Health blog Category: Physical Therapy
How Your Core Muscle Strength Affects Your Health
Do you ever find yourself slouching in a chair, slumping at the computer or your belly sticking out after standing for awhile? This is a sign of core muscle weakness that can negatively affect your health and create long-term back or neck pain.
What are Your Core Muscles?
Your “core” is the group of muscles that help stabilize your body and give a strong anchor point from which your skeleton can move properly with good posture.
Read full blogManual Therapy VS. Massage
Manual Therapy VS. Massage, What’s The Difference?
At first glance it is easy to mistake manual therapy for a massage. However, there are significant differences between these two treatment methods. It is important for you to be able to understand these differences, in order to pick the appropriate treatment method.
Massages:
You most likely think of a massage then instantly think of laying on a table of a spa.
Where is Your Pain Coming From?
If you are suffering from aches or pains, it is important for you to be able to determine the root cause of the problem. Here are some important questions to ask yourself in order to determine the causes:
How long have you had your pain?
For example, acute low back pain may be from a muscle strain. Chronic low back pain is typical of restricted joints, tight muscle tissue and weakened muscle strength.
Knee Injuries Don’t Just Occur In Sports
Whether it is sports related or just degenerative changes that occur as you age, at one point or another you have probably experienced a knee injury. Some of the most common injuries are osteoarthritis, ligament injuries and meniscus injuries. All of these cause pain, weakness in your knees and a decrease your ability to participate in some activities.
Ligament injuries more commonly occur with the more active patient population.
Sports such as soccer and basketball that involve jumping, planting of the leg, or a change in direction can cause ACL tears.
Don’t Let Back Discomfort Take Away Sleep
Experiencing an inability to sleep, difficulty tying our shoes, difficulty bathing, trouble sitting at work, or trouble standing while waiting in line at the grocery store are often indicators that we are living with a back problem. We may be forced to sit out from our extracurricular sports and unable to enjoy our favorite exercise classes.
Like many conditions, when their is pain or discomfort in one area of the body, and its’s not handled, it can start impacting another area of our body.
How Common are Hamstring Injuries…
While hamstring injuries can happen to an athlete during a practice or a game, it’s actually much more common for you to experience hamstring problems related to everyday activities.
How many times a week or even a day do you have to do any of these things?
- Bending at waist
- You have to reach down to pick up your child’s toy or put some documents in a lower filing cabinet drawer.
Physical Therapy Helps Reduce Arthritis Pain
You’ve probably been out somewhere and you, a friend, or family member say that they were stiff, or even heard them predict the weather because of how they were feeling. It’s pretty common from middle age and on to have been diagnosed with osteoarthritis.
Osteoarthritis involves the degeneration of the joints, more specifically the cartilage that lines a joint. When this smooth material is worn down, the joint no longer will move like it’s supposed to. This occurs because the bones that are a part of the joint are rubbing together.
Shoulder Pain can Disrupt your Everyday Life
Shoulder pain can present itself in many different ways. We may first notice pain and/or tightness when moving our arm in certain directions. Then, it may progress to where we start to lose range of motion. Range of motion loss is often first seen when trying to tuck in a shirt, fasten a bra or reach into a cabinet. Sometimes, shoulder pain can manifest itself further down the arm as well.
Read full blogPoor Posture Isn’t Worth the Neck Pain
Most of us, spend a large part of our day staring at small screens. Whether it is our cell phone, tablet or computer, these tiny screens play a giant role in our poor posture and neck pains. It is easy to get lost in the digital world and lose focus on how we are sitting or positioning ourselves while at work or playing on our gadgets. Over time, we can end up hurting the tiny postural muscles and structures in our neck that help us to hold our head up high.
Read full blogSI Joints are Crucial to Enjoying Everyday Life
You probably take for granted being able to sit, stand, walk and roll over in bed. When you have problems with your sacroiliac joint, these everyday movements can become painful or even feel impossible.
What does your SI joint do?
Your sacroiliac (SI) joint connects your hip bones to the sacrum. When functioning properly, these hip joints absorb shock and allow you to bend and move smoothly. However, if something is disrupting your SI joints, these motions can become very painful and difficult.
