Health blog Category: live pain free
What Type of Frozen Shoulder Do You Have?
What frozen shoulder is, depends on what type of frozen shoulder you have.
Primary
Primary frozen shoulder is an idiopahtic (no clear cause) condition. It has a gradual onset and can take over a year to fully resolve.
Physical therapy can help with this form, but in general, it has to run its course.
Primary is:
- Less common.
7 Common Questions About Physical Therapy
Out of All the Questions We Receive, This One is the Most Common… “What is physical therapy?”
The use of exercise, manual therapy and different techniques to improve movement patterns, increase function and decrease pain to overall improve quality of life.
“Do I need imaging before coming to PT? MRI? Xray?”
No you do not need imaging before coming to PT. At the initial evaluation will do specific testing to determine a diagnosis.
Read full blogTips to Avoid Injuries While Shoveling Snow
As the temperature starts to drop again, and the chance of snow could arise we want to be sure you are prepared to clear your sidewalk and driveways without sustaining and injury. Believe it or not, shoveling is a common task that our community members do that leads to an injury. Here are 7 things to do to help avoid and injury…
- Warm up with dynamic or static stretching (CLICK HERE to learn more)
- Do not twist through your back-instead turn your whole body (WATCH this video!)
- Do not throw snow over shoulder
- Push snow instead of lifting and don’t overload- if lifting is required bend and lift through
legs not back.
What Activities Cause Elbow Injuries?
Elbow injuries are a common thing we see in the clinic. It can be caused by many activities but most of the time it is from doing repetitive movements or by suddenly stressing the elbow joint. Often, elbow pain is ignored with the thought that it will just go away with time. However, this will cause the pain and injury to flare up and could prolong your recovery time.
There are many injuries that could be causing you to feel pain in your elbow.
Read full blogRock Climbing Injuries to Lower Extremity and Ankle
Rock Climbing can lead to many different types of musculoskeletal injuries. Some of the most common injuries to the lower body include;
- Meniscal tear
- Stiffness, swelling, feeling like the knee is going to give out, catching in the knee.
- Knee ligament tear
- Swelling, instability, loss of range of motion.
- Morton’s Neuroma
- Sharp burning pain with standing and walking between two toes, tingling in foot.
Common Causes of SI Joint Pain
What in the world is an SI joint? Why is it even important?
SI joint problems can happen in people of all ages and fitness levels. Many young athletes often complain about lower back pain or symptoms that radiated down their legs. You might be thinking, ‘They’re young. They can’t have low back problems. They’re in peak physical condition and participate in sports practices for hours a day!’ So why were they coming into the athletic training room with lower back issues?
Read full blogWhy the Spine Needs Discs
What are they and why do we need them?
To start, let’s talk about what these discs are. You may have heard the analogy that the discs in your back are like a jelly doughnut. The disc should be filled with fluid kind of like the strawberry jelly in one of these treats. The outer lining of the disc is made of up rings and then in the center, there is a jelly-like fluid.
Read full blogWhich Muscles Stabilize Our Shoulders?
The rotator cuff is a group of muscles that help stabilize our shoulder within it’s socket as we do overhead movements. There are four muscles that make up the rotator cuff, each muscle has a different action and all must be equally strong and flexible in order to avoid a number of different shoulder injuries.
Those muscles are:
- Supraspinatus
- Infraspinatus
- Teres minor
- Subscapularis
Shoulder Injuries
Rotator cuff strains are common in professions that require a lot of repetitive overhead movements and are common in sport athletes who participate in overhead motions for example:
- baseball
- tennis
- basketball.
Treating Back Pain
Most of us will experience back pain of some sort during our lifetime. While back pain is prevalent in our society, it isn’t something you have to “live with”.
Causes
Back pain can be caused by multiple things depending on where the pain is in the spine, along with the type of pain you are experiencing. Some common causes of back pain are:
- Muscle weakness: muscles work together to help to coordinate proper movements.
Shoulder Fractures
Fractures at the top part of the shoulder are very common.
The risk of fracturing the shoulder increases with age for various reasons:
- Increase in balance issues with age
- More common to have osteoporosis
- Lack of physical activity leading to weaker muscles in the winter
- Increased number of people over the age of 65 with osteoporosis
How do the above lead to more fractures?
The more inactive you are, the weaker your muscles become because of disuse. When your muscles are weak, your balance becomes affected which increases your risk of falling. Then there is osteoporosis. Osteoporosis involves a decrease in new bone formation while the body is continuing to break down bone. This results in more brittle bones and a more increased risk of fracture when a fall occurs.