No pain no gain – not necessarily. I hear this phrase so often in my clinic and it is not my favorite. Often people feel like they need to push through pain to get better. This is not true! There are different kinds of pain that I encounter as a physical therapist: stretch pain, workout …
What is runner’s knee? Runner’s knee is also known as patellofemoral syndrome. The patella is the knee cap and the femur is the thigh bone. Believe it or not, our knee caps are supposed to be able to move. If they don’t move like they should, you can have knee pain that surrounds the knee …
Why does my neck hurt? Disclaimer: this is not medical advice. Neck pain can be caused by a lot of different things: falls, hits to the head, car accidents, overuse, posture. Did you have a traumatic injury ( car accidents/ bike accident/driving accident/fall off ladder or height more than 5 ft)? Are you older than …
Cupping is a technique used to reduce pain that originated from Eastern medicine, mainly China. In traditional Chinese medicine, a vacuum is placed in the cups on the body in specific locations to influence the flow of the qi in the body which promotes healing. Sometimes, physical therapists may use cupping as a technique to …
Lower back pain is one of the most common conditions that I treat as a physical therapist. You may have a herniated disc, spinal stenosis, sciatica, degenerative disc disease but that does not mean that you have to have surgery. Often times, people respond well to conservative treatment, despite the scary diagnoses that they may …
Often, we equate core strengthening to doing numerous crunches and sit ups. While this does work part of your core, I think the more important core muscles are the lower abdominal muscles – your transverse abdominis. This is the deep abdominal muscle and is your spine stabilizer. I like to say that it acts like …
