Why scars suck!!!

It constantly amazes my patients  (myself included) who have tried various forms of treatment for their complaint with no change, to then finally figure out that it was their old scar on their elbow having knocked it as a teenager, or even from an old piercing that was creating their problem.

BS I hear you say. Hang on one second, let me explain with an analogy.

Our body is not much different from a computer. We have our physical component (hardware) and the brain with its associated motor patterns (software).

Like the computer, we are born with pre-installed software to help Coordinate the body's movement, this is known as motor control. 

Now let's introduce scar tissue. Scar tissue moves different, feels different and acts different to your normal tissue. More to the point, scar tissue likes to disrupt the signal from the brain to its desired location. Some what similar of what a virus does to your computer. It makes it work different, maybe even more slow than usual and down right annoying. 

Now back to your body, if your scar tissue is changing the way that pathway is being received expect your body to change the way it acts and moves, down repetitively this certainly can lead to low back, neck or even jaw pain.

Neurokinetic Therapy is an assesment tool used at Kinetic Healthcare to determine if your brain and its pathways are being compromised by scars or old injuries which may be a cause to your pain. 

Moral of the story, just cause it hurts there doesn't' mean your problem is there.

Don't just guess. Have it assessed.

Kinetic Healthcare

Feel Better, Move Better, Perform

Your core and low back. How do they relate to pain and dysfunction?

Muscle fibre orientation of the internal and external obliques

Many people would have heard the term 'core' previously. Too be honest it gets thrown around without a proper understanding of what it is but more importantly what it is meant to do.

So first of all core is just not your abdominals. It is made up of your internal and external obliques, rectus and transverse abdominis, quadratus lumborum and diaphragm. 

Great I hear you say but what does all that mean ? Well these muscles all act in unison with one another to create spinal stability. In other words, they help to control fine movement of the back bones of your low back relative to one another. So no stability = dysfunction = poor movement patterns = pain

Now to get just a little techy. If your external obliques switch off ( refer to the  diagram for where they are) your low back will naturally went to extend/arch while causing the ribs flare out and elevate. This could lead to stress on the joints of the low back. If your abdominals are overly contracted that will cause your pelvis to tilt underneath. This slouched posture puts extra pressure on your discs, something you don't want when sitting. 

End of the day these muscles need to work together to provide a neutral spine to provide an even distribution of forces throughout your spine.

Now it makes sense why so often you hear people say they went to pick a pen up from the floor and their back went or they got their child's toy and couldn't move. The problem was not the pen or toy but their body's ability to stabilise itself.

If you have back pain, hip tightness and have tried treatment in the past with no little or no change we would love to talk to you see if we may be able to help.

MOVE BETTER, FEEL BETTER, PERFORM

Kinetic Healthcare

Tennis elbow. Is the problem really coming from your elbow?

Superficial front arm Line 

Lateral epicondylitis or commonly known as 'tennis elbow' is an overuse injury surrounding the outer part of your elbow. Often the muscles that attach to this area get overworked, tired and generally cranky often leading to pain. Things like opening car doors, shaking hands and twisting tops/caps off bottles make it worse.

Great. So we know what the pain is, what causes it and what makes it worse. However we should ask ourselves the question why did they become 'overused' in the first place?

For those of you that have read Thomas Myers 'anatomy trains' you will be quite familiar with his philosophy that muscles do not work independently but more so on movement patterns and slings. In other words, muscles are connected to other muscles and tissues. 

I want to bring your attention to the above picture. This here is referred to as the 'arm lines'. As you can see there are few muscles that criss cross one another from the right hand up to the shoulder. These muscles pretty much work as one unit for your upper arm not individually. So for instance your rounded shoulders from sitting too much at work shorten your pec muscles which causes the rest of your arm muscles to change the way they lengthen contract. Boom elbow pain. Another example is a previous shoulder injury that was not treated correctly which led to a change how the shoulder worked, causing the elbow to take more  load on than it is used to. 

On the other hand (pardon the pun) if your hand is moving too much, aka unstable, it will try and stabilise itself at you guessed it, your elbow.

So next time you go and see your physical therapist and they only treat your elbow for your elbow pain you better ask them. ' what about the rest of the arm?'

Kinetic Healthcare

Feel better, Move better, Perform