When is Arthritis Not Arthritis?

Joint pain is one of the leading symptoms that many doctors see throughout the country.  Pain on movement, swelling, deep joint pain and muscle aches make up the many symptoms that ends up being diagnosed as arthritis. Many patients end up taking medications for many years to help control the pain and inflammation.

If you have continued joint pain (knee, hip, ankle, shoulder etc...) your doctor may order an X-ray to see the inside of the joint.  If they see any types of change within the joint most times they will diagnosis it as arthritis. The doctor will say that due to the degenerative changes of the joint that is the reason for your pain.

 
Here is the problem, even though there are degenerative changes seen on the X-ray that isn't necessarily the origion of the damage.  I submit to you that this is where the damage ended up and not where it began.

Let me explain...

When force is introduced into the body the muscles are designed to act as shock absorbers and absorb the force.  Just like the shock absorbers on your car they are made to take the shock away from the body.  When there is a subtle breakdown of the muscles the muscles lose their ability to absorb force and that force (walking, running, twisting, jumping etc...) will then be transferred to the joint.  At the joint, the ligaments, tendons, cartilage and bone are not designed to absorb that force.  When this happens excessive 'joint play' begins which causes the bones to wear and inflammation to begin resulting in pain.

The pain in the joint, belive it or not, DID NOT START IN THE JOINT...it started in other areas where the muscles were not working properly.  You see, the joint pain is where the damage ENDED UP, not where it began.  So by carefully testing the surrounding muscles for inhibition and restriciton we can correct the muscle breakdown and then train it to properly absorb force thus taking all of the pain away.

Here is an example of a real life patient who came into my office with ongoing hip pain.  He explained that he was experiencing chronic hip pain for years and so they decided that he needed a hip replacement. They completed the hip replacement and he continued to suffer with pain.  He attempted to go back and play golf and he reported that if he played one round of golf he would be laid up for three or more days afterwards.  He went back to the doctor and told him his problem and he was told that there was nothing wrong with his new hip.  He went to get two other opinions and both doctors told him that his hip was fine.  In fact, the last surgeon told him that the pain that he was experiencing wasn't coming from his hip but from his lower back.  They scheduled him for spinal fusion surgery.

A friend of his recommended that he come and see me to see if there was anything that I could do to help him avoid another surgery.  I consulted and examined him and told him that yes I feel that I can help him not only avoid surgery but eliminate the pain in his hip.  After carefull examination I found the problem to be in his lower quadracep (thight muscle) and hamstring (back of your upper leg).  These muscles were not turning on fast enough to absrob the force and that force was being transferred to the hip area.

Treatment began to locate and eliminate the site of the muscular breakdown.  In three weeks he was 90% out of pain and we began teaching him the proper exerciese needed to strengthen that area. The 10% of discomfort that he was experiencing was due to the lack of strength in his hip and his upper legs. He returned to golf playing in a few three-day tournaments without any problems.  He continued to do his exercises and reported being pain free.  Now, I tell this story not to boast about my unique treatment methods but to show you that they were going to put rods and screws in his lower back to "take the pain away."  What do you think would have happened if he went along with this?

If you have been dealing with chronic joint pain or mild pain that seems to be getting worse don't settle for the old arthritis diagnosis.  You can get rid of it and lead a pain free life.  For more information contact www.ConwayClinic.com

Football: Bigger, Stronger, Faster May Lead to Fatality

     For the past several years both college and professional football has been growing both in attendance and physicality.  Players are becoming much bigger, much stronger and much faster at every position.  Physics dictates that a object in motion will stay in motion unless altered by another equal or opposite force.  When this happens if either player can't properly absorb that force - something will breakdown.  In the majority of instances the breakdown results in injury to soft tissue or bone. 

    Concussions are becoming more prevalent in the sport of football.  We need to take a closer look at the mechanism of impact to reduce the incident of trauma.  In my opinion, I can't fully understand why we can't put a thin layer of force absorbing material on the "outside" of the helmets.  It only makes sense to me that if we can develop high intensity materials for space travel, automobiles, and other items. There is no reason why we can't develop a material that can withstand impact to protect the athlete.

    The game of football is a rough sport with players developing way past the point in which the game was originally developed.  It started with no helmet that was leather in nature.  They then added plastic to protect the head and eventually added a bar across the face.  They have tried putting air inside the helmets and then water.  They've attempted to build up the jaw area to prevent impact to the TMJ area  (the area that can accelerate a concussion).

    So why with all the changes on the inside of the helmet why the hell aren't we attempting to change the outside of the helmet.  You can't tell me that by adding a force absorbing material on the outside of the helmet won't take the changes of concussion down by a considerable amount.  Please don't tell me that we are doing it because of money.  Division I football is making plenty of money from the direct activity from the student-athletes.  The NFL is the most solvent sports organization in the world.  So please, please don't tell me that we can't afford to add something to the outside of the helmet.

    Football needs to change with the times because as we develop from decade to decade the players continue to develop just as fast.  The equipment hasn't changed in many years except for the rib protection for quarterbacks.  It's time to modify the uniform and equipment just like every other sport has including golf, tennis, and the shoes in basketball.  We need to take a closer look at what materials are protecting our young athletes.  Innovation is the backbone of America and we need to let the spirit of our inventors help change the game while preserving the sport that we all love.

    We also have to take a closer look in the way we train our athletes.  Bigger and stronger has definitely changed the game but have you looked at the weekly injury report?  Yes players are bigger and stronger but they are getting injured at an accelerated rate.  It's not how you will get injured...it's when.  Why is it that every football team needs to carry two quarterbacks?  They all know that sometime during the year the starting quarterback will go down with injury.  The game has developed to the point that we all know that most, if not all quarterbacks will not make a full season without injury.  We need to begin to train all athletes to properly hold muscular position.  That will allow the body to better absorb force or impact. 

    If larger muscles were the total answer then every body builder would be our best athletes.  We need to train the muscles to properly lengthen and become more dense to be able to absorb force keeping it away from the joints, ligaments and tendons.

    Let's build the sport support the player and not to support the companies bottom lines of profit.  I'm all for making a profit but quality should be first and foremost be put on the front burner to develop a safer way for the athlete to participate in football.
   

Weekly Health Update

Mental Attitude: Can't Stop Thinking About Cigarettes. Blocking thoughts of cigarettes helps reduce smokers' intake... at first. However, smokers soon experience a behavioral rebound, the phenomenon where trying not to think about something leads to an increase in the behavior. These findings have implications for individuals seeking to give up smoking, overeating, drinking and other excessive behaviors. 
Psychological Science, August 2010

Health Alert: Obesity Rates Decline, Disparities Worsen! Obesity rates have started to decline and level off for many adolescents, but continue to increase for certain racial and ethnic minorities. The prevalence of high body mass index (BMI) scores among Hispanic, non-Hispanic white, Asian, black, and American Indian adolescents in California from '01-'08, reveals obesity rates at the 95th percentile declined or stabilized among many groups. Obesity continued to climb for black and American Indian girls, reaching 23%. These two groups were more than three times as likely as white girls to be severely obese, with a BMI at the 99th percentile. Pediatrics, September 2010

Diet: Food Choices Decrease Risk Of Heart Disease. Women who consumed two servings per day of red meat compared to those who ate half a serving per day had a 30% higher risk of developing coronary heart disease. Compared to one serving each day of red meat, women who substituted other protein-rich foods experienced lower risk of coronary heart disease: 30% lower with nuts daily, 24% lower with fish daily, 19% lower with poultry daily. The Annals Of Internal Medicine, August 2010

Exercise: Headaches Tied To Overweight, Smoking And Lack Of Exercise. Teens with all three of these negative lifestyle factors were 3.4 times more likely to experience frequent headaches. Those with two negative factors were 1.8 times more likely to have frequent headaches. Frequency of  headaches: Overweight teens 40% more likely, smokers 50% more likely, exercised less than twice a week were 20% more likely.
American Academy of Neurology, August 2010

Chiropractic: For Headaches. "Spinal manipulative therapy is an effective treatment for tension headaches. Four weeks after cessation of treatment . . . the patients who received spinal manipulative therapy experienced a sustained therapeutic benefit in contrast to the patients that received amitriptyline therapy."
Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, 1995

Wellness/Prevention: Stay In Shape And Sleep Better. The worsening severity in sleep-disordered breathing is primarily attributable to increases in obesity. For every unit increase in Body Mass Index, sleep-related breathing disorders increased by 5.5 events per hour for men, and 2.8 events per hour for women.
Medical Journal of Australia, Aug 2010

Quote: "Health is more than the absence of illness; health is the presence of aliveness, energy and joy."  ~ Unknown .

Healing in Half The Time

A young male football player entered my office with pain and disability from a post-surgical ACL reconstruction operation.  The young man injured his knee while playing football.  He was scheduled to attend a local rehabilitation facility however his mother chose to come to my office knowing we has a more cutting- edge approach to his rehab.


His mother told me that he was scheduled for up to six months in rehab according to the surgeon.  She asked me if I was going to follow his prescription for rehab and I politely told her no.  I explained to her that if everything goes right I will be able to release him back to training for football much quicker than what was prescribed. We began his rehab that day using a combination of a treatment that I co-developed called MyoFascial Disruption Technique and the use of the the ARPWave.  The combination of these two treatments allowed for this young many range of motion to double in about a week and with consistent hard work he was jogging without pain in about three and a half weeks.  We continued with his daily work and at the seventh week we tested him.  His test consisted of 30 12 yard sprints up to 100%, jumping off of plymetric boxes and running laterally to test his stability from side to side.  He passed with flying colors and was released from active treatment.


There is new technology that most doctors don't fully understand let alone the average patient. There are many different injuries that you can have relief from even thought you've been told that you may have to live with it.  What type of pain or symptom have you been dealing with that you thought that you had to "just deal with?"  You don't have to put up with that type of pain or chronic nagging discomfort.  When the damage is properly located you can have relief from that pain in many instances the very first day!
If you're interested in reading more go to www.ConwayClinic.com.

Knee Pain

For most people over the age of 30 they've experienced pain in and around one or both knees. What bothers me the most about our health care system is that most doctors are going to diagnose the condition with a term of "arthritis." This pretty much tells me that the doc isn't up on his musculo-skeletal treatments. Now of course there are other diagnoses but how many people do you know that have been told that they have arthritis?

How it works....
The muscles are designed to first move bones and there second job is to absorb force. Day to day movement produces various forms of force....some of it intense and some time light. Either way, that force should be absorbed by the muscles. If the muscles can't absorb the force then that force will continue to travel to the joint. When that happens it puts all sorts of stress on the ligaments, the tendons and the joint itself. The ligaments, tendons and the joint isn't designed to absorb force so stress is produced which brings about inflammation. As time goes on that stress continues and now the bones begin to adapt to that stress which will show on a X-Ray as degeneration or arthritis.

You see, where you are feeling the pain ISN'T where the damage is - it's where the pain ended up! The damage is in an area away from the pain spot - the knee pain that we are using here as an example is where the pain ended up not where it began. So if you can find the area of damage and where it began you can take away the pain in the knee.

Short circuit....
The muscle begins to break down when it doesn't get a true nerve stimulation (electrical supply)
and the muscle slowly begins to shorten. Once the muscle shortens it loses it's ability to absorb force not only can it set you up for injury in that muscle but also in a nearby joint.

A muscle once gets its nerve supply will only "turn-on" or "turn-off." If it can't turn on fast enough it loses its ability to absorb force.

Because this example sets you up for inflammation most medical doctors will give you an anti-inflammatory medication. Do they work....heck yea, but they only work until the chemistry stays in the body which is about 4 to 6 hours. Then you have to start it up all over again.

So if you are on medication for knee pain for arthritis do yourself a favor and find out where the pain is coming from. Once identified and properly treated the pain will go away.

If you have interest in learning more feel free to go to www.ConwayClinic.com to read more about how you can be helped.

Wimbledon

Now that Wimbledon has come and gone for another year its time to begin the preparation for the NFL season. In another few weeks many of the camps will be opening up and injury is surely to follow. In the advent of players getting bigger, faster, and stronger most people don't realize that the injury rate has risen faster than some wide receivers forty times.

I have gotten to really appreciate tennis in its grace, speed and difficulty. Until you've been on the court with a top 100 player in the world it's hard to understand how good these athletes really are. To hit a ball in the rise at 120 miles per hour is as difficult as Michael Jackson keeping his lunch tray even on his lap while watching recess. Returning someone serve traveling at 140 miles per hour is enough for anyone to lay down and cry at the mere fact that a ball can travel that fast - let alone have the ability to hit it on the rise.

As with any professional sport that I work at it's eire to know that most of the sports and the athletes are alike. The athletes are young, naive, and full of piss and vinegar. They all want the coveted ring, trophy or cup that comes with their particular sport. They all have the perception that if they don't make it to the very top of their sport than everything else has been a waste of time. They've put in thousands of hours of practice and conditioning that rival a deep southern chain gang and to come up short is more than disheartening.

Injury has been something that has been over looked in many professional sports. Injury in the way that most people don't think about. Minor injuries and restrictions of the body begin to accumulate which slowly diminish the athletes abilities - slowly but surely to the point of major injury. This is why so many athletes that have the ability to win slowly self destruct. Injuries can alter any athlete at any level. That's why its so important to be able to have a specialist who is trained to see what part of the body is breaking down and to be able to correct it before it turns into a major injury.