My job would be to help to realign the vertebrae in the neck using tissue release and other techniques to allow the movement necessary to return the neck to it’s original position but also to consider why the shoulders are out of position, forcing the neck to do what it is doing to compensate. There may be something further down that is pulling the shoulders out of position, so we chase the cause as far as it goes so that the trigger doesn’t pull your neck out of position again. As in my last post, part of the success is me and part will be the patient as we stretch, strengthen and create awareness of what they might be doing that causes the trigger to re-occur. Some triggers are completely avoidable, and some are only modifiable (if that’s a real word). It is very difficult to stop doing what we might have been doing for years and years so we need to use discomfort as a reminder that we have fallen into this pattern again. Pain isn’t such a bad thing if we know what it means and how we can change to reduce it.

I have seen a cases where there is a fallen arch in the right foot. This translates to the right pelvis being rotated forward, pulling the whole body forward and turned to the left, so the right low back tightens the pull the body back up right. It often might go too far so that the left shoulder is forward and higher than the right shoulder so your head is tilted to the right. The left neck muscles tighten to pull the head so it is level (subconscious righting mechanism) so the vertebrae in the neck are compressed on the left and open and unstable on the right with there being a possibility of pain occurring on either side for different reasons.

This whole thing can cause foot, knee, hip, low-mid back, shoulder and/or neck pain just because of one little fallen arch. If I only look at your neck, I’m probably not doing you a favour. We need to look at the whole body to see the general picture.

Crazy these bodies we have.

I believe that when beginning a stretch program, you almost need to do it religiously for at least 2 weeks to a month without expectation of results, as sometimes it takes that long, therefore there isn’t an disappointment for lack of progress during the beginning.

The teacher in the video has been doing this for a long time so don’t be disappointed if you can’t stretch as well as he. Just be patient and stretch as your level. Once a day is nice. Watch some t.v. while you do it. Click on “web page” on the first line of my entry or go to:

Enjoy!!

Being out of position can occur from the feet up to the head. Maybe your foot is rotated out, your pelvis is turned one way or the other. Perhaps the low back had too much of an inward curve or the mid back has too much of an outward curve, or the right shoulder is turned in too much. When things like the above happen, the body is working hard elsewhere to bring the body back up so that you’re not leaning in one direction or another.

I find this philosophy has applied especially to the way that shoulders may be pulled out of position by upper back, and how neck pain occurs due to misaligned shoulders and low back pain reacts to mispositioned pelvis. If your neck hurts, then you don’t connect it to shoulder position. If your back hurts, then you wouldn’t think “hmm, my pelvis may be out of position”. That’s my job. My job, essentially, is to say “hey, your back hurts, and this is what I’m seeing. You should be in this position. I’m going to loosen tissues to make this position easier for you and give you stretches and strengthening exercises so that this good position is easier to hold. And were going to focus on things that you do during the day, that can be contributing to your issues to see what can be changed or altered”. Patient knowledge and education is so important so that you know what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Otherwise home care and exercises don’t mean anything and you may end up not doing them as you’re not making the connection.

This is some soap that I found on youtube with a number of people who were saying that they loved it. It’s a multi-use soap that is a great alternative to shampoos, body soaps, general cleaners and laundry soap. This is a list of some of those uses. I found some at London Drugs for around $14.00 and is found at many place. To look at the bottle, it almost looks like it was sold by a guy that rides around with a horse and cart and goes from town to town selling his wares but it really is a fantastic product, especially to those that are sensitive to chemicals that are in many commercial soaps.

Among other things, it’s an awesome laundry soap. I caught wind that those anti -static deals that you put in the drier are because of the static caused by the chemicals in regular soap so it would interesting to try using the Castile soap in your laundry and try running the drier without the static cling thingie and see if there is any static after the drying. I’m going to try it tomorrow.

Right now I’m using it as a soap and shampoo while showering. I have had issues my skin feeling really dry and my hair being really fine after having a shower even with Pears soap and a good quality shampoo and noticed a vast improvement now using the Castile soap. I think the natural oils help keep the skin and hair hydrated and the coconut oils help to maintain healthy hair.

The soap’s ingredients include: Water, Coconut Oil, Potassium Hydroxide, Olive Oil, Hemp Seed Oil, Jojoba Oil, Citric Acid, Tocopherol , with a natural foaming agent.

Have a look and try it out. There are lots of recipes out there with options for cleaning agents.

The best alternative to reducing this tightness and pain in the low back and hips is to keep your knees just a touch unlocked and move the body weight to the midfoot to the heel of your foot. If you do this, from having your body weight on the front of your feet, you will notice that your pelvis and back will move back into line where your upper body is directly over your feet again. Now your lower back won’t have to tighten to compensate and the joints in your lower back will be open and will move much better. With your knees unlocked, they will also be involved in stability so that your back and hips aren’t doing all the work.

If you are on your feet all day, give this a try.

The times when medications are good is when pain affects our ability to go about our day or affects our sleep or has become so great that it is unmanageable. For example, the pain keeps the person up at night or they aren’t able to go out to buy some groceries or similar.

Sometimes if there is local pain because of tightness in a muscle, if you can stay at home, icing 3-4 minutes on and then 10 minutes off is an excellent way to deal with the discomfort. I suppose this blog entry is an effort to have you consider what reason you are taking the pain medications and that you don’t rely on them totally giving you the ability to be accountable and make any changes that can create long lasting effects with reduced pain, whatever it might be.

A big side effect of the NSAIDS (most common groups of drugs) is their affect on the liver and kidney. Here is some information on NSAID pain medication.

Treating the symptoms is fairly standard in releasing the trigger points in the muscles that are causing the headaches and making sure there is normal movement in the joints of the neck but more emphasis is put on preventing the reoccurrence in the future. For example, if the muscles and tissues at the front of the shoulder are tight, this can cause you to slump slightly so that you will end up looking downward towards the floor, so your neck muscles will tighten to pull your head straight. It is these muscles than may end up tightening for long periods of time and can develop trigger points that may refer dull achy pain (headaches) to your head. Part of the treatment will be to reduce tightness of the front shoulder muscles, mobilize the upper back joints, if necessary, to allow your back to come out of the slumped forward position, teach a stretch to keep the joints and front chest muscles stretched but most importantly, teach postural awareness. We can mobilize and stretch and strengthen forever but the body will always want to fall back into the position which it is used to, which might be the slumped forward position. The way to encourage proper position, is to give the body a reward for making the change, which may be decreased pain or increased neck movement and shoulder movement. If the body recognizes a benefit to making the change, then it will be more likely to stay in that position.

So, most of the time, headaches can occur from neck muscles that are doing what they are supposed to do because of imbalance further down. They can be dealt with easily by good shoulder position, pliable muscles and adapting your posture and activities that can be contributing to the imbalance and tightness of the neck muscles.

Above is an example of the Trapezius muscle. A muscle that will become lengthened and weak when slumping forward, if you can imagine the shoulders rolling forward and shoulderblades moving outwards slightly.
The trigger points would be where the X’s are and the red areas are where the dull achy pain is found, so you can see how the headaches can come about from muscles in the upper back and neck. There are other muscles are well that can send headaches to other parts of your head like at the top or behind the eyes.

Once the muscles are released, the joints are functioning properly and the shoulders and upper back are rebalanced, headaches should not be an issue any further. If they do continue, and are unrelenting, it is good to visit your doctor.

Look at this good video

A lot of the time, there is a description of pain travelling up the inside of the calf and can exist during the day, during activity and/or after activity. With my work, I am always dealing with the pain locally but need to figure out why the muscles are so tight. There is a lot of stress put on the calves as it is, but I find myself focusing on returning the surrounding joints to normal function. A lot of time, the joints that make up the inside of the foot are the culprits. I notice that the Calcaneus at the back, has been pulled in slightly and the inner arch of the foot (between the big toe and the heel has become rigid and unable to flatten to the degree that it needs to. What this does is turns the foot into a rigid platform, as opposed to a moving multi-joint foot. This has to make the calves work super hard during anything from walking to running to biking and anything in between. My treatment often includes release of the calf muscle, realigning the Calcaneus (heel bone) and remobilizing the middle inside joints of the foot. I teach the client a way to maintain mobility of the joints as well at home so they experience a long lasting effect. There is a simple method to maintaining flexibility of the midfoot joints and to keep the Plantar Fascia (of Plantar Fasciitis fame) at the bottom of the foot in a flexible position. Very often as well, is that underneath the calves are muscles that attach to the underside of the foot and involved in curling the toes. In most cases, they have lost their flexibility and are pulling too hard where they begin, which is on the back/inside of the lower leg bone, and is best described as shin splints. If the shin splints are relatively recent, are a manageable condition.

There is also consideration that the gluteus muscles may not be firing during push off, that can also make the calves work too hard as well. I confirm that the hip can extend properly (which is what the Gluteus muscles do) and teach them to fire the hip muscles properly from very focused exercises to including the firing during whatever function they are doing.

Identifying the issues, treatment and homecare for the patient will be the focus to get them back to function but as I always say, half of their success will be what I do and the other half will be their understanding and maintaining the progress that we make and their commitment to their exercises and homecare. In most cases the person will have to reduce any unnecessary repetitive activity for a short period of time, while the initial treatments and rehabilitation are in process but able to return slowly to original activity as symptoms reduce and normal biomechanics are in place.

Neck pain is something that I see a lot of coming into the clinic The one common denominator is that more than often, the pain occurs as a result of the neck pulling the head straight because the shoulders are out of position. This leads to my previous blog with relation to the shoulder and shoulder pain.
People will describe achiness going down from the neck to the top outer edge of the shoulder or sharp pain that occurs when rotating or side bending in one direction.
In each ear, deep inside, in the Utricle and Saccule are small gelatinous masses called Otoliths, which have tiny receptor hairs attached to them. If the head is leaned to the side, the Otoliths will move to that side and initiate a response to the receptor hairs going down into the brain to tell the muscles on the other side of the neck to tighten to pull the head back to a level position. This is completely subconscious function so you are unaware that you are doing it. This is where the shoulder comes into play.
Lets say that your right low back is tight and pulls your torso to the right. If you do this, you will notice that your left shoulder is now higher than your right, and your head is now leaned to the right. The Otolith will indicate that your head is in that position and will tell your left neck muscles to tighten to pull your head level. Now the muscles are contracting chronically to keep your head level, which can cause eventual weakness and pain with the muscles that are contracting all the time. What this also causes is a curve in the spine, with the concave on the left side and convex on the right. This will cause pinching of the neck on the left side (especially on turning and side bending your head, like with shoulder checking when driving). There are small lateral joints in the neck called Facet Joints, which are now irritated as they are closer to each other on the concave side. The misposition of the joints vastly affect your neck mobility. Now, there is a little work done to relieve the pain with the neck muscles and to help to take the neck out of that concave/convex curvature but the big long term goal is to level the shoulders so the neck doesn’t have to tighten to relevel the head.
Part of this work is to identify why the shoulders are out of position. Many people are hunched forward so the shoulders are rolled forward, which causes the back neck muscles to tighten on both sides to pull the head straight. Alternatively, it could be a pelvic or (as I described earlier) low back tightness imbalance that leans the upper torso and back to one side or another.
Many people don’t notice the imbalance in the shoulders or back as the Head Righting Reflex will level the head so it is really hard to notice.
I’ve had a lot of success with treating the body as a whole to reduce the need for the neck muscles to tighten to pull the head back to level. Part of it is what I do, but most of the time, what I do is only necessary to make it easier for the patient to do what they need to do, so it is 50% me and 50% them. I’ve seen torso twisted around, pulled to the left or right or leaned forward or backward. Imagine that the head is a house and the shoulders are the foundation. If you want the house level, you need to level the foundation.