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Health and Wellness

Is Your Balance Setting You Up For An Injury?

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It’s what gives us the ability to walk on two legs and stays with us our entire life, balance. Our balance and vestibular system develop as we grow from a baby all the way through adulthood, and then begin to decline. Most people don’t know their balance is not optimum until they suffer a sports injury, trip and fall, or lose their balance in the shower. No matter what your age, balance affects your ability to be active.

Can you do this?

  • Stand next to a counter or sink barefoot with your hand gently grasping the counter surface.
  • Put one foot directly in front of the other, so that one heel is touching the opposite toes.
  • Gently lift your hand up, but keep it close to the counter in case you need to grab it quickly. Try to hold this for 10 seconds (only do this if you feel safe or have someone nearby to help you).
  • Now try it with you eyes closed.
  • Do you wobble a lot or even lose your balance? Your balance needs work! 

There are many reasons for our decline in balance:

  • Changes in our vestibular system
  • Changes in muscle mass, flexibility and strength
  • Changes in eyesight
  • Diminishing reflexes
  • Previous injuries to ankle, knee, hip or spinal joints

How balance affects sports performance

The more aggressive you are in sports, the better your balance and reflexes have to be. Many ankle, knee, hip and back injuries in running, tennis and other sports are attributed to poorly performing balance. By incorporating simple balance exercises into your workout routine, you can set yourself up for success and prevent injuries, as well as enhance your sports performance.

How balance affects back pain

How you walk directly impacts your back and can actually be a big contributor to back pain. By improving balance, coordination and strength in your hips, pelvis and legs, your spine will be supported and guided, reducing strain. This in turn, helps your back function normally without aggravation and inflammation. Balance activities are an important component of our SPINE Program for relieving back pain. 

Preventing falls

According to the Centers For Disease Control (CDC), over 2.5 million adults were treated for nonfatal injuries in emergency departments in 2013. In older adults, falls are the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries. Most people don’t think about keeping their balance in shape, until it is too late and they fall, fracturing an arm, leg or injuring their back. The good news is that most falls can easily be prevented, simply by the regular exercising of your balance system.


What you can do

You can improve your balance, and it involves performing simple balance exercises. Try this easy exercise to strengthen your balance:

Calf Raise

  • Stand facing and lightly touching a wall with your hands.
  • Slowly raise up and down on your toes.
  • Repeat 10 times, rest, then do 2-3 more sets.
  • Try without holding on for a greater challenge.

The first step in preventing an injury or fall is testing your balance and being honest with yourself that your balance needs work. Our physical therapists can make a big difference in improving your balance and vestibular system, improving your ability to be active, safely. Call us today to learn more about our specialized programs and how you can get back to an active, pain free lifestyle!

Knee and Hip Pain

Tips For Relieving Knee Pain

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Are you one of the millions of Americans suffering from aching or painful knees? You are not alone. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) 1 in 2 people may develop painful knee osteoarthritis by age 85. In addition, if you struggle with weight, research shows that 2 in 3 people may develop painful knee arthritis in their lifetime.

The knee is an incredible joint, having to sustain 6 times your body weight in force, while moving through a large range of motion. The knee joint is inherently unstable, held together by a mass of ligaments, tendons and muscles. The knee also takes a beating during your lifetime. It is estimated that you will walk an estimated 200 million steps, therefore it is easy to see why your knees sustain a lot of wear and tear over the years.

How to Keep Your Knees Healthy

There are a variety of factors that can cause knee pain, but it is important to focus on preventing knee pain from occurring and what can be done to keep your knees healthy.

Here are useful tips to keep your knees working in tiptop condition:

  • Stretch daily – With sitting for prolonged periods, walking, bending and other activities, your muscles and tissues can become tighter. Daily stretching maintains good flexibility in your muscles, tendons and ligaments around the knee. This allows the knee to continue with its normal range of movement in many directions.
  • Strengthen your legs – Since the knee is very unstable, it requires good muscle support and strength. This provides the stability needed to bend properly, walk and run. Studies show that strengthening the quadriceps muscle is very important in preventing knee pain and knee osteoarthritis.*
  • Get a tune up from your physical therapist – Your knee needs to move side to side, back and forth, and rotate. Our physical therapists are medical experts in evaluating these special types of motions called accessory movements. By evaluating and treating your knee on a regular basis, our physical therapists can keep your knees moving as they should.
  • Use ice or heat – Typically, ice is used after a flare-up of inflammation, injury or pain. Heat is used more for chronic swelling in the knee with the purpose of increasing circulation.
  • Keep your kneecap moving – The kneecap or patella is a very important part in knee function. The kneecap protects your knee, but also serves as a pulley for the quadriceps muscle to use. The kneecap tracks up and down in a C-pattern when you bend your knee. Keep your kneecap moving freely by gently pushing it down and up, and side to side. If you find your knee swells, gently lift your kneecap up and away from the joint.
  • Watch your weight – The more weight you carry, the greater the forces and loads on the knee. When squatting down you can increase the pressure on your knee by three fold. When jumping, you can increase the pressure by 6 times your body weight. Therefore, the closer to your ideal weight, the happier your knees can be.

The most important part in preventing knee pain is keeping your legs flexible and strong. If you are concerned about how your knees feel when you try to walk, bend and run, then give us a call today. Our experts have years of experience evaluating the proper mechanics of the knee and restoring them, for a pain-free future.

Headaches, Shoulder Pain

Are Your Shoulders Giving You Headaches?

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Do you know that 47% of the adult population will have a headache at least once within a year according to the World Health Organization? 45 million Americans complain of headaches each year, 8 million visit their doctor, and 3 million went to the emergency room according to US Department of Health and Human Services.

Even minor headaches can be a nuisance that create stress, social and emotional impacts not only on the individual, but alsoon all those around them. A majority of headaches are related to tension headaches and are typically of a mechanical nature. This means that the muscles and joints in the neck and shoulders are strained, causing irritation and spasms that trigger headaches. These can be felt in the neck, shoulders, one side of the head or face, and even the forehead.

The large shoulder muscles around the scapula (shoulder blades) play a large role in supporting the neck. Having proper posture, movement and support of the neck and shoulder musculature is the key to having a healthy neck. In today’s environment sitting at the computer, staring at mobile devices, sitting for prolonged periods and more, weakens the muscles of the shoulders and upper back.

What you can do to relieve tension headaches:

  • Proper posture – Having good posture with sitting, typing at a computer, standing and working all play a part in how you use your neck and shoulder muscles throughout the day. Take time to examine and make sure your posture is what it should be.
  • Vary your tasks – If you sit for hours each day at a computer, make sure to give your muscles frequent breaks. You can do other productive tasks in standing or moving around the office.
  • Exercise – Strengthen the muscles of the mid back and shoulder blade areas. Exercises such as rows and pull downs can help strengthen weakened postural muscles. Exercise also helps release endorphins, which can counteract stress.
  • Handle your stress – Handle tasks and obligations one at a time and get them completed. Piling up tasks, even small ones,draws your attention on them and creates stress.
  • Watch what you eat – avoid foods, which can affect your body’s acidity level such as processed foods, excessive sugars, and high fat meals. Eat a little better and drink more water. Your blood chemistry will be more balanced throughout the day. In fact, a big cause of headaches is chronic dehydration, so keep a glass of water by your desk during the day and constantly drink.

A little prevention can go a long way to relieving headaches. If you suffer from tension headaches, migraines or other forms of headaches, know that there is relief! Call us today for a neck posture, strength and mobility examination to pinpoint the exact cause of your headache. We can give you the tools to handle your headache easily and effectively. Life doesn’t have to be a headache!With the right physical therapy you can get back to the activities you love to do, pain-free.

Aches and Pains

5 Ways to Avoid Joint Pain

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Do you find your joints aching for no apparent reason? Even small aches and pains are your body’s way of telling you something is not working and should not be ignored. According to a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study, 30% of the people surveyed reported some form of joint pain within a 30 day period. The greatest number of respondents had knee joint pain, followed by shoulder, finger and then hip joint pain.

Our joints move an incredible amount each day, bearing heavy loads and often being strained, without us really paying attention. This accounts for wear and tear, sprains and even injuries.

Here are the top 5 reasons for joint pain and how you can improve them:

Repetitive Movement Injuries

A repetitive movement injury is when you perform the same task over and over again, straining the muscles, tissues and joints that are involved. For example, lifting heavy boxes with poor body mechanics when moving can be a repetitive injury. Another example of a repetitive injury is with moving your computer mouse all day long with poor posture. This repetitive movement, strains the muscles, tendons and ligaments causing abnormal pressure on the joint.

Using good body mechanics, the right posture and breaking activities up helps protect against injury. For example, if you have to trim a tree, don’t spend hours looking up trimming, and then gather the trimmings afterwards. Break up the activity by trimming for a short while, then squat down to pick up branches to put into a pile. This alternates the muscles you are using.

Posture

Poor posture is the number one cause of most joint pain. Posture is critical to the alignment of the joints in the body from your spine, to your shoulders, hips, knees and even feet. For example, a forward head posture from prolonged sitting protrudes the shoulders forward and weakens the back muscles. This leads to shoulder impingement and even rotator cuff injuries.

Make sure you are aware of your posture throughout the day. Take frequent, short breaks to stretch and move around. Sit with a straight-backed chair and your feet flat on the floor. Improve your posture by performing postural and stretching exercises.

Weakness

Joints need muscles to move and provide support. Most joint pains are related to poor strength and function of the surrounding muscles. For example, with knee pain a small muscle on the inner thigh, called the VastusMedialis Oblique (VMO) often becomes weak. This muscle is critical to how your kneecap tracks. Therefore, with a weak VMO, knee pain often occurs due to the poor tracking of the kneecap.

Strength training is a vital part of keeping healthy. It is also important to do cardiovascular exercise to keep your heart and body in tip-top condition. Strength training is best done with a professional physical therapist first to make sure you are moving your body correctly, especially if you have had or are having pain.

Arthritis

There are many forms of arthritis, but the most common is osteoarthritis. This is caused by wear and tear on the joint cartilage surfaces. Arthritis becomes painful when there is a build of inflammation and joint debris from the cartilage. When joints don’t move correctly and smoothly, abnormal pressure on the surface of the joints can occur, causing pain. Arthritic joints generally lose motion and the surrounding muscles become weaker. This causes a spiraling effect of pain and poor joint support.

Arthritis pain can be effectively treated with the right physical therapy. Improving joint movement and surrounding muscle strength, brings back support to the joint. This lessens the joint inflammation, abnormal pressure and pain. Often combined with different injections, other treatments and in worse case scenarios, joint replacement, physical therapy is an important treatment for arthritic joints.

Sprains

Sprains are movements beyond the normal range of the joint. This causes tearing of tendons, ligaments and other tissues that give joints their stability. Common sprains are in the ankles, knees, shoulders, wrists and fingers. Many sprains occur from forceful injuries such as playing sports, but others can occur because the muscles around the joint were weak to begin with.

To prevent sprains, it is important to have good muscle strength in your body. If you have suffered a knee or ankle sprain before, it is important to strengthen the muscles around those effected joints. The likelihood of re-spraining these joints increases once you have already had a sprain. The reason for this is that the joint is already loose and unstable to a degree.
There is a lot that can be done to eliminate your joint pain and get you back to an active lifestyle. If you have aching or painful joints that are interfering with your life, call us today for an evaluation. See how good life can be pain free!

Back Pain

Are Your Hips Killing Your Back?

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Are you like many people, with an aching back at the end of the day or worried about lifting an object due to your back going out? You are not alone, over 80% of the population will suffer back pain at one time or another in their life according to CDC data. It is the price we pay for walking upright on two legs. However, the majority of back pain is non-specific, meaning that there is not a primary cause, such as a fracture or disc protrusion. In fact, the mobility and strength of your hip joints is often a major player in the causes of back pain.

As physical therapists, we know that a high percentage of people suffering with back pain actually have 3 common problems or a combination of them all:

  • Poor posture
  • Weak core and gluteus muscles
  • Poor hip flexibility

How hip ligaments hurt your back
Your hip joints have to travel through a very large range of motion. There are thick Y shaped ligaments that surround the hip joints called the iliofemoral ligaments, which provide support. However, with prolonged sitting over weeks, months or years, these ligaments shrink, reducing the natural movement of the hip joints.

Whenever you walk, instead of your hips moving naturally, the ligaments yank and pull on the pelvis, which is attached to your spine. This causes inflammation, strain and pain to the back muscles. Furthermore, the loss of hip motion can even cause your pelvis to tilt, altering the posture of your spine and increasing strain. By improving hip mobility, back pain can typically be relieved quite quickly.

When you suffer from back pain, make sure that you have an expert physical therapist look at your movement. Even though your back may ache, it may not be the source of your problem. Call us today to discover how our SPINE Program can pinpoint the cause of your pain, relieve it quickly and teach you how to maintain a healthy spine.

Two simple tests to see if your hips are causing your back pain

You can easily check your hip motion by doing the following tests. If you discover your hip motion is limited,or you feel pain or strong discomfort, it’s time to get your hips checked by our physical therapy professionals. Try these tests and see how mobile your hips are:

Hip Mobility Test

  • Lie on your back with your legs straight out.
  • Cross one ankle above the other knee cross-legged in a figure 4 position.
  • Keep your ankle pressed on the other leg, but now lower the raised knee to the side. Does it lower close to the ground?
  • Repeat on the other side and see if there is a difference.
  • If so, this might indicate a hip motion problem and cause pain in the back on that side or even the opposite side.

Hip Squatting Test

  • Stand next to a counter for balance and gently hold on.
  • Keep your knees parallel facing forward.
  • Squat down as far as you can keeping your feet and heels flat on the floor.
  • If you feel a lot of pressure in your knees or calf muscles, you could have a hip movement problem.
  • Try again in front of a mirror. Does your body want to go to one side? This can indicate a hip motion problem on one side.