- tennis elbow (lateral epicondylitis)
- golfer's elbow (medial epicondylitis)
- swimmer’s shoulder (rotator cuff tendinitis and impingement)
- Little League elbow syndrome
- runner’s knee (patellofemoral pain syndrome)
- jumper’s knee (infrapatellar tendinitis)
- Achilles tendinitis
- shin splints (periostitis)
- rotator cuff tendonitis and tears
- bursitis (prepatellar, olecranon, trochanteric, and retrocalcaneal)
- iliotibial band syndrome
- spondylolisthesis
- spondylolysis
- Osgood-Schlatter disease
About 1/3 of all injuries suffered by athletes are deemed "overuse" injuries. The definition of an overuse injury is: damage to a bone, muscle, ligament, or tendon caused by repetitive submaximal stress without allowing adequate time to allow for structural adaptation to take place. Examples of overuse injuries are:
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This is episode 2 of Sonima presents "Becoming Pain Free" with Egoscue. (View episode 1 here) "Becoming Pain Free" is the video story of one man's journey to become pain free with Egoscue. In episode 1, Steven learns how Postural Alignment Therapy can help him eliminate his many chronic pains and allow him to enjoy being active with his wife and 5-year-old son. In episode 2, Steven learns how diet and nutrition play a crucial role in his body's health and ability to respond to posture alignment therapy. As the saying goes: We are what we eat. What we eat and drink are the building blocks that our body uses to repair and build every cell in our body (from muscle, bone, and nerve cells, to heart, lung, and kidney cells, to skin, hair, and nail cells). Our bodies need macronutrients like carbohydrates (main fuel for our brain and important fuel source for exercise), fat (excellent fuel source for daily activity and exercise) , and protein (major structural component of cells) and micronutrients like vitamins and minerals (important for normal building and function of bone and blood cells, immune function, growth, healing, and metabolism) along with water (hydrate joints and discs in the spine along with maintain blood volume and flush out waste products) and oxygen (necessary for production of energy and elimination of waste products).
Eating a diet consisting of simple carbohydrates (high calorie, high sugar, low nutritional density) and energy drinks (containing stimulants rather than real energy sources like high quality complex carbohydrates and balanced fats) like Steven shares in the video, will not give the body fuel for every day life or exercise and will not provide adequate nutrients for repairing and building cells. This type of diet will allow the body to slowly get sicker and weaker over time. Poor diet can result can be chronic pain and fatigue or even chronic sickness or disease. In order for Postural Alignment Therapy exercises to work, the body needs to have an adequate nutritional diet that provides all essential nutrients that will give the body energy to do the exercises and respond to the demands and have the necessary building blocks for new muscle, bone, and nerve cells. Easy ways to help improve your body's health is to:
I think Michael Pollan, who has written the best selling books including "The Omnivores Dilemma", "In Defense of Food", "Food Rules", and "Cooked", has some of the best, easy to follow, advice anywhere. A great place to start learning about how to eat better is his article Unhappy Meals published in the New York Times Magazine in 2007. Related articles/videos: Becoming Pain Free episode 1 East-West Breathing How Posture affects lung capacity New Beliefs about Pain 10 Things that cause posture imbalances and pain If you've heard of Postural Alignment Therapy or read Pain Free by Pete Egoscue and are trying to understand how personalized one-on-one therapy in a clinic works this video by Somina is a great starting point in understanding how therapy works. When you have any chronic pain symptoms the most important information for you to understand is what is causing the pain and what can you do about it. And when I say "what is causing the pain" I am not talking about things like "you have moderate osteoarthritis in your hip" or "you have a herniated disc at L4-5" or "you have a partial rotator cuff tear".
To find the underlying reason for the pain you have to ask the next question:
These questions help you dig much deeper than the easy answers (that are often not true at all) and get to the root cause of your pain. After asking these questions you can begin to look at your postural alignment and movement patterns to see why you were wearing the cartilage away in one hip and not the other or why you herniated a disc at a certain level. These questions, answers, and solutions take more effort than the easy ones, but the results are much better and longer lasting. If you think age caused your arthritic hip, there's nothing you can do about your age, so your only options turn into live with the increasing pain and disability as you get older, take pain medication to hide the pain, or get a hip replacement (which will limit your activities, often not relieve all the pain, and sometimes has complications). But if you ask more questions you'll discover that the reason why your one hip is arthritic is because the other hip is not helping. Strengthening the weaker hip and restoring normal range of motion to the arthritic hip might take a year but if you're able to return to your normal activities without pain and avoid drugs and surgery most people will say that's worth it! When you're ready for help contact me and I'll work with you on asking and answering these questions and finding the way for you to get well and return to a pain free and active life. Related videos/articles: What is "normal" aging? Orthopedic doctor and postural alignment specialist discuss osteoarthritis Knee joint osteoarthritis Could a simple misunderstanding really cause all my pain? Cause of back pain is never found in 85% of patients. Really!? Why? |
About Matt WhiteheadI'm an Egoscue Institute® certified Postural Alignment Specialist (PAS) and Advanced Exercise Therapist (AET), certified personal trainer, PatchFitness performer, ultra trail runner, mountain biker, dad, music lover, environmentalist, and wanna-be slam dunk champion. I will be providing you with the latest posture exercises to help you live, play, and be pain free. Archives
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