|
This is a lateral shift. A lateral shift of the low back (lumbar spine) joints. It's not a hip, pelvis, SI, or IT band issue. They're not always as obvious as this, so orthopedic clinicians must remove the patient's shirt to see it. It is not observable in lying; the patient must be standing. It is corrected (often painfully) by moving the low back joints in the opposite direction first. Usually that entails side glides against the wall or in free standing, and sometimes I need to assist as the clinician. Once the patient has free movement in both directions side to side, we restore extension and flexion of the low back. These are not that common, but I will typically see a few patients a month with a lateral shift. 
0 Comments
If a patient has knee complaints - and I rule out the spine as the source - I treat the knee with repeated movements. Usually the movement is to address the joint position itself, though sometimes the movement addresses a tendon or muscle. Here McKenzie diplomat Joel Laing demonstrates the movement: knee extension with overpressure in partial weightbearing. I used this with a patient last week in fact! There are many ways to move a knee, but this is one of the most commonly used movements. Please remember, even in the presence of arthritis, meniscus, ligament, tendon, or cartilage damage, in most cases joints can be rapidly fixed with repeated movements. The typical exercise prescription for home for the knee is 10 repetitions every 3-4 hours. McKenzie clinicians are trained to examine whether your problem falls into the 80% of cases which will respond to repeated movements, and to find which movement is best for you. --Laura I recommend checking the spine first in nearly all patients, but if your symptoms are not improving (even symptoms like sinus congestion!) with whatever treatment, repeated movements are worth a try. The McKenzie method typically uses repeated movements to address patients' symptoms as movement is frequently the best medicine - and carries little to no risk as we use the least force necessary. While my role is to investigate exactly how you need to move, it's true that most therapeutic movements are those opposite our normal joint position. In this patient's case, that means neck retraction (moving the neck back). --Laura If you lie propped up on your elbow for some time, it’s likely when you go to first move it, it’s stiff. Same with sitting on a crossed hip or ankle. As you start to move, the joint rapidly loosens and there’s no lasting impact. Do this enough, though, and it can become harder for a joint to consistently rebound to its correct alignment. And as the joint further deforms, this stiffness may become pain.
While this applies to extremity joints, these days it seems more prevalent in the spine. If your day entails primarily kneeling, it can become increasingly stiff and painful to straighten your knee(s). More commonly, though, if your day is spent protruding your neck looking at a computer or rounding your back driving in a car’s bucket seat, your spine may enter the stiffness-pain paradigm. For many joints, it can be hard to notice stiffness/motion loss. Detecting stiffness, however, is often important in the prevention of pain, especially with previously painful joints. I therefore teach my patients how to self-test their affected joint each day. If stiffness is spotted, their corrective exercise should be performed to restore full joint motion and prevent unwanted escalation into pain. --Laura Joint derangements are about 80% of all orthopedic problems. Derangements are when a joint isn't sitting properly, leading to pain, stiffness, tightness, and so on. They are usually rapidly reversible! Unfortunately, people are often given structural diagnoses instead (here, it's an AC sprain) or told they have a muscle or tendon problem. Since joint derangements comprise the LARGE majority of orthopedic problems, McKenzie experts are trained to look for them first. If a joint derangement is found, we use repeated movements to restore joint alignment. This patient had shoulder pain and limited movement following a car accident. One movement fixes her symptoms (bringing her arm across her body) - and one movement worsens her symptoms (bringing her arm back away from her body). McKenzie experts are trained to find WHICH movement is best for you and use that one movement as the treatment approach. -- Laura I always write about not basing orthopedic treatment on imaging findings. We should also not base our treatment on clinical findings that appear to be structural without repeatedly moving the spine and/or extremity. Clinical orthopedic tests for the shoulder have been proven to be unreliable (for example, tests for rotator cuff tears, labral tears, impingement, or tendinopathy). McKenzie clinicians move your spine and extremities, looking for immediate cause and effect. Here, while it looks like the patient has a shoulder problem, when the McKenzie clinician moves her thoracic spine, it resolves. -- Laura When people twist or roll an ankle, the common diagnosis is that the ligaments are sprained. However, the joint itself is also affected! Here, a patient who twisted her ankle is treated successfully with simple repeated movements of the ankle JOINT. Therefore, the ankle JOINT was injured, not the ligaments. She was discharged with full recovery at visit number 2. Clinicians MUST assess joints as joints are injured far more commonly than soft tissues such as muscles, tendons, and ligaments. (I learned how to assess joints like this through my post-doctoral studies with the McKenzie Institute, not in school.) -- Laura  Running is a wonderful activity which exercises our body’s musculoskeletal system and others. I encourage running for nearly anyone interested, but don’t advocate it being one’s only form of exercise. (Movement variety is key!) There are differing opinions when it comes to running; unfortunately, many are incorrect.
First, there is a correct way to run, just like there’s a correct way to pitch a fastball or land a ski jump. Small variations exist - and may be allowable - but remaining mostly injury-free requires correct technique. Yes, we have a “natural” way of running, but the stresses we place on our bodies over time usually change how we move. These stresses, when imbalanced, often lead to misaligned joints, tight muscles, restricted nerves, etc. If we have any imperfections, running, an extremely repetitive sport, will expose them. Something will give. Secondly, though these frequent running injuries appear common for the recreational runner, I argue they’re not normal. When running correctly, every joint, tendon, etc. from our head to our toes moves in the biomechanical way it was intended. To ensure someone is moving correctly, I teach starting with the joints of the spine (the body’s fuse box) and going from there. -- Laura  Osteoarthritis (OA) is prevalent with aging. So is gray hair. And wrinkles. OA is a form of joint degeneration, just like gray hair and wrinkles represent types of degeneration. But we think of hair and skin changes kindlier, accepting them as normal, harmless parts of getting older. OA, on the other hand, gets a bad rap – a painful rap – when in fact it can also be normal and harmless. An association between OA and pain is unfortunately widely believed. If someone’s knee hurts and a knee MRI shows osteoarthritis, we quickly blame the osteoarthritis for the pain and tell ourselves that it can’t be fixed (unless we have surgery). When our head or skin hurts, do we automatically blame our grays or our wrinkles? It is clear OA doesn’t necessarily cause pain because we find plenty of OA in people without pain. In fact, a person over 60 undeniably has OA somewhere in her body. Pain in a joint may be from OA, but it may also be from an irritated nerve, a dysfunctional tendon, or a misalignment in the joint – which are all typically very fixable! Expert McKenzie clinicians identify (and then treat) the true cause of someone’s pain. -- Laura  Tendon issues are unfortunately incorrectly diagnosed all the time. That is, issues that are not tendon problems are diagnosed as tendon problems. “Issues” and “problems” refer to tendinopathy, tendinosis, tendonitis, and tendon tears. We have hundreds of tendons in our bodies; they are pieces of tissue that connect our muscles to our bones. Those that get an unfair share of the blame are the four rotator cuff tendons in the shoulder, the two main tendon groups at the elbow, the Achilles tendon of the ankle, and the patellar tendon at the knee. This frequent misdiagnosis happens for two chief reasons. One, tendon problems are common on images such as MRI so, in the absence of an expert clinical mechanical exam, the tendon is identified as the culprit simply because of a picture. The concern with this is that tendon problems are common on images such as MRI in people with NO pain or other symptoms. So if Sarah has a large supraspinatus tendon tear on her MRI and no shoulder pain and John has a large supraspinatus tendon tear on his MRI and does have shoulder pain, can you assert that the supraspinatus tendon tear is causing his pain? Not from that information alone, you can’t. (Say your car starts acting funny. You open up the hood to take a quick look. You see a lot of leaves around the engine. Can you assume that the leaves are causing the problem? Or would your mechanic need to run some diagnostic tests? After all, we know that there are plenty of cars with leaves stuck under the hood that run just fine.) The second reason for this misdiagnosing conundrum? Lack of expert clinical “mechanics.” When I first began as a physical therapist, if a patient came to me with shoulder pain (with or without an MRI report), I performed the orthopedic shoulder tests I learned in school. While there are several tests aimed at diagnosing a rotator cuff tendon problem, these tests are actually not very good. They can regularly be positive when something other than the tendon is at fault. If physical therapists, orthopedists, general practitioners, surgeons, chiropractors, athletic trainers, etc. are still basing their diagnoses (and subsequent treatment) on these tests, they are missing a lot of crucial information. Once I learned during my post-doctoral coursework that other problems can mimic tendon problems, I began looking for these in the clinic. And, lo and behold, most of the time it is something else causing the patient’s problem. The top two problems that mimic tendon problems are misalignment in the spine joints whose nerves send signals to the area of the tendon (eg the neck) and misalignment in the extremity joint closest the tendon (eg the shoulder). How do I diagnose a tendon problem then? These are my top two criteria:
In closing, don’t jump to conclusions based on an image or the location of pain. A lot of shoulder pain is coming from the neck or from a shoulder joint that is not sitting properly – not a rotator cuff tendon. Likewise, a lot of pain on the outside of the hip is coming from the low back or from a hip joint that is not sitting properly – not the gluteal tendon. Our bodies are beautiful in their intricacy and nuance, making my job as a mechanical therapist exciting. It is the ability to understand this nuance that makes a clinician effective at diagnosing and treating. --Laura |
LearnFind more information about the world of orthopedics here! 
|
RSS Feed