Quite often, people come to me to help them with issues such as their knee pain, back pain, or on-going shoulder pain. Unfortunately, most pain is not a quick fix.  You can’t rest an area and assume its going to get better.  You also shouldn’t rely on medications to “cure” you.  Rest, meds, and ice are all good for helping to manage the initial phases of pain; however, they will not get rid of the problem.  They will simply mask it.  You need to get to the root of the problem. 

As I’ve mentioned on the homepage, if your car has a flat tire, you don’t just “rest” it in the driveway until it is fixed do you?  The same should apply to our bodies.  Rest will alleviate the symptoms, and it is useful in the acute phases of an injury to help with reducing inflammation.  However, if you have a shoulder that has been bothering you for weeks, months, years… it will keep bothering you.  The pain will keep coming back once you start using it again, and most of the time it comes back with a vengeance.  

 

Here is an example: 

 

“A client comes to me with elbow pain, they’ve had “tennis elbow” on and off for 2 years with an increase in pain over the past 6 months.  The pain stops them from gardening, playing golf, and holding the groceries.  It also wakes them at night. They can’t figure out why their symptoms haven’t improved: they stretch it, massage it, do all the strengthening exercises they’ve been told to do, but nothing is giving it much relief.  After taking them through a movement analysis, the problem seems fairly clear:  their shoulders are causing their elbow pain. “

 

HOW?  It’s simple.

 

“The SITE of pain May not be the SOURCE of pain” 

 

You see, if the shoulders present with poor biomechanics (weaknesses and/or mobility issues that effect the joint function), then it is quite common for your elbows to be overloaded due to compensating for the discrepancies at the shoulders.  When we look deeper into the client’s history, we realize that 10 years ago, they had a bad fall down the stairs where they hurt their shoulder.  They suffered from shoulder pain and problems for a few years but it slowly dissipated with a decrease in activity.  It is easy to detect that years of poor shoulder biomechanics have led to pain symptoms which have now moved down to the elbow.

Just because the client didn’t have any current shoulder pain, doesn’t mean their shoulder was 100%.  You can have biomechanical issues that don’t cause any pain or other symptoms, but they are still exhibiting faulty movement patterns.  These faulty patterns can lead to extra work to be carried out by the surrounding joints, such as the elbow or neck.  In this case, its the elbow.  

We often see similar compensatory patterns occurring in running clients complaining of knee pain.  They often ask:

“If my knee hurts, why are we focusing on my hips?”

 Well, the issue isn’t exactly with the knees.  The pain is felt in the knees, but its caused by poor hip mobility.  For example, if they have tight hip flexors and quadriceps muscles (front of the thigh), this causes a decrease in power generated at the hips, which is causing extra work and force going down through the knees, thus exhibiting a pain response.   If we can fix the hip biomechanics, then the load on the knees will be decreased, and the pain should subside.  

I hope these examples help put a little perspective on how pain symptoms can manifest in other parts of the body.  Unless you’ve experienced an acute trauma, such as a fall, your pain symptoms are quite often a sign that something is happening elsewhere in the body.  

If this sounds familiar, then stay tuned to www.balancedpostureonline.com as we help you learn more about your posture and how to prevent pain symptoms from manifesting into bigger issues.

Remember:

“THE SITE OF PAIN MAY NOT BE THE SOURCE OF PAIN” 

Please note: if pain is felt, do not proceed with exercise.  It is advisable to make an appointment with a health practitioner for a more thorough assessment and to diagnose the problem.  Pain is a sign your body is not happy and the sooner you can address it, the better.  Listen to your body! Seeking professional help is a great way to understand your body and learn how to self-manage as much as possible. If you’re hesitant to get something checked out, ask yourself this: what if you don’t fix the issue and then you end up with an injury that can set you back weeks, or even months?  If you miss work due to a strained back or torn rotator cuff, the consequences can be quite unsettling.  If you tear an achilles tendon and have go wear a moon boot for a few weeks, how will that effect your daily life?  It is important to remember that the body will go through aches and pain as we get through life, therefore it i our management of symptoms that is very crucial.