Femoroacetabular impingement syndrome is a movement-related condition, usually caused by abnormal bone formation of the femoral head and/or acetabulum.
How Pilates Can Treat Thoracic Hyperkyphosis, also known as Rounded Back
When a client presents with thoracic hyperkyphosis (rounded back), there are many approaches for how Pilates can treat thoracic hyperkyphosis. And for each of these approaches, many Pilates exercises can be utilized. Before addressing these approaches, let’s briefly review thoracic hyperkyphosis…
The Effect of Foam Roller Massage on Pressure Pain Threshold
Foam roller massage is quite popular nowadays among athletes and being recommended to patients by many health rehabilitation professionals as an intervention to augment other manual therapies or as a warm-up before an athletic activity, or as a recovery after athletic activity.
Body Language – From Commons Signs to Spotting Lies
Here is a fun exercise to help you practice your body language reading skills. Turn on a movie or tv show, but turn the sound off. It is amazing when there are no words to distract us, how much better we can read the body language and understand the feelings and emotions of the communication.
Stretching Reduces Cancer Tumor Growth in a Study with Mice
The fact that simple stretching for only 10 minutes per day could reduce cancer tumor growth by 52% in this study involving mice is pretty amazing! Being a manual and movement therapy physician, author, and educator, it is clear to me that the human body needs movement. But to see a 52% improvement was incredible!
20 Memory Tips to Improve Your Learning
The following is a blog post article contributed to us from Daisy May Hartwell. In this blog post article, Daisy discusses 20 simple and straight-forward tips that we can employ to improve our memory and improve our learning!
Healthy Lifestyle: How To Maintain A Fitness Routine Without Burning Yourself Out
Once your life is more balanced, it will be easier to maintain a workout routine for the long-term. Not to mention, you won’t be missing out on other aspects of your life — or compromising your health. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to self-care and achieving a healthy lifestyle as everyone has different needs.
Physical Activity Linked to Healthier and Longer Life, but Highly Physically Active Workers Die Early
When working, we place a demand on the body and the body responds by adapting to meet those demands. However, every tissue, has a limit to the mechanical stress that it can accept during physical activity without injury. It would seem likely that the demands of some professions are too great for the human body.
Differences in Knee and Hip Adduction in Runners with Iliotibial Band Syndrome
This study seems to show a relationship between iliotibial band (ITB) syndrome and knee adduction (genu varum) and the activation of the TFL. A relationship can be two incidents that occur together, termed a “coincidence.” Or there can be a causal relationship between them; i.e., one causes the other to occur.
Decreased Ankle Dorsiflexion is Associated with Dynamic Knee Valgus
A proposed biomechanical explanation is that restricted ankle joint dorsiflexion directly results in overpronation of the foot, which causes internal rotation of the lower extremity, which strains the external/abductor musculature, which can then no longer prevent femoral adduction; hence genu valgus.
How Can Tight Muscles of the Hip Joint Cause a Scoliosis?
So, if hip abductor group on one side is tighter at baseline tone than the hip adductor group on that side, the pelvis will be pulled into depression on that side, resulting in a lumbar scoliosis that is convex on that side. Similarly, tight opposite-side hip adductor musculature can cause the same scoliotic curve.
Absence of Evidence – Do Parachutes Actually Help Skydivers?
Absence of evidence is not evidence of the absence. Following is how a research review of the effectiveness of parachutes might be concluded: “There is no conclusive evidence that parachutes are effective at helping skydivers.” Ridiculous? Yes. Yet accurate and absurd!
Does Carrying a Backpack Cause Back Pain in Adolescents?
And perhaps the biggest problem I have with this study about backpacks and adolescent back pain is that an overuse syndrome usually does NOT cause pain in the early stages. When the body is physically stressed by something like carrying a backpack, it often requires many years before the overuse results in pain.
The Effect of Massage Therapy on Blood Pressure in Prehypertensive Women
The results indicated that the mean systolic and diastolic blood pressures in the massage group were significantly lower in comparison with the control group. The results also showed that the lowered blood pressure was still observed 72 hours after the treatment.
Healthy at Home: Maintaining a Balanced Lifestyle with Diabetes
Diabetes is no longer a dreaded condition that confines people to a life of bland foods, self-injections and the constant monitoring of glucose and insulin levels. By observing some basic dietary rules, individuals with diabetes can lead perfectly happy and normal lives.
Thoracic Hyperkyphosis – The Critical Component of Upper Crossed Syndrome
For most of our clients who present with the postural distortion pattern known as upper crossed syndrome, it is important, perhaps absolutely necessary, to include thoracic spinal joint mobilization technique into extension as part of the treatment plan to address the thoracic hyperkyphosis.
Battle Obesity: The War Against the #1 Killer in America
According to NBC News, nearly 18 percent of all deaths in the US can be directly contributed to the obesity epidemic. While a little extra weight may offer some protective benefits for senior citizens, everyone else — children, adolescents, and adults — should strive for a healthy weight.
Deep Pressure Massage to the Low Back – Use Body Weight
An excellent demonstration of the force that can be generated by using body weight is to lean down onto a bathroom weight scale that is placed on a table that is positioned as various heights. Simply relax and lean into the scale with your body weight and notice the force that you generate.
Deep Pressure Massage to the Low Back – Use Stacked Joints
Stacked joints are aligned in a straight line; in other words, the joints are extended as in anatomic position. This allows for the force from your core to travel through your upper extremity and into the client with little or no loss of strength.
Deep Pressure Massage to the Low Back – Support Your Treatment Contact
Bracing the contact means that the two hands must work together instead of each contacting the client separately. Less area of the client’s body will be covered this way, but stronger and more efficient pressure will be created at the area that is being worked, which is more important when deep pressure is needed.
Deep Pressure Massage to the Low Back – Apply Pressure Perpendicularly
Maximal pressure for the effort used is achieved if the angle of your force into the client is perpendicular to the contour of the region being worked. To apply this concept of working perpendicularly, the client’s back and pelvis can be divided into separate regions based on the curve of each region.
Neck Deep Pressure Massage: Step by Step – Engage the Tissues
Being able to feel tissue tension barrier is the one most crucial aspect for a clinical orthopedic manual therapist performing deep pressure massage. From a mechanical standpoint, it is only pressure beyond the tissue tension barrier that effects therapeutic change (this is not necessarily true neurally).
Neck Deep Pressure Massage: Step by Step – Deep Stroking Massage
When performing deep pressure massage, deep stroking massage must originate from your core by further rocking your pelvis and extending your spine forward. Short deep strokes to the neck between 1 and 2 inches (2-5 centimeters) in length allow you to preserve optimal body mechanics.
Does the Condition Text Neck Exist?
That people aged 18-21 in this study have not yet begun to experience pain as a result of text neck posture does not surprise me at all. They are simply still too young to experience what the physical stress of the overuse of text neck posture will eventually do to them.
Ten Things to Avoid if You Have Lower Limb Tendon Pain
In summary, exercise-based rehabilitation is the best treatment for tendon pain. A progressive program that starts with a strength program and then progresses through to more spring-like exercises, and endurance aspects will give the right loads on the tendon and the best long-term results.
Previous Leg Injury Increases Risk of Other Leg Injuries
Once one joint/structure/tissue is injured, compensation patterns usually occur in which the individual offloads physical stress to other areas of the body. This would logically lead to an increased risk of use/overuse/misuse/abuse to these other areas, likely eventually leading to injury.
Neck Deep Pressure Massage: Step by Step – Apply Pressure Perpendicularly
When performing deep pressure massage into the neck, maximal pressure for minimal effort is achieved if the angle of your pressure into the client is perpendicular to the contour of the neck where you are working.
Neck Deep Pressure Massage: Step by Step – Use Your Core
For deep pressure massage to the neck, align your core with your stroke by laterally (externally) rotating your arm at the shoulder joint so that your elbow is positioned in front of your core. Now lock your elbow into your core just inside (and usually slight above) your anterior superior iliac spine.
Neck Deep Pressure Massage: Step by Step – Contacts
Even perfect body mechanics cannot eliminate all physical stress to your body when doing massage. Ideal body mechanics merely minimize the stress. For this reason, when doing massage, especially deep pressure massage, it is wise to alternate which treatment hand contact you use during a session.
Neck Deep Pressure Massage: Step by Step – Positioning
When performing deep pressure massage for the neck with the client supine, it is typical for the therapist to sit, centered at the head of the table. However, this does not allow for efficient body mechanics because it is difficult or impossible to position your core in line with the stroke.
