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Articles Of The Week October 14, 2018

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We talk lots about exercise and strengthening around here, but is it always necessary? While I’m a firm believer in movement and loading tissue, sometimes a “mythical dysfunction” comes along and we’re taught very specific exercises to fix said dysfunction. But is it really necessary? Give this article a read to find out.

“Deep Cervical Flexor Training” – Paul Ingraham

Therapists quite often get caught up in “corrective exercises”. In line with these corrective exercises, they’re talking to their patients about how dysfunctional, or weak they are, rather than instilling strength and resilience. When the reality is, just getting stronger is corrective to whatever their treatment goals or issues are.

“Getting Stronger Is Corrective” – Tony Gentilcore

This one has a GREAT infographic along with some great information regarding the biopsychosocial aspects of therapy and how it can be explained to patients.

“Simple Tips To Improve Mental Health” – Keith McCarroll

Knowledge about pain has come a long way in the past few years. However, the teachings around it haven’t kept up the pace quite as well. That’s where some great posts like this one come out and help all of us gain a better understanding of chronic pain.

“A Better Understanding Of Chronic Pain” – Mark Olson

There are just as many misconceptions around exercise as there is about manual therapy. Fortunately, guys like Nick are out there sharing quality information. In this post, he shares lots of information and demonstrations of some lower body exercises (many of which you could perform right in your treatment room with patients) along with the explanations about why they’re important.

“The Missing Lower Body Exercises For Strength” – Nick Tumminello

Why Do Isometrics Work So Well?

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A question I often get asked is “Why do isometrics work well to isolate pain?” I started adding isometrics to improve pain during motion and pain and end range with active and passive testing.

They work great! Forget “muscle energy technique” and other theories. They are too mechanical. I go over the reason why isometrics work well as a compliment to manual therapy and repeated loading strategies.

5 Tissue Loading Progressions To Help With Hip Pain

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Not too long ago we went over the different phases of tissue healing and how to start properly loading the tissues to promote healing and help get our patients stronger. This is ALWAYS a great way to reinforce the manual therapy you do with your patients on the table and can also be a way to start the treatment.

If someone comes in who is having some S.I. Joint pain, Glute pain, or just pain in the posterior hip, in general, this is a good way to start getting them moving again. Quite often when a patient is dealing with pain, they become afraid to move because they associate pain with the movement.

This is where doing a solid intake interview (remember to rule out red flags) is important to listen to your patient and let them be heard regarding their pain. All too often patients feel like no one will actually listen to them and rush to get into a treatment, rather than listening to what they are fearful about, or acknowledging that their pain is real.

However, if you can get the person into a different plane of movement and apply some graded exposure techniques you’ll find they become less fearful and start to move more. Even if the movement is just a minor increase each time, it can make a huge difference for the patient. 

This video shows just one way to do some graded exposure, but I would encourage you to try some different movements to instil that feeling of safety with your patients. Remember, pain is a protection mechanism and sometimes we just need to send signals to the brain to show that movements are safe again.

Once you’ve done some treatment, this is a way to start loading the tissue.

During the acute phase (the first 24-48 hours) these isometrics would be most appropriate. As you can see there is some movement as the patient loads and pushes up into the glute bridge, but once they are there have them hold the contraction at the top of the range for 20-45 seconds (depending on their tolerance) and gradually add a little bit more time to the contraction as they build strength. 

Once your patient can confidently do the exercises in the video above, see if they can handle doing the same exercise, one hip at a time.

These are still an isometric load, we’re just building more strength on each side by removing the assistance of the opposite hip. 

Once the patient can do the single leg isometric exercises, you can start to add more difficulty by using an eccentric load, as they are now in the proliferative phase of healing and it’s safe to start adding more load.

In this case, we are going to provide stability for the patient by coming up into the bridge using both hips, but then applying the eccentric load to only one side. This way if the patient is feeling weak or unable to do a full range, the opposite hip is there to provide safety in case the movement feels like it’s too much at any point. 

Now as we progress hopefully your patient is going through the ranges in a more pain-free movement as you’ve been doing great treatments and appropriately loading the tissue.

If by their third or fourth visit they can do the above eccentric exercises, you can start to apply concentric loads. By this point they have probably reached the remodelling phase of healing, so we can start to be a little more aggressive, but still need to stay within the patient’s pain tolerance. 

Takeaways

  • Remember that your patient may be fearful of movement due to their experiences with pain, this is where using graded exposure to the movement is the most beneficial.
  • Encourage the patient that movement is a good thing, even if they are a bit sore from it the next day. If they haven’t been moving for a while, some discomfort the next day will be normal, just like going to the gym for the first time after a long absence.
  • As important as your communication with the patient is, their communication and feedback are far more important, listen to their concerns and address them appropriately.
  • Educate on how a little bit of pain during movement is okay, just remind them not to overdo it.

4 Tissue Loading Progressions To Help With Knee Pain

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We have discussed therapeutic exercise/movement many times on this blog before.

Not too long ago we went over the different phases of healing and discussed appropriate measures to take in loading tissues to help with healing. Movement is a great way to reinforce the manual therapy you help your patient with while they’re on the table, so we encourage you to start making a practice of tissue loading and movement once they’re off of it.

After you’ve done your interview and concluded it is safe to begin loading (which you can read about here), here are some progressions for the knee you can do right in your treatment room. These are good for someone with anterior knee pain, a quad contusion, patellar tendinopathy, or a quad strain. 

If the injury is more severe like a ligament tear, more specific interventions and movements should be chosen.

In the acute stage, (the first 24-48 hours) these isometric exercises (joint angle doesn’t change during contraction) would be appropriate. You’ll notice there is some movement to get into a bent knee, but then the contraction is actually a hold with the knee kept bent. 

 

When your patient comes in for their second treatment, you can start to progress the movement as you are now in the proliferative phase of healing.

In this case, you can progress to an eccentric load, but make sure to stay within the patient’s pain tolerance.  A little bit of discomfort is okay, but we don’t want to aggravate the injury by causing any significant pain.

Hopefully, by this point, your patient is getting into more pain-free movement because you’ve been doing lots of great treatment and also getting them to load the tissue. 

So, if they could do the above eccentric movements by the third or fourth visit, you can progress them to concentric movements as they have probably progressed to the remodelling phase of healing.

Here is a final progression you can try if your patient is up for it.

Plyometrics! It may take a bit of encouragement to get them to try, but if they can do this, it’s a great progressive load for athletes who may be on a return to play rehab scenario or a return to work for an injured worker.

If the patient has any balance issues, it might be best to avoid this until they regain more strength and their balance has improved. 

Takeaways

  • Make sure you are monitoring the area for swelling, redness, and heat, or anything else that could indicate chronic inflammation.
  • Encourage the patient to move, they may be apprehensive to start a loading program.
  • Communication is essential both for the instructions you give, and the feedback you get from the patient.
  • Educate them on how a little bit of pain and discomfort is okay during the movement, they just don’t want to overdo it.

10 Evidence Based Reasons Why You & Your Patients Should Exercise

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Exercise is great, we know this, right?

Well, sort of.

Many people know exercise is good for us on a general level, but the question is, do they know it’s right for them on an individual level and is it the right fix for their problem?

This is an entirely different proposition, applying that general information to the person. This idea that these things are good for us can be quite vague, one of those things we may have glanced over in a newspaper or half-hearted on the news whilst eating our corn flakes.

People also build up ideas about what is the correct treatment for them. This can be from their own in-depth research on the internet (right!), what they have picked up from friends and family or from previous treatment with a therapist. This can lead to some pretty strong ideas about what should and perhaps should not be done to help them.

These beliefs don’t always align with the best available data we have about interventions. A prime example of this is the belief that exercise risks outweigh the benefits with back pain (55% of folk in New Zealand). This stat was taken from this Darlow paper in 2016 HERE. 

We know that exercise can be effective with back pain, certainly not a magic bullet, but one of the best things we have at our disposable within a comprehensive treatment plan, especially as it is low cost and low risk too.

Beliefs And Expectations

Our beliefs drive our expectations and actions. Predicted expectations are gaining weight as a prognostic factor in recovery over the past decade. They may influence my participation and behaviour in a treatment plan that will ultimately affect the outcome.  If I don’t believe in something I am much less likely to do it.

How can we combat this? Well, in my opinion, the best tool we have is good quality information we can use to combat the beliefs that may hold people back. A key to start affecting beliefs, again, in my opinion, is not to challenge too firmly, but inform people using well-evidenced information. One of my favourite one-liners is “That’s what we used to think but we are learning new things all the time, the latest research suggests…”

Here are some small tidbits of information that we can use to start informing our patients and clients about the role of exercise in pain AND health, which of course ultimately affects pain too!

Remember that giving people information is really designed to change behaviour rather than just show how smart you are so monitoring what happens is pretty important.

1. Exercise Is One Of The Best Evidence-Based Interventions We Have For MSK Pain

This paper HERE from 2017 in PLOS one shows moderate to strong effectiveness of exercise as an intervention for many MSK issues. This is in contrast to the belief that things need to be zapped, needled or popped back into place.

My therapist only gave me some exercises. Yep. Because they followed the evidence!

2. Exercise Won’t Make Your Body Worse

So many people see the body as a bit of machinery. The more it works the more the parts need replacing. Is this true? Absolutely NOT. The body is an organic organism that adapts both positively and negatively to stimulus. The more active we are (within reason) the stronger we become. The less active, well…

A classic common belief is that our intervertebral discs wear out the more we use them. This classic study from Battie HERE (2009) looked at twins to determine the major contributors to disc degeneration. They suggest that the “commonly held view that disc degeneration is primarily a result of ageing and ‘wear and tear’ from mechanical insults and injuries, was not supported by this series of studies”.

This study HERE from 2017 found that if you have a rotator cuff tear, the tear getting worse did not appear to be simply related to activity levels. In fact, they suggest pain development is actually associated with LOWER activity levels. If I had a pound for every time it has been suggested to me that running damages the knees then I would be a rich man. A study of marathon runners HERE showed that they had LESS meniscal abnormalities than non-runners.

3. Exercise Might Actually Make The Discs In Your Back Healthier!

Two recent studies have shown a POSITIVE effect of activity on intervertebral discs. Firstly this study HERE from 2017 showed that MORE vigorous activity was associated with BETTER disc health on MRI. Secondly, in this paper from 2016 HERE. Runners were shown to have intervertebral discs that had increase hypertrophy compared to the non-athletic group. The authors suggest that running actually strengthens the discs, whether we can infer a causal relationship here is unclear but this goes against activity causing wear and tear which is a common belief.

4. Activity Is A Pain Killer

This study HERE showed that older adults who were MORE active also had better endogenous pain inhibitory mechanisms when their conditioned pain modulation (CPM) was tested. Simply put, this means the more active the better their natural pain-killing mechanisms were. Which of course is super cool.

5. Exercise Is An Anti Inflammatory

This study HERE showed that regular physical activity caused an increase in interleukin -10 which is an anti-inflammatory cytokine that can reduce nociceptor sensitisation.

Now the caveat here is this study was performed in an animal population but as we know that there are associations between inactivity and both acute and chronic pain in humans it is a linked that potentially needs to be better explored.

6. Lack Of Exercise Is Associated With Chronic Pain

This large study HERE looked at the relationship between recreational exercise and chronic pain. Both older and younger folk were studied and the researchers found that for both groups exercise participation was associated with reduced chronic pain. A relationship was also present for the frequency, duration and intensity of that exercise.

7. Lack Of Exercise As A Major Cause Of Chronic Diseases

This comprehensive paper HERE makes a case for a lack of exercise being a primary prevention against 35 chronic conditions suffered by us poor humans. This goes beyond what most of us involved in the musculoskeletal field would have to deal with but also shows the importance of exercise for systemic health too.

8. It’s Involved In Mental Health As Well

We are understanding more and more that the mind and the body cannot really be separated. Physical health and mental health are interlinked in the human being and guess what…..exercise plays a role in improving mental health too. This paper HERE explores the mechanisms that may relate to mental health and exercise.

This randomised control trial looked at aerobic exercise and a variety of measures of psychological health HERE. The authors found significant group differences that favoured the exercise group.

9. You Want To Live Longer Right?

Strength training in this paper HERE was found to have a significant association with decreased mortality in adults over 65. But only a minority of this age group actually meet the current guidelines.

10. Have A Healthier Heart

This prospective study of 15 years duration HERE found that physical activity was a predictor of cardiovascular disease.

Summing Up

There are a whole bunch of others studies that relate to these topics but I just picked a few. I think it demonstrates that physical activity and exercise have an effect on us on a number of different levels, from the heart to the head to pain as well.

  • Do it
  • Do it
  • Do it
  • Do it

Exercise Saves Lives

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I’m a firm believer in that statement. If that is too bold of a statement you could at least agree that exercise enhances lives.

The different forms of exercise can make you stronger, faster and more mobile. Aside from physical benefits, what about the mental benefits of exercise? Can movement also help you cope, decrease depression and anxiety, and also make you happy?

I say, yes!

This best can be shown through two real-life examples: myself and one of my long-term patients.

Helping With Postpartum Depression

In May of 2017, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. My husband and I are so lucky! She was and still is, an easy baby. She’s laid back, very cute and eats and sleeps like an angel. 

So it was shocking to me when at about three months postpartum, until very recently, I suffered from postpartum depression. Wasn’t I the luckiest person to have this sweet girl in my life? I didn’t know how to get out of feeling so low all the time.

I have been a gym rat since I was 13 years old. Now as a 35-year-old mother I have never appreciated exercise more! I strength trained through my entire pregnancy and once baby arrived I couldn’t wait to feel well enough to get back in the gym! As my journey through postpartum depression intensified I found strength in the gym. I didn’t care that I could deadlift only half of what I used to and I could no longer do a pull-up without assistance.

I felt so much healthier mentally by just spending 40 minutes lifting weights.

Evidence supports the anti-depressive effects of exercise in the general population and small studies have been done to determine if exercise can also decrease postpartum depression. The literature suggests this is true, though more and larger studies should be conducted. While science hasn’t concluded that exercise can decrease depression in postpartum women, if you want real life proof, I will be your case study!

Helping With PTSD

An even better example of a positive exercise story is through my patient. He came to see me for massage therapy the first month of my career as a registered massage therapist and I have treated him almost weekly for eight years. 

Talk about loyal!

This patient had a significant workplace injury, was forced to retire and now lives with constant pain. He also has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and deals with frequent episodes and nightmares. I have learned a lot from him in the past eight years.

He has had ups and downs. High levels of opioids, sleeping pills and other medications, weight loss and weight gain, good days and very low days. He has had plans and goals that have fallen through because he feels too much pain.

Recently, he came into my massage room and said, “F*#& It! I’m going to do this on my own!” He didn’t want to rely on constant pills, doctors and psychologists anymore. He decided to take his health into his own hands.

He started walking. Five kilometres almost every day.

Then he started running.

Running turned into more running. More running turned into healthy eating. Healthy eating turned into losing 60 pounds in less than a year. I joke that we both lost 60 pounds last year, him from exercise and me from giving birth (plus exercise and healthy eating)!

But the best part of the running was the things positive things he would say to me each week:

“My PTSD symptoms are less severe.”

“I’ve been sleeping a lot better.”

“I can handle intense situations now.”

He still has pain. Every day. That has not changed. But he has found something that makes him feel good and has improved his mental health:

Exercise.

I saw dark roads for both myself and my patient, but now we lift or run our way to health and happiness.

“Sometimes the briefest moments capture us and demand that we live the rest of our lives in reference to them.” – Lucy Grealy.

This quote hits the nail on the head for our type of situations. An injury, a traumatic experience, or a lifestyle change can hugely affect how we view and live the remainder of our lives. Encourage your patients (or yourself) to find movement that they enjoy and that makes them feel good. You might find exercise saving one of your patients one day.

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