Knee joint osteoarthritis affects 365 million people worldwide and is the knee is most frequently affected joint. Symptomatic knee osteoarthritis affects 13% of women and 10% of men over 60 years old. Knee osteoarthritis typically features joint space narrowing, osteophytosis, pain, stiffness, and disability. Knee osteoarthritis most commonly occurs in one knee and not both. Knee osteoarthritis typically gets worse over time, often progressing from mild to severe over a period of 10 years. 

The key to both preventing knee osteoarthritis and slowing down or stopping the progression of knee osteoarthritis is to address the postural and movement imbalances that are causing it. Posture simply means the alignment of bones and joints in the human body. The human body has eight major load joints that are designed to align vertically and horizontally with each other. When the joints of the body are aligned as designed, the joint surfaces are also aligned as designed. This means as we stand, walk, run, and jump the force of gravity is distributed evenly and optimally across the knee joint and cartilage. All movement in this case strengthens the cartilage of the knee and protects the knee from damage. 

If the load joints are not aligned there will be increased pressure, friction, and stress placed on a certain portion of the knee joint which will lead to wear and tear of the cartilage over time. This wear and tear is what leads to osteoarthritis, joint space narrowing, osteophytosis, stiffness, swelling, and pain. The only way to stop the wear and tear is to realign the load joints of the body. 

Posture alignment therapy is effective at restoring proper load joint alignment, muscle strength and flexibility, and movement patterns. As postural alignment is restored, knee pain will decrease and function will return. 

Contact me for a free posture evaluation on Zoom today. 

The sacroiliac joint is a common site of lower back pain, especially if your lower back pain is on one side of your lower back. Sacroiliac joint pain is sometimes referred to as sacroiliac joint disfunction, sacroiliitis, or SI joint pain and you might have been diagnosed with synovitis, capsulitis, or enthesitis or may have been told your SI joint is stuck or hypermobile. 

You may experience it as lower back pain, typically on one side, that is a sharp pain, a dull ache, a stuck feeling, or feelings of numbness, tingling, or tightness of the lower back and pain in your buttock, groin, or inner thigh. Movement or prolonged sitting or standing might increase symptoms and you may feel like your leg/hip is going to give out due to weakness, instability, or pain. 

You have two SI joints, one on each side of your lower back where the bottom of your spine, the sacrum, meets your pelvis, or ilium.

​SI joint pain is almost always experienced on one side of the lower back at a time. Any SI joint pain or dysfunction is due to an imbalance in the position or movement between your two hips or sides of your pelvis. Correcting this imbalance with posture alignment therapy can eliminate your SI joint pain. 

Sciatica is literally a pain in the butt (and down the leg). If you've had sciatica you know how painful it can be, and I've had it and it hurts. 

The great thing about sciatica is that it's pretty easy to figure out the cause and to fix it. Most sciatica is only on one side of the body, which means it is caused by a hip disparity.

(If you have sciatica, you are often diagnosed with a bulging or herniated disc, ruptured disc, degenerative disc disease, stenosis, scoliosis, or piriformis syndrome. These are all symptoms of your body not moving correctly, and if you are experiencing sciatica from any of these problems, the underlying cause is still a hip disparity.)

A hip disparity basically means one hip is in a different position than your other hip, or one hip is moving differently than your other hip. This can show up in several ways: 

• elevation - one hip or side of your pelvis is higher than the other
• rotation - one hip or side of your pelvis is rotated forward compared to the other
• tilt difference - one side of your pelvis is tilted forward or backward more than the other side
• range of motion difference - one hip has more or less range of motion in flexion, extension, or rotation than your other hip
• stability - one hip is more or less stable than your other hip

What if there were a couple super simple and easy things you could do to make this year your best year yet? 

Well, you're in luck because that's exactly what this blog post is about! 

Is it possible to live a life without injuries? 

Maybe. Limiting risky behaviors and activities. Maintaining strength and joint range of motion. Being very careful in everything you do. Only doing things you're 100% prepared for and 100% sure are safe and doable. Never spontaneously taking part in a sport or adventure. That might be the injury free life, but that isn't the life I'd want to live. 

The moments in life where I feel the most alive and that I remember fondly are often big adventures where I've really pushed myself to the edge and challenged both my physical body and mind. Those adventures where you're not really sure whether you'll be able to complete it and often where there's some risk involved. 

If you picture an amusement park, think about the different types of rides. There's a carousel, Ferris wheel, bumper cars, things like the Scrambler, and then roller coasters. You can play if safe and just ride the carousel and Ferris wheel, or take a little more risk and do the bumper cars where you'll experience a little more emotion (which will implant a stronger memory) and a better story to tell afterwards. Or take a bigger risk and ride the scrambler or the super fast, twisting, looping, and swooping roller coaster. You might be screaming the entire time, but that's a ride you'll remember for years to come. 

When I think about some of my favorite memories in life, many of them involve taking big risks and had unknown outcomes when I took them on. Some of these ended with me feeling great and being injury free, but some ended with injuries. ​

The cause of injuries has been debated for centuries with the blame often going to:

• bad luck
• old age
• overuse
• genetics
• overtraining
• not wearing supportive shoes
• running or jumping on hard surfaces
• nutritional deficiencies
• poor technique
• not cross training
• incorrect warm-up

In cases not involving blunt trauma, injuries and pain are caused simply by dysfunctional joints. Healthy or functional joints maintain joint centration during movement and return to a neutral starting point immediately after movement.

Joint centration is another way to saying optimal joint alignment. This is the most beneficial or optimal alignment of the joint surfaces to properly support the body and external forces and allow the desired movement. Joint centration allows balanced distribution of loads on the joint surfaces and supporting structures. ​

​Injuries are prevented, or at least minimized, by maintaining healthy joints. How do you know if you have healthy joints? ​

This is false. Stress actually causes many negative health effects including high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, headaches, loss of sleep, depressed immune system, muscle pains, and many other undesirable things. Keep practicing your stress deduction techniques! 

I hope you laughed reading this newsletter as I did creating it! Have a wonderful pain free April! 

Eye strain and blue light are major buzz words in the last couple years and it seems everyone is talking about it. From the start of the internet until December 31st 2010 there are 135,000 results on Google but from January 1st 2011 until today there are over 39,000,000 more results! 

What is blue light? Blue light is a color in the visible light spectrum that is short wavelength and higher energy than other wavelengths of light. Blue light comes from the sun, computers, smart phones, TVs, tablets, and LED and fluorescent lights. Electronic devices emit more blue light than any other light. 

Does blue light cause health problems? Blue light has been blamed for loss of sleep, headaches, eye strain, and even eye damage like macular degeneration. Laboratory studies on mice have shown that prolonged exposure to high intensity blue light damages retinal cells. Human studies have not shown this same negative effect on humans however because our eyes are different than those of mice. 

What's the truth about blue light? Sunlight is almost all blue light and on a sunny afternoon it is about 100,000 brighter than your phone or computer screen. There have been no studies that show exposure to sunlight cause macular degeneration. So don't worry about your screens causing eye damage, but do continue to wear sunglasses outside because they are helpful. 

The MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, is an amazing piece of technology. But MRIs continue to be overused even after guidelines in 2007 from the American College of Physicians and American Pain Society strongly discourage the use of MRIs for many patients with back pain. The rate of MRI has continued to grow since 2007, if at a slower rate. 

The problem with MRIs in many situations of back pain, shoulder pain, knee pain, etc is that the results of an MRI don't often show what is causing the pain the person is experiencing. And MRIs can show abnormalities that have nothing to do with the person's pain sometimes leading to unnecessary, costly and dangerous surgery. ​

Here are some of the main points these studies have shown:

1. MRI's of healthy people with no pain or symptoms often show abnormalities like disc herniations, meniscus tears, or rotator cuff tears. 
2. MRI's of people with pain and symptoms often show no abnormalities. 
3. A person's pain and the abnormalities shown on an MRI often don't correlate. For example, a larger herniation doesn't mean more pain than a small herniation. 

MRI's also never show the cause of them problem, only the symptom. A herniated disc, meniscus tear, or stenosis are all symptoms caused by posture and movement imbalances. Posture and movement imbalances are what also cause the pain and other symptoms you are experiencing. There is a postural explanation for why you herniated L4-5 on the right side. The MRI can't tell you that. There is a postural explanation for why you tore the medial meniscus on your left knee and not your right knee. The MRI can't tell you that. There is a postural explanation for why you have lumbar stenosis at L4-5 and L5-S1. The MRI can't tell you that. A free posture evaluation can tell you why and how to fix it. 

Almost every new client I talk to will hear me say, "You are bent, not broken." 

Why? Because think of how it changes your thinking. If something is broken, it needs to be fixed, repaired, replaced, or if it can't be fixed, you have to live with the broken thing forever. In contrast, if something is bent, all that has to be done is to bend it back a little. 

When a client contacts me for a free posture evaluation, they almost always have chronic pain that is getting in the way of their life and often have been given some kind of diagnosis: arthritis, stenosis, herniated disc, tendonitis, bursitis, torn ligament, meniscus tear, etc. The client thinks they are broken and the medical system has reinforced this thinking and has often told them the only way to get better is to have surgery to fix the broken piece. The client is feeling hopeless and doomed to a life of pain. 

The problem with this thinking is that often the arthritis, stenosis, or herniated disc isn't the cause of the pain the client is experiencing. The arthritis, stenosis, or herniated disc is a symptom they are experiencing just like the pain is a symptom they are experiencing. 

The question we have to ask is: what is causing the pain and the arthritis, stenosis, or herniated disc? 

The answer to that question is: your posture. Your posture is bent. You are bent not broken. 

And you can bend your posture back into better alignment and when you do your pain will go away and your body can heal itself. That's what I do as a Posture Alignment Therapist - help people bend their bodies back into better alignment. 

When you understand that you are bent and not broken, you believe you can and will get better and that's the key to it all. You must believe. ​