How to: stretch your tight neck – Please don’t pull on your head!

How to: stretch your tight neck – Please don’t pull on your head!

by | Dec 21, 2022 | neck

 

When you are experiencing pain or tightness in your neck, you will feel like you want to stretch your tight neck to alleviate the symptoms. Common information demonstrates a stretch where you pull on your head to get the stretch. Please don’t do this!

It is important to consider what is happening to all the structures being affected by the stretch technique when you stretch your tight neck. Not all structures benefit from stretching. Nerves tend not to like being stretched. If ligaments are lengthened through stretch, they can no longer do their job of stopping motion properly. When pulling on your head to stretch the muscles in your neck, you are also compressing structures on one side, and stretching structures, like the ligaments and nerves in your neck, on the other. 

Instead of pulling from your head to get the stretch, consider stretching the muscles in your neck by pulling down on your shoulder instead. In this way, you will reduce the potentially negative effects of the stretch on the other structures in your neck that don’t want to be stretched. 

Keep in mind that if stretching only offers you temporary relief, stretching may not be what you need. It may actually be making your neck problem worse. Stretching your muscles often feels good because of the temporary reflex relaxation in the muscle, giving you relief from the tight feeling you are struggling with. However, for example, if your neck muscles are tightening up in an attempt to give a really loose hypermobile neck some stability, then relaxing the muscles through stretching reduces the stability in your neck. If your neck struggles with extra motion, then the structures in your neck will undergo more shear and compression which can cause pain and damage to the cartilage, disks, and other structures in your neck. To protect these structures, your muscles will tighten up again to control the extra motion and add stability and the cycle continues. Better to spend time strengthening your muscles in your neck, work on good body mechanics, and correct your posture to help a loose neck feel better. 

There are many other scenarios like this explaining why stretching may not be the best strategy for your neck. So if stretching your neck is not resolving the tight feeling you are trying to address, please give me a call! I’d love to help you find the cause of your neck tightness and help you treat it appropriately!

This post is intended for education and demonstration only and is not meant to take the place of guidance from your Primary Care Provider (PCP). Don’t use this post to avoid going to your PCP or to replace the advice they give you. Get clearance from YOUR PCP before using the information in this post. Use at your own risk.

How to: exercise to prevent low back pain?

How to: exercise to prevent low back pain?

by | Dec 7, 2022 | low back pain

 

When you are struggling with low back pain, it is common to seek relief with stretching and strengthening exercises. This approach is an important part of your recovery and healing. However, your time will be better spent, especially initially, learning to avoid the most common triggers of low back pain. By avoiding common triggers, your low back is no longer sustaining the damage caused by these triggers, often resulting in an immediate reduction in pain. Appropriate strengthening and stretching exercises are then less painful to perform and more effective at maintaining improvement. 

So how do you avoid the most common triggers for low back pain? There are many activities that can cause low back pain depending on what structures in your back are injured. Repeated or prolonged bending, twisting, and combining bending and twisting is particularly damaging to the disks in your low back. These actions pull on the outer layer of the disc and eventually cause painful damage to that layer. If you can prevent this damage, or stop it from continuing, you can significantly reduce the frequency and intensity of your low back pain. Replacing your bending with a good hip hinge, squat, and golf lift is an effective way to stop pulling on the outside of your disc and allow it to heal and feel better!

Relieving low back pain by replacing bending with hip hinging and squatting can be challenging for two reasons. First, learning how to properly hip hinge and squat can be difficult, especially when you are in pain. Pain is a muscle inhibitor which reduces our coordination and strength with tasks. So it’s hard to learn something new when your body isn’t moving as it should because you are in pain! Second, hip hinging and squatting in the gym can feel much different than hip hinging and squatting at home. Can you hinge when you brush your teeth? Can you squat properly with your heels down and your bum back when you lift your laundry? Applying these movements to your home and work activities is an important step in eliminating bending and low back pain.

It’s not unusual to need help in this process. 

Working with me provides the information and coaching you need to move with less pain. You’ll learn what structures in your back are acting up and why. Through treatment and coaching you’ll learn how to hip hinge and squat safely to keep your low back calm and painfree. You’ll also learn exercises that reinforce and strengthen these healthy movements. As a Physical Therapist, I can also help you correct any joint stiffness, muscle spasm, or nerve issues that are hindering your recovery. I’d love to work with you! Please call today!

This post is intended for education and demonstration only and is not meant to take the place of guidance from your Primary Care Provider (PCP). Don’t use this post to avoid going to your PCP or to replace the advice they give you. Get clearance from YOUR PCP before using the information in this post. Use at your own risk. 

Tips to relieve neck pain when looking down!

Tips to relieve neck pain when looking down!

by | Dec 2, 2022 | Uncategorized

 

Neck pain when you are looking down can be caused by several factors. Understanding some of these factors will make it easier for you to see what will help you relieve your pain.

First, think of your head as a bowling ball stacked on your neck. Your “bowling ball” is easy to control and hold when it is aligned right on top of your neck. When you look down, various neck structures, like muscles and ligaments, need to work a bit harder to hold that 8-12 pound bowling ball in this new position. Rest assured, your neck is designed to handle this task…to a point. If we spend a long time looking down, knitting, washing dishes, or using cell phones, then those structures start to get fatigued and can eventually strain under the load and become injured.

My favorite advice works in this scenario: if it hurts, don’t do it. This advice especially applies to tasks that your body wasn’t designed to do. Your body was built to hunt and gather, not look down at your phone,  knitting or a book for hours at a time. Set yourself up more ergonomically to align your head and neck upright in a position it is able to sustain. For example, lap desks can create an elevated work surface to knit or prop your book or smartphone on. You can add a smartphone or book stand to add more height if needed.  

Let’s look at another reason it is common to have neck pain when you are looking down. There are more than a dozen joints in your neck and upper back that have to slide and glide properly to ensure pain free motion. If any of these joints are not moving as designed (too much or too little), then your neck has to work even harder to accomplish looking down.  Sometimes stiff joints are painful because they aren’t moving well which starves the joint structures of the nourishment and activity they need to be healthy. Sometimes the loose joints are painful because they are moving more than they should, compensating for the lack of movement in the stiff joints. This causes strain and pain in the ligaments around the loose joints.

The best treatment for this is to stretch the stiff joints and strengthen muscles around the loose joints to help stabilize them. This is hard to do without the help of a professional (me!) to assess which specific joints aren’t moving properly. But I can offer you two bits of advice to get you started. First, please don’t spend lots of time stretching your neck. Stretching the muscles of your neck can offer some temporary relief. However, when you stretch, you are going to stretch and pull through the path of least resistance, which is through the loose joints. This leaves the stiff joints to stay stiff, and tugs on the loose joints, making them even more unstable.

What you can do is foam roll your upper back! Your thoracic spine gets stiff as you age. Foam rolling this area is one way to get the joints in your upper back and rib cage to move a bit better. When these joints move better, they can contribute to the motion of looking down which they are supposed to do. This reduces the work load off the painful joints in your neck! Here is a video to show you how to safely foam roll your upper back: How to: Foam roll your upper back (and why)!  

In review, setting up your ergonomics in such a way that helps you avoid spending long periods of time looking down is the best way to let your structures heal and feel better. And foam rolling to your upper back helps get the upper back moving better which will take some stress off the painful joints in your neck when you do need to look down. 

I’d be happy to do a thorough assessment to determine which joints are causing your pain and why. With this information, we can apply the best treatment approach to resolve your neck pain if the above suggestions don’t do the trick! Give me a call anytime or contact me here.

This post is intended for education and demonstration only and is not meant to take the place of guidance from your Primary Care Provider (PCP). Don’t use this post to avoid going to your PCP or to replace the advice they give you. Get clearance from YOUR PCP before using the information in this post. Use at your own risk. 

 

Strengthening exercises for your feet

Strengthening exercises for your feet

by | Aug 19, 2022 | Feet

 

Are you struggling with plantar fasciitis, tarsal tunnel syndrome, peroneal tendonitis, shin splints, or sprained ankles? Learning great strengthening exercises for your feet, especially focusing on the smaller muscles in your feet, helps you in your recovery of any foot problems you might be struggling with. Also, if you’ve spent any time on crutches or in a boot, you can often see the muscle shrinkage this can cause and it takes some work to get those muscles back to peak performance. This video demonstrates some great exercises that can help!

Keep in mind, when you are doing these strengthening exercises for your feet, not only are you regaining strength, but you are also increasing blood flow, delivering oxygen and nutrients for recovery. Additionally, you are washing out swelling and irritants that are contributing to pain.

It’s important that you do these exercises in a way that doesn’t recreate any pain you are working to recover from. So start small if you need to, creating more movement as you are comfortable. 

These exercises are good to start with as they don’t require much weight bearing, making them less likely to aggravate any problems you are struggling with. It’s important for full recovery to progress these exercises into weight bearing and resistance training to safely return to activity and prevent recurrence.

If you’d like some help working through an appropriate exercise progression or would like to learn other strategies that can help with your foot or ankle pain, give me a call! I’d love to help!

How long does physical therapy take?

How long does physical therapy take?

by | Jan 26, 2022 | FAQ

PT Health Academy - physical therapy - Roxanne Meldrum

Roxanne Meldrum PT, ATC

Understanding how long physical therapy takes to get you moving and feeling better can help you decide if PT is the best option for you. Maybe you are concerned about squeezing physical therapy visits into your tight schedule between Zoom meetings and soccer pickups. Or if Monday’s ankle sprain can be better by Saturday’s 5k. Maybe you missed some time off work because of back pain and are trying to figure out what will get you back to work the quickest. So, how long does physical therapy take to work?

Fortunately, you can access the expertise of a physical therapist without overwhelming your schedule and achieving your recovery goals efficiently. I’m going to explain how physical therapy saves you time, what factors determine how long physical therapy will take, and what steps you can take to speed the process along. 

How long does physical therapy take with PT Health Academy?

When you’re trying to answer the question of how long does physical therapy take, it’s important to consider where you are considering receiving your PT. Working with a direct access physical therapist (like me!), for example, is a great way to save you time. 

First, you don’t need a referral to attend physical therapy, saving you the time and money of a PCP visit. Sprained your ankle? I can assess if you need an x-ray, give you instructions on how to get walking on it safely again, start you on appropriate mobility exercises, tape you up, or recommend a good brace to get you through your 5k Saturday. Back sore from shoveling? I can assess what tissues are involved, help you to calm them down with hands- on techniques and self management strategies, and offer ergonomic suggestions to get you through your work day without aggravating the problem. When you get the right care right away, recovery starts immediately.

Second, when you receive hour long one on one sessions with the same therapist (me!), you accomplish more per visit. If your schedule doesn’t tolerate multiple weekly appointments, you can still make great progress towards your goals. Unfortunately, some PT clinics treat more than one patient at a time, treat you for only 30 minutes, or require you to see a different physical therapist for every visit. This is an inefficient way for you to receive care and will cause physical therapy to take longer.

Third, because I have weeknight and weekend appointments available, you can get the care you need when it works for your schedule. Have a long commute to Boston and don’t get back in town till 7:00 PM? I can work with that. My Saturday appointments are great when weekdays are filled with work and taxiing kids and pets.

How long does physical therapy take to work? 

Now that you know how much time physical therapy might take out of your schedule, you’re probably wondering when you’ll actually start to feel better. This depends on many factors. 

For example, if your goal for physical therapy far outstretches your current capabilities, this may take longer to achieve. Are you trying to get back to 5k or marathon training when you haven’t run in several years? Do you want to walk a mile or get back into basketball? 

How long physical therapy takes to work also depends on the extent of the injury. Did you roll your ankle but there is minimal swelling and you are able to walk on it? Or are you chronically spraining your ankle and your last injury has landed you on crutches for two weeks? Do you have a long history of off- and- on symptoms? Or is this your first incident? Is your tissue healthy? Are you healthy?

Different tissues heal at different rates, which will also affect how long you might need physical therapy. For example, muscles heal more quickly than tendons because they have better blood supply. In our clinical examination on your first visit, we can usually determine the tissues involved to ensure you get the right treatment for the injured tissue right away. Imagine you’re a runner with tight hamstrings so you start stretching. Later you learn that you are suffering with sciatica pain, which is worsened by stretching, meaning your recovery time has only been lengthened by your stretching. This is something I see frequently.

What steps can you take to speed your recovery time?

For starters, when you take the time to consistently implement physical therapy recommendations, you’ll feel better faster, requiring less care overall. For example, if you have plantar fasciitis and you come into the office with year old sneakers with inappropriate arch support, the first thing I’m going to recommend is new shoes. After the evaluation, I can offer suggestions as to what characteristics to look for in a new shoe to help relieve your pain. How long it takes you to get these shoes is absolutely going to impact the speed of your recovery!

Committing to the home exercise program as prescribed is vital in your recovery. This can be tough with your busy schedule. If clients are not compliant with their home exercise program, it’s often because it’s painful, they don’t feel like it’s working, or they don’t understand what benefit the program offers. They say they don’t have time but typically if the program is helping relieve their pain, they find the time. 

I work with you to design a program that works like medicine. Take it, and you feel better! I explain the goals of each exercise so you understand the benefits of your efforts. And I work hard to ensure this program will work for you within the constraints of your schedule and exercise preferences. It might mean doing a little bit throughout the day, or just tweaking your current routine to achieve your goals.

How long does physical therapy take compared to other treatment options? 

Other treatment options that might seem like they will save you time include massage therapy, chiropractic care, or even asking your personal trainer for their advice on exercises for shoulder pain. 

Here’s the difference. As a physical therapist, I have the expertise to thoroughly evaluate your injury, determining the specific tissues involved and the factors that might be contributing to the problem. I can teach you strategies for self management, prescribe the best exercises to alleviate symptoms and support healing, utilize hands-on techniques like joint mobilization or massage, and support the healing tissue with taping or bracing as needed. Only physical therapists are trained and licensed to provide all of these services.

Personally, I’ve had seven and a half years of training to become a Certified Athletic Trainer and Physical Therapist. I completed one year of fellowship training in joint mechanics and mobilization. I’ve completed 25 years of continuing education training in a variety of areas like orthotic prescription, dance medicine, pain management, sports injury management. Most recently, Currently, I’m learning how to use meditation for pain relief, and how to assist patients with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome.

An example:

Here’s a story I’ve seen time and again. A client has back pain and gets a massage. Of course it feels great, but after a few days, the pain returns. He continues with the massage for a few weeks, getting short term relief, but then decides to seek chiropractic care to speed things along. His initial chiropractic plan requires visits three times weekly and weans down over several weeks. His pain is better but he’s still having trouble going a whole day without symptoms. 

Next, off to the PCP, who is concerned that his symptoms have been going on for more than six weeks and orders x-rays, which suggest disk pathology. The PCP recommends the patient either try physical therapy or see an orthopedic specialist. He chooses the orthopedic because now he’s concerned about his disk and wants to know what’s happening. The orthopedic confirms it’s a disk problem and suggests an MRI. 

Now one of two things happens. The first is that he gets the MRI, but his insurance requires a bout of physical therapy before he can have any further medical interventions. The second is that his insurance requires physical therapy before the MRI is approved. Now eight to ten weeks have passed since the onset of his symptoms. 

Now with me in my PT office, I ask what triggers his symptoms and he answers, “sitting at work for several hours and driving”. We discuss his chair ergonomics. We make significant adjustments to his sitting posture and sitting schedule. We go out to his car and adjust his seat to unload his disk while he’s driving. Problem solved. Once his back is feeling better, he meets his goal of tolerating more activity and exercise, and we spend time teaching him what to do next time his back flares up so it will recover more quickly.

By getting to the root cause of the problem, which for this client was sitting, instead of tending to the symptoms and the diagnosis, recovery begins in a much more concise time frame.

Getting started with physical therapy

I hope I’ve answered your question of “how long does physical therapy take?” and you are ready to get started.

It’s important to remember that physical therapy does require some time and effort. But the physical therapist you choose and your investment in the process, can make a big difference in speeding your recovery. 

Ready to start? Call me today at 802-489-7842 for an immediate appointment.