. This is a very common misconception. In fact, research supports that running may actually be GOOD for your knees!

Staying strong, active, and mobile is your best defense against osteoarthritis.

Therefore runners, because they are typically active and healthy individuals, often have healthier knees compared to non-runners.

Ok then — so if not arthritis — what really causes knee pain in runners?

In most cases, it’s simply a biomechanical issue that goes unaddressed over time. But the GOOD news is that once identified, these issues can actually be fixed with proper education and strengthening (best offered by movement specialists like us!).

Here are three of the most common factors we see that cause knee pain while running:

 

1) Poor ankle mobility

Ankle mobility affects the way force hits your foot, which can impact your knee. If your ankle doesn’t move fully, freely, and adequately, excess forces will be shifted up to your knee. The knee may be forced to flex, rotate, and/or tilt more than it needs to. This, in turn, may result in unwanted loads that the tissues of the knee can’t handle. An expert in biomechanics and movement can not only help you identify if this is the true root of your “knee problem,” but can also help you improve your ankle mobility. This will help prevent long term damage to the joints, tendons, and ligaments in your knees. We actually see this as a very common problem. Specifically, in those that have sprained or twisted their ankles in the past. If that’s you, this could be a reason why you’re suffering from knee pain while you run.

2) Weakness in your hips and thighs

There’s a widely perpetuated myth out there that runners don’t need to strength train. That’s simply not true! Adding strength training to your running regimen makes it way less likely that you’ll suffer an injury. When it comes to protecting your knees, developing good, balanced strength in your hips and thighs is critical. The hamstring and quadriceps muscles play a crucial role in stabilizing the patella, otherwise known as your kneecap. Since running is extremely repetitive on your joints, especially your knees, it requires they have good durability and endurance — something that is lost quickly when you neglect proper strength training. Often “wear and tear” in your knees (otherwise known as arthritis) will get blamed for your knee pain when in actuality, the loss of strength around your knees is what’s causing that wear and tear to feel worse than it needs to.

3) Unstable core

It may seem like running is all in the legs, but the stability of your pelvis and trunk have a huge influence on how your legs perform. You derive the majority of your power, speed, and stamina from your core muscles and glutes. Much like with ankle mobility, if your core is not performing adequately or efficiently – your legs will have to work harder. A stable core is key for developing and maintaining good balance and rhythm with any activity – but especially running.

With a repetitive activity like running, efficiency and form is everything. Without a strong core, it’s impossible for your leg muscles and knee joints to work as efficiently as they were designed to. It will be really difficult for you to maintain good and proper running form. When your core strength is weak, and doesn’t have enough endurance to sustain the amount of miles you want to run, your knees will suffer.

What’s important for you to remember is that arthritis is NORMAL — everyone gets it as they age. 

What doesn’t have to be “normal” is for arthritis to stop you from running, or doing any other activity that you love. You can get surgery to fix the “wear and tear” in your knees, or injections to decrease the inflammation, but if you don’t check and address any underlying biomechanical issues, these fixes will be temporary and your knee pain will keep coming back. And worse… they could force you to stop running all together!

If you’re local to Portsmouth, NH and suffering from knee pain that’s starting to impact your ability to run or do any other activity that you love, you might want to consider speaking to one of my specialists.

In this FREE Discovery Session you can tell us everything that’s been going on with you, and determine for yourself if we’re the best people to help you. It’s a completely free, no-obligation appointment that will give you all the information you need to make the BEST decision for YOUR health – whether that’s working with us or not!

CLICK HERE to request a free discovery session.

Dr. Carrie Jose – back pain specialist and Pilates expert – owns CJ Physical Therapy & Pilates in Portsmouth, NH.

Is running bad for your knees?

Movement is medicine (when prescribed properly)

/in , /by

I have a confession to make. A few months ago I hurt my own back.

Yes, you read that correctly, the back pain expert injured her own back! I preach this ALL the time to my clients, but one of the reasons I’m so passionate about helping people with back problems is because the treatment is not cookie-cutter. But once we find what works for you, physical therapy is so effective and rewarding.

In my case, I was able to use very specific movements to get rid of my back pain, and then start focusing on strengthening exercises to keep it gone. Don’t get me wrong, there were moments when I wanted to call my doctor and ask him for pain pills, and even the idea of an injection crossed my mind once or twice. But because I keep up with the research, I know that pills and injections really don’t work well for long-term results. Aside from the many potential complications and side effects, quick-fix treatments tend to mask your pain and keep you from doing the real work that is necessary to keep the problem from recurring in the future.

At CJPT & Pilates, long-term solutions are the only thing we are interested in. We believe that movement is medicine.

For all musculoskeletal injuries, including back pain, the research shows that movement and exercise really is the best course of treatment in about 80% of all cases. OK, I know what you’re thinking. If it were that easy, why can’t you just go to the gym, to yoga, or follow an exercise video at home to get rid of your own back or knee pain?

It’s because although movement IS medicine, it only works when prescribed for you properly.

Let me explain.

I’m working with a gentleman right now who’s had back pain for over a year. It started after a car accident. He’s tried regular physical therapy, chiropractic, steroid injections and radiofrequency ablation. None of it worked. He feels good when he exercises and moves around, but the pain always comes back.

When he came to see us, the really interesting thing I noticed about his back was when he put himself in certain positions, he would stand up and literally be crooked. His spine would shift to one side, and become very painful and stiff. In the PT-world we call this a lateral shift, and it’s a sign that indicates he likely has a bulging disc. The great thing about a bulging disc is that they tend to respond very well to corrective movements. Once we know what movement “fixes” you, we can prescribe it to you. This gentleman can now make himself straight and get rid of his back pain in under a minute. Of course the goal is to get him to the point where he no longer needs this corrective movement, but for now, it quite literally is his medicine.

I think the reason more people don’t use this approach is because it requires a little bit of work, and you don’t often see the results immediately. When you get an injection, or even take a pill, the pain is gone in a few hours and it will often stay gone for a period of time without you really needing to do much. With movement, you have to stick with it and do it correctly for it to work. And although you can get an immediate reduction in pain from the correctly prescribed movement, it takes several weeks for it to start to stick and produce long-term relief.

But here’s the best part about using movement as medicine — it’s natural, there are no harmful side-effects, and you can do it completely on your own.

If you’ve been suffering in pain for awhile and tired of using pills or quick fixes to manage your pain, sign up for a FREE Discovery Session with us to find out if movement can be your medicine instead! You can also check out our free back pain guide right here.

people walking with face masks

Beyond the Mask: Five Ways to Build Immunity and Stay Healthy

/in , , , , /by

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed so much of how we live, work, communicate, and think about our health. While precautions like face masks can be helpful, the best way to avoid getting seriously ill is to have a strong, healthy immune system. In our office, we’re helping people’s immune systems by making sure they stay active, healthy, and mobile. We’ve been helping people with back and knee pain recover quickly and manage their conditions from home, so they can get back outside and keep moving and exercising.

Exercising regularly is just one way to keep your immune system strong. Here are five more ways to make sure you’re building immunity during  these strange times!

 

1. Hydrate

 

Staying hydrated is one of the best things you can do for your health in general, but it’s especially important when you’re trying to fight disease. Each individual cell in your body that works for your immune system needs to be fully hydrated to perform its job optimally — and that all depends on how much water you drink!

 

2. Stay Moving

 

In the era of working from home and passing time with friends or family on Zoom, it can be hard to get up from your computer and make sure you’re staying active. But it is so important that we interrupt our sitting and make time to exercise! Keeping your blood flowing allows pathogens to be filtered out more efficiently — plus, sweat can even kill pathogens on the surface of your skin. 

 

3. Get Good Sleep

 

Sleep deprivation has been proven to increase the risk of illness, as well as increasing the risk of more serious long term effects. Sleep is when your body’s cells get to repair themselves — including those immune cells! Plus, getting enough sleep at night can help lower your overall stress. 

 

4. Eat Well

 

Nutrition is key for building and maintaining immunity. You should try to avoid processed foods and integrate more clean alternatives like nuts, berries, eggs, and fish. 

 

5. Get Outside 

 

Scientists are telling us that the novel coronavirus thrives best indoors, and out of UV light. All the more reason to get outside! Soaking up that Vitamin D will boost your immune system and just make you feel better in general. Not to mention that going outside is the one of the best ways to get exercise right now with gyms being closed! 

If you’re currently suffering from back, knee, or any other kind of pain that is preventing you from moving and exercising, give us a call.

We’re currently offering free consultations, both in-person and virtually, to help you figure out what’s going on and give you all the information you need to make the best decision about what to do next.

 

Noticing More Knee Pain during Quarantine?

/in , /by

Aside from back pain, the second most common complaint bringing people into our office these days is knee pain, and lately, I’ve seen a little surge.

Here’s why…

People are sitting a lot more, which leads to increased stiffness in your knees. And a lot of us are doing different kinds of activities than we did 6 weeks ago, which for some, is exposing knee problems they never knew they had.

I spoke to one gentleman last week (we’ll call him “Jack”) who had started walking every day, and running a little bit, because his gym had closed. After about 4 weeks of this, he began experiencing pain in the front of his knee. He put some ice on it, took a break from his daily walks and running, and also resumed some stretches that a former physical therapist had told him to do. This seemed to help, so he resumed his walks and running again. Three days into it… bam… his knee pain returned.

Our specialist team has opened up our schedules to answer people’s questions about what they can do at home right now to take care of any aches or pains.

So Jack took us up on that, because he wanted to know if his knee pain was something to worry about. Did he need to see a doctor? Did he need to let it rest some more? Were there specific exercises he could do?

He did NOT want to stop his walking and running routine, but he definitely didn’t want his knee to get so bad that it would keep him from returning to the gym when it opened back up. He’s 55 years old and staying active and mobile is VERY important to him. We spoke for about 20 minutes and I knew immediately that rest wasn’t going to work, and that X-rays or medication from a doctor wouldn’t do anything either. Those things would only mask the problem. They would take care of the pain in his knee – but wouldn’t correct the source of his problem.

Ironically, the truth about knee problems is that they’re often not actually knee problems!  

With most knee pain, we can trace the underlying issues to a locality directly below the knee (the ankle or foot) or directly above it (the pelvis, hips, core, and low back). If you don’t engage your core throughout your daily movement, it actually puts a huge amount of strain on your knees. As your legs swing and rotate, the torque that should be occurring through your pelvis and hips gets overloaded onto your knees. So as we age, we may start feeling a sense of wear and tear or weakness in our knees that actually comes from a lifetime of improper movement.

The mainstream medical model is focused largely on treating symptoms rather than identifying the root cause of WHY the problem is occuring in the first place.

Pain pills, injections, and even surgery are often recommended before more conservative and natural treatments! And because these quick fixes are merely addressing the symptoms, the physical problems return for the majority of affected individuals. That’s because those knee issues actually stemmed from a different part of the body, and the knee will continue to be overloaded until those biomechanical problems are addressed directly!

Yes – we were able to figure ALL of this out from a FREE phone session.

The next step for Jack was an evaluation with our knee specialist. We scheduled a virtual session over Zoom, she was able to confirm the source of the problem. Turns out the muscles in his hips weren’t firing like they should and it was causing his knees to compensate and work harder than they needed to, which resulted in pain. So we got him doing the correct stretches and specific exercises that would train his hip and pelvis to work like they are supposed to.

In no time, Jack will be back to his walking and running routine, but he will ALSO be in better shape to return to the gym. One of his frustrations before was not being able to do as many squats as he wanted – because they hurt his knees. He had no idea that the problem was actually coming from his hips! So he is pretty excited to try his squats again once his gym opens back up.

If Jack’s story sounds familiar to you, schedule a call with us.

There is no point in sitting at home worrying, or scouring Google for what you should do to fix your pain. We can figure out what’s going on with you over the phone and I’ll let you know if you need to schedule a session with us, see a doctor, or if it’s something you can take care of on your own.

How to Tell Good Pain from Bad Pain

/in , , , /by

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been inundated with people asking for help.  And we’re so thankful for everyone who is reaching out! 

Since being quarantined at home and off their routines, people are noticing more knee pain and back pain (these are the two biggies) because they are either sitting more — or because they are DOING more.

The folks who have been sitting more have been complaining about more back pain and stiffness, tightness in their hip flexors and knees, and more tension in their necks.

However, the people who have been doing more are noticing increased or NEW aches and pains in their knees, muscles, and joints – and are wondering if this is “normal” or if it’s something to be concerned about.

For some, the aches and pains are quite harmless – and it’s easy enough to stretch out on your own at home. If you’ve been more active lately because you’ve been bored or suddenly have more time, these could be symptoms of “good” pain. It’s not unusual to have more soreness in your muscles and joints with increased activity or exercise.

But for others – these symptoms could be a sign of an underlying problem that was already there – and just now surfacing. And if that’s the case – simple home stretches that you look up online are not going to be enough – and could actually make you worse.

So how do you know?

One way is to look at how your pain behaves. Does it get worse? Or does it get worse, but not until later? Does your pain move around? Or does it come and go? Does it get better and STAY better the more you stretch? Or does the stretch only provide temporary relief — like a bandaid — and your pain just keeps coming back?

Understanding how your pain behaves is how you know whether or not you’re doing the right thing or the wrong thing.

And how your pain behaves is not as simple as “getting better” or “getting worse.” 

There is so much grey area when it comes to pain, and it’s where people get really confused.

For example, pain might seem like it’s going away, but then it comes back again. Does that mean you’re better? Or is the problem still there? Sometimes pain will move, and you think it’s a sign of improvement. We see this all the time with back problems. Pain starts in your back and is really painful, but then it moves to your butt, hip, or thigh and is more achy and not as sharp. You think you’re getting better — but most of the time this means your back problem is actually getting worse!

The truth is, you’ve got a 50% chance of getting it right and a 50% chance of getting it wrong. And if you fall on the side of getting it wrong, it can lead to a lot more problems down the line that you won’t be able to fix on your own from home.

The BEST way to figure out if your pain is normal — or if it’s something more — is to talk to an expert.

That’s what we’ve been doing ALL month here. As specialized physical therapists, we have been getting on the phone — or hopping on Zoom — to help you figure out what’s going on in your back, knees, or somewhere else.

It’s totally free to talk to us! We’ll let you know if what you’re experiencing is normal… and if what you’re doing is safe or not.

If you want to get on our schedule — and talk to one of us for free — just fill out this form.

You can talk to us in-person if you’re comfortable leaving your home, or virtually if you’re nervous about leaving. Both methods are equally as effective!

Whatever you do, don’t try to figure out your pain on your own — and don’t just throw pills, ice, or heat at it. This could lead to more problems down the line. Plus, if you let it get bad enough, you may be forced to go to Urgent Care or the ER — two places you DON’T want to be right now.

Instead, get on top of your pain and learn how to treat it properly so that you can be healthy and pain-free for the rest of quarantine! 

 

work from home, coronavirus, back pain, quarantine

Back Pain Doesn’t Go Away for the Coronavirus!

/in , , /by

The coronavirus (COVID-19) is forcing everyone to adapt to new routines — but many of us are still experiencing the same old chronic pain. In fact, your back pain may start acting up again now due to stress, decreased exercise, and more time spent at home on your computer. The important thing is that you don’t ignore it! Listen to your body and KEEP MOVING!  

Prior to seeing us, many of our clients who suffer from back pain were told that the best way to recover was to ice and lie down. They were advised to rest, relax, and limit their movement until the pain goes away. The problem with this model for treatment is that it goes against everything we know about the basic principles of joint and tissue healing.

Our modern health research suggests that early movement is actually the BEST way to head off chronic back pain!

Of course, if you’ve suffered a trauma like a car accident or a major fall, you should absolutely go get checked out by a medical professional and follow their advice based on your injuries. But if you are dealing with a chronically aching back or general soreness, stiffness, and pain, it turns out that movement is actually the best course of action!

But not ALL types of movement and exercise are safe or beneficial when you’ve hurt your back…

That’s where physical therapy comes in! A physical therapist is able to identify specific movements that actually work through and relieve that pain, based on your individual condition. We call these initial exercises “first aid movements” – and they are especially helpful because you can use them any time you might tweak your back in the future! If you’re experiencing acute back pain, of course it doesn’t make sense to continue with all of your activities as usual if they are just exacerbating your symptoms. But there is a middle ground between overdoing it and completely stopping the movement that your body craves. 

But how are we supposed to see a physical therapist, you ask, when everything is shutting down to contain this coronavirus?