Latissimus Dorsi

I couldn't believe the difference I made in such a short period of time in shoulder flexion and external rotation.  Recently I had a young man that I worked on at the FCA.  We tested him before getting on the table and on the table both his Lat test and GH joint were positive for lack of ROM and hypertonicity.  He was unable to lay his arm flat to the table by about 30 degrees and the same with external rotation.  I turned him into a side posture did pin and stretch to the lat and movement therapy.  I used the manual cup on his infraspinatus and teres and some more on the Lat.  Within five minutes we retested and the arm could now comfortably lay down to the table and he about a 10 degree deficit left of external rotation.  We finished the last 10 degrees with muscle energy.  He got off the table and had full function in both flexion and external rotation.  He said he had been having trouble for about a year.  Lesson learned, the more you understand which muscles are involved the quicker and better result you will get.

Debbie

AMTA Trip to Minneapolis

I was helping out at the CranioCradle booth for the 3 days.  I touched many lives and one in particular stood out enough to write about.  She shared with me that her husband was legally deaf from an accident and that she had just graduated massage school.  Since working with him with her limited skills and knowledge he was able at times to go without the hearing aides.  She asked me about his forward head posture and the types of therapies she should take in the future to continue to help him.  I explained the role of SCM over working as he was overworking to hear someone.  Go ahead, lean your ear to listen closely as someone whispers.  That is using the SCM, scalenes, traps, etc.  So what would help?  NMT for head, neck, and TMJ work, Craniosacral therapy, muscle energy, entire fascial lines, cupping, heat, body retraining for posture, craniocradle, ATM for Cervical and that is just to name a few.  I told her to keep adding to her tool box every chance she got because you just never know which technique or combo will do the trick.

Happy educating to all

Flexibility and Fibromyalgia

How can flexibility help fibromyalgia? The more flexible the muscles are the less likely they will be to cause compression on the nerves. Put a rubber band around your finger or wrist and leave it there, you will soon find out how compression can cause pain, tingling, and numbness all of which patients complain of that have the diagnosis of Fibromyalgia. Adding flexibility to your massage therapy sessions will help take the stress off of you as a therapist and will give the patient long lasting benefits. Using stretching in your therapy sessions is also a great teaching tool to the patient as to what they should continue to do at home. If you are unsure of how to add stretching to your massage routine, join us for our Flexibility Coaching Program.

Happy Stretching.

Eat, Pray, Love Another Message

I rarely work a Sunday, but I got this call from a young women who wanted to do something special for her mom's birthday. The only day both daughters and the mother would be available would be Sunday. Something in me said ok, we would be happy to make a very special day for your mother. They arrived and mom had never had a massage or a facial. If fact from what I learned about her that day I am quite sure she always did everything for everyone else. The reason I am writing about this very special lady this time is not because she was in pain, but because we all could learn a very valuable lesson from the unselfishness of this 45 year old lady. I took the daughter in first for her facial and asked what her mother's age was, and how special it was to do this for her. Her daughter tells me they have only had a couple of hours of sleep because for her mother's birthday she wanted to have a religious ceremony (they were Hindu) and the religious ceremony consisted of cooking lots of food starting at 3:00 in the morning for friends and family and praying. What a contrast to most of us who would have maybe wanted to be taken out for dinner or be bought some sort of gift. Her gift was giving to the people she loved, praying for the people she loved, and eating with the people she loved. If that is not beautiful and inspiring I can't imagine what is.

So to those that might read this, eat, pray, and love
Debbie

Shoulder Assessment with a surprise

This week even I got a surprise. I got a call from a chiropractor in town who was seeing a mutual patient. He called me to give me the results of an MRI that I had suggested to the client that if I were her I would get. The results were a full thickness tear of subscapularis, a partial tear of supraspinatus, arthritis in the AC joint, and arthritis in the labrium. He called to tell me how he couldn't believe he had missed the tears and I was right in my assessment of this patient. That was not the only surprise in this case. When I did the assessment she had full flexion, extension, abduction, internal and external rotation actively. She did not test weak in any of the muscles surrounding the joint. What? That's right, the only thing that allerted me was when we were attempting some simple strengthening exercises of flexion, she had a moment where the arm grabbed on the way down which is sometimes an indication that supraspinatus is partially toren and will grab the humerus on the eccentric load. The next indication was when I had her on the massage table I felt the grinding of the joint when moving the arm from external to internal rom. I noticed also that her SC joint was misaligned on that same side and was painful on palpation and was not smooth at either end of the clavical. There seemed to be that familiar almost clunk that a toren labrium will produce when moving once again from internal to external rom. So at the end of her third session we talked about her upcoming hip replacement and that after that she would not be able to get a MRI of her shoulder so why not go ahead and find out for sure what was going on with the shoulder. She originally came to me for some strength exercises of her hip and what she thought was a weakening shoulder over the course of the last year. What a surprise for her to find out not only will she be facing a hip replacement, but now a shoulder repair as well. This shows you the necessity and importance of feeling, listening, and assessing.

Happy Assessing, Debbie