Tag: Physical Therapy

Not The Same Since The Injury

So you got hurt. It was soar for a while. Maybe it stopped hurting, or maybe it didn’t change much. Either way you can’t shake the fact that it feels different. If this describes you, then you’ll want to read this post. I can’t tell you how many of my clients tell me that they wish they knew about this years ago.

Your body is a story teller. It tells about all the adventures you’ve gone through. It tells whether you have emphasized developing physical skills or intellectual skills. Whether it’s callouses on your fingers from playing the guitar, or the ability to quickly calculate the a square root in your head from your math studies, your body changes.

When you place a demand on the body it adapts to improve your ability to perform that task. When you lift weights you build muscle. When you study hard your brain rewires to access that memory more easily. Either way, you change.

At the same time, your body also tells about that bike accident when you were 16, or that car accident when you were 30. When your body hits that seatbelt, your ribs experience a force for which they were not ready.

So what happens? Your body will tighten up to make sure next time it happens you are more protected. While that sounds like a good thing, try to hike with kids in a backpack carrier or go golfing again and you could start getting back or rib pain. You are no longer moving as freely as you used to and now strain is placed on other areas.

The question then becomes, how do we fix this? It’s actually not that difficult for most injuries. It just takes the right touch.

Most of the trick is finding the issue. If you’ve ever been given exercises that didn’t work then you’ve experienced good treatment for a problem that turns out wasn’t yours. It probably helped the issue it was supposed to, but it wasn’t the key to your problem.

That’s where getting the right assessment and diagnosis makes the difference. So what’s the secret? Knowing the answer to why. In the case of the ineffective exercises, it may have been given to strengthen a muscle because it was weak. Well, why was it weak? Was it the slumped posture, the joint that needed to move and wouldn’t, or a tight muscle on the other side of the body? How about the ankle sprain 2 years ago that caused the knee to buckle which moved your hip and made you bend to the side which then pushed your shoulder forward?

Here at Realize Physical Therapy, we hep you learn to identify the major issues beyond the presenting symptoms. That is why you will see immediate changes that last. Contact us to learn how we can enhance your assessment strategies.

Dietary Inflammation Is Impacting You Pain and Strength

Dietary inflammation is going to strongly impact your body. Pain and strength are directly impacted by the inflammation, but you can reverse the effects.

If you’ve studied up on different diets, you may have come across anti-inflammatory diets. The main premise is that there are foods your body will react to and cause inflammation. Because of the histamines associated with the inflammation, you get tightness in the abdomen.

So what does that tightness mean? You can expect bloating, impaired digestion, back pain, poor strength, and decreased trunk motion. The tightness is causing your muscles not to work and the pressure from the tightness and bloating causes pain.

Reversing the problem requires to steps:

  1. Remove the offending food
  2. Restore the movement

1. Removing the problem food could be as simple as reducing high levels of sugar, or as complicated as eliminating gluten. Every person is different.

The most common foods that cause inflammation are:

  • Sugar
  • Wheat/Gluten
  • Milk
  • Soy
  • Rice
  • Corn
  • Peanuts

While not a comprehensive list, these are a good starting point. If you are wondering if you have any of these issues, find a qualified dietician to talk to about the best strategy to identify and eliminate these foods. Making sure you’re still getting the right nutrients while avoiding the problem foods is important.

2. Next is restoring the motion. This is where Manual therapy shines. Using fascial release techniques it can restore your movement and get rid of the tightness.

Your symptoms change immediately as you feel the movement increase. Then you keep doing your home exercises and you can keep your motion.

Once you have motion, then you need to restore your body’s proper motion. Research is showing that just because you heal doesn’t mean your muscles go back to working right. Physical therapists trained to identify and restore proper muscle function can help enhance that function quickly and efficiently.

Check out our courses which can help you learn how you can get moving or help others get moving to improve health or contact us with questions.

How The Wrong Shoes Can Affect Child Development

Shoes are more important than you think. If you’re a parent, then your child’s development is most likely always on your mind. Movement is one of the first things children learn and the more they can move the more they learn.

“Your children learn to move so they can move to learn.” (Unknown Author)

Movement is critical and your shoes form the connection between your child’s feet and the ground. That has major implications.

The way your foot hits the ground directly impacts which muscles fire. Try doing a squat, then roll your ankle in and squat again. You should notice your muscles don’t feel the same. That’s because your body can’t work the same.

Too much developmental time with bad lower body mechanics will impact motor function, cause ankle, knee, or hip problems. That’s not including the resulting balance and tripping issues. Research is also linking movement issues with behavioral issues. Many children see improvement in behavior when the right muscles fire.

The number of children I see who have bad feet is higher than you’d think. Those “flat arches” are a result of multiple issues which could include:

  • High birth weight
  • Poor support in shoes
  • Too much arch support when learning to walk
  • Wearing used shoes that are worn
  • History of ankle injuries

Let’s briefly discuss each of these starting with high birth weight. Gregg Johnson, PT, FFFMT theorized that a high birth weight contributes to the feet getting locked up because they didn’t have enough room in the womb. Being too tight for too long results in stiffness. This theory is consistently correct in my patients. Just under 8 lbs seems to be where problems start. When the foot locked up then the ankle cave in so they can walk, which causes the flat arch.

Poor support in shoes result in poor foot positioning and control. This problem is seen more in those with history of ankle sprains or flat feet. Poor support is commonly from bad shoe manufacturing, shoes getting worn out, or poor shoe design.

While kids are first learning to walk, too much arch support prevents them from using their natural foot motions, which prevent development of crucial muscles which support the arch. Without those muscles, they will fail to control that movement which leads to those ankles caving in.

Wearing shoes that are too worn, or worn in by bad feet, will also cause bad foot posture. The result is hips and knees not working right. If that goes on too long the muscles will stop firing correctly because that is what they learn. If your muscles don’t fire correctly then the arches fall because the ankle compensates.

Lastly, ankle sprains can result in the ankle losing proper form which again results in bad arches.

So what can you do? First, if you can, don’t go too cheap on shoes. Don’t break the bank, but be selective. Second let your kids run barefoot, it’s amazing what it will do. Third, get them crawling. Crawling alone makes huge changes. Lastly, get them evaluated by a qualified manual therapist to enhance that foot posture. They can address your foot in a way no one else can.

If you have questions on how to get the feet moving better, contact us or check out our courses.