Entries by dmiddaugh

Important Exercise Tips You Must Know When Repairing A Knee Cartilage Problem

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Hey El Paso! Welcome to the Stay Healthy El Paso Podcast. I'm your host Dr. David Middaugh specialist physical therapist from El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And I'll be talking to you today about the three most important exercise tips when repairing knee cartilage problems. Knee cartilage problems often cause achiness, pain, crunching sensations, grinding sensations, those types of knee cartilage problems are completely fixable.

Now I'm not saying that the crunchy or grindy can go away, but it can reduce in pain and discomfort. You can reduce any swelling that you've got going on. And most importantly, it is possible to get back to exercising, to going up and down steps, and doing the things that you love to do without worrying that you're going to end up having some surgery later on.

Unfortunately, a lot of people in the medical field don't believe that it's even possible to fix a knee cartilage problem. And often when patients go to see them, they resort to fixing this type of knee cartilage problem with medications, injections and surgery.

In fact, surgeons that do procedures that are designed to clean up knee cartilage problems often tell their patients that they'll need a knee replacement at some point soon, within a few years or a decade or so. But they don't offer a way to naturally help the knee cartilage problem because that's just not what they went to school for. That's not what they trained for. So they're just usually not even aware of it.

And in fact, they may even see people that attempted to fix their knee problem on their own naturally and didn't successfully do it. And so they're back in the clinic and it just validates their perception of the fact of it validates their perception about that it's not possible to heal a knee cartilage problem naturally, that is just going to get worse over time no matter what. But the truth is that it is possible to repair knee cartilage using exercises.

We do it here in the clinic all the time. What's important to notice is that there is no one exercise that works for everybody consistently every time. It's a series of exercises all bundled together in a process. It has to happen gradually over time and that process needs to be adapted to your specific situation. Depending on how severe your knee cartilage problem is, and how weak other muscles are and how you move, what goals you want to get back to. There’re all these factors that have to be accounted for in properly recovering a knee cartilage problem that you might be dealing with. So I'm going to cover with you today the three most important exercise tips when repairing cartilage.

 

So here are the three most important tips for exercise when repairing knee cartilage problems.

Number One, Take Pressure Off.

Specifically take pressure off the kneecap. Knee cartilage problems often happen when the kneecap is pressing way too hard against the end of the thigh bone where the joint is, where the surfaces of the bones meet. Oftentimes, it’s the quad muscles, the quadricep muscles, the muscles in the front of the thigh that are too stiff, too tight, too strong, and yank that kneecap up against the end of the thigh bone way too hard.

Over time, that begins to degenerate the cartilage on the back of the kneecap or on the front of the thigh bone, and cause there to be too much pressure, too much bad forces. And that’s how the knee cartilage problem develops.

If you feel like that’s your situation, then what you need to do is just lay off, do less walking, do lower intensity activities. A lot of people that we talked to that have knee problems, they try walking for exercises, to fix their knee problem, stop doing that. You need to do things that are not aggravating to your knees so that you can take off the pressures from your knee.

In fact, if you’ve been actively exercising your quadricep muscles, those thigh muscles in the front of your thigh, stop doing that because it’s likely putting too much pressure on the kneecap. So take pressure off your kneecaps.

Number Two, Lots Of Light Reps.

What I mean by that is, cartilage is stimulated to heal by taking on light pressures. Now think about this, if your skin can take pressure. For instance, if you think about calluses, if you go lift weights or you do some housework or yard work, and you are using a broom or some tool with handles on it, you start to get callus on your hands.

That’s your skin’s response to doing an activity that puts a lot of pressure on the skin. And of course, if you do it in the right way, your skin gets a nice callus that allows you to be able to do that job over and over again, without messing up your skin. Well cartilage has to do the same thing.

So, you need to put the appropriate amount of force on the cartilage so that it thickens and gets denser so that it can take on the forces that you need to put it away for your everyday normal activities. But if your cartilage is very irritated right now, it’s just like if you have irritated skin, you just can’t put a lot of pressure on it. In fact, you have to put way lighter than normal pressures on it to accommodate it.

If you have a lot of pressure on your kneecap right now, and you want to put some light reps through it, you got to do super-duper light stuff, like biking with zero resistance, like a stationary bike that might be an option. Walking is probably going to be too much. Tailgate swinging is an exercise that I’ve talked about in other videos, you can go check out our playlist of videos on our YouTube channel if you want and find what I mean by tailgate swings, and shameless plug.

We’ve got a program called the 28 Day Knee Health And Wellness Boost Program where I talk all about tailgate swings, and other exercises that help to heal knee cartilage problems.

But back to what I was saying. It depends on the intensity or the irritation level of the cartilage. So if your cartilage is actually not that irritated, then maybe walking can be a high repetition, low intensity or light exercise that you can do. Now we’re looking at doing reps in the hundreds at this point, so if you are able to do light reps, you got to do hundreds of reps. I’d say 2, 3, 4 hundred or more reps, which you might not be counting the reps, you might be more so count the time.

That might mean walking for 20 minutes or cycling for 20 minutes or tailgates waiting for 20 minutes or more. And you can spread this out throughout the day, if it’s a lot to do all at once. But it should not hurt you to do this activity, it should just kind of warm up your knees. It shouldn’t make it painful at all. And if you do that, if you give your knee cartilage light reps over time, you should put it in a position where it’s going to stimulate healing. And it can make the cartilage more dense so that you can take on more aggressive activities and it’s a good thing for your knees. Not a harmful thing.

Number Three Get Strong.

If you’ve been able to take the rotation off, if you’ve been able to control the flare ups or the inflammation that you have initially with a severe cartilage problem in the knee, and then you’ve done light reps on your knee exercise that just puts a light pressure through the knee joints. And if that worked out for you, then the next step is to progress your strength in muscles that influence good movement in the knee joint.

Specifically, you’re going to want to work out your glute muscles way more than your quads in just about 99% of cases, so that you don’t put more pressure through your kneecaps. But you do need to get strong. Just think about being able to get up and down from chairs easily. If you’re the type that needs a few chances to swing your body weight back and forward and then get up out of the chair. That’s not good. You need to be able to get up right out of the chair. And chances are you’re missing strength to do that.

If you can’t tolerate standing more than 10 or 15 minutes, just because you get tired. That’s a sign that you’re probably pretty weak as well. Maybe you’re more fit than what I’m talking about and you’re able to do all that stuff but haven’t worked out in a while. And you probably need to strengthen more from where you’re at so that this knee problem isn’t going to come back. So get strong in the right muscles to ensure that your knee cartilage is healthy.

The reason for this is because as you get stronger and you put good forces through your knee cartilage, it thickens. It densifies and allows your knee cartilage to absorb more aggressive forces without becoming irritated. Essentially, you build a margin for being able to tolerate bad forces, so you protect it. This protection is what allows you to avoid having a surgery later on, or avoid taking medications, or injections because of a knee problem.

Now that being said, you might still have sounds coming from your knees whenever you go to go upstairs or downstairs or squat down and get something from the ground. That’s okay. As long as it’s not painful, then you’re okay.

Well, thanks for listening to this podcast, I hope that you learned a lot. If you're at all interested in resolving your knee cartilage problem, then I encourage you to check out the notes about how to get to the 28 Day Knee Health And Wellness Boost Program. That program is packed with great information about how to exercise, how to rest, what not to do, what to do, and it's a guided procedural type program where you can know exactly what to do there. I walk you through step by step how to do it. And you can access this 24/7. So if you're a late night person, early morning person, or you just kind of like to fit it in whatever parts of your day, it's completely on demand, you can you can decide when you want to start it. And then you can repeat it. If you want to go through it a few times, I encourage you to do that because you'll get more benefit for doing it more times if your knee problem is really severe.

Another option is, if you want us to help you directly if you're in the El Paso area, then call our clinic at 915-503-1314. And let us know that you heard about us on the podcast and that you want to get in touch about how we might be able to help you out in person with solving your knee cartilage problem. We're happy to do that. Guys, I hope that you have a wonderful day and stay healthy guys. See you soon. Bye.

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Natural Remedies for Headaches & Migraines

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Hey there welcome to the stay healthy El Paso podcast. I'm your host Dr. David Middaugh. Specialist, physical therapist over at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy and today I'm going to cover nine natural remedies for headaches and migraines.

Headaches and migraines are so common in our culture today, with the use of computers, desk jobs, we got screens in our house and the wall TVs, we got screens in our pockets, our mobile devices. And then we hop on computer at home all the time too.

Headaches and migraines can definitely plague just about any American at any given time of our lives. So I'm going to cover the nine natural remedies for headaches and migraines with you today.

These types of headaches, we are experts at helping people out and they often are taking pain medications regularly, they may go see a specialist to get specialized pain medications. Sometimes they get injections for it. Oftentimes they're missing work or they're just not able to function daily and be their normal self because of this darn headache and migraine problem.

If you've got some combination of those issues that I just described, you're going to want to hear these nine remedies that you can try at home right now so that you can begin to calm down your headache or migraine problem.

Number One, Ice And Heat

I put these two together because one may work for you and one may not. And a third option is neither may work for you, it's just an option to try out. So using ice on your head, like grab a bag of ice, in a Ziploc bag or put a towel around. You have to find the best method for you. There are ice packs that are out there that are gel and they can conform to your head or body part wherever you want to use it. You can buy those at the grocery store or warehouse stores as well. And just put that wherever you feel like your headache is bothering you.

Now, if you've got a lot of sensitivity to the cold, because that does happen to some people with headaches, then an alternative would be to try heat out if the ice doesn't work out for you and you've tried it out. Great. Scratch that off the list. Now go get heat. So sometimes the same ice packs that you purchased at the store can be heated up in the microwave or some other method. A hot water bottle works really well as well. Those are a little older, but you can use a rice pack, they can heat up in the microwave and put it on over you.

Another option is a towel, just get a small hand towel, dampen it in the sink with some water and microwave it for 30 seconds and it gets nice and steamy. So steamed towel and just put that over your head or wherever you feel like it bothers you. And that's an easy way to get heat onto your head.

Now if you try both of those options and they're not really working for you or they don't work consistently for you, then you just may not be a heat or ice person, I would just scratch it off the list. But oftentimes, ice or heat may be effective enough to bring the headache or migraine pain down just a bit so that you can avoid taking a pain medication, or maybe even avoid going to the doctor and keep it under control so that you can be a little nicer with people around you.

Number Two, Drink Water

Oftentimes, people don't realize how much water they're not drinking. And especially if you have a desk job and you're busy at work and you just are busy with your work and you don't really feel thirsty until the end of the day, it's already kind of late by then you've already become dehydrated. So what you can begin to do moving forward is make sure to get plenty of water and generally 80 ounces or more is good. There are all kinds of measurements out there. What I found is that if you get about five water bottles ranging in size from 16 ounces to 20 ounces or more.

If you make it a point to drink all five of those water bottles every day, you're definitely going to be hydrated. You'll be going to the bathroom a bit more. That's okay though. If your headaches are going away, it's a much better life experience, your quality of life will improve tremendously. And you'd be surprised what difference it could make in your headache and migraine problem.

Number three, reduce screen time.

We are surrounded by screens, they live in our pockets, we are attached to screens a lot. And it does something to your head. There are all these research studies that have been coming out lately about the different shades of light that are coming off of like mobile devices, phone screens, or even television screens, and how they can affect our eyes and our brains that are right behind our eyes.

And with that type of light coming in, it can set off headaches. We've seen trends where kids that are on computers more, using mobile devices more, tend to get more headaches and migraines. And part of it is postural as well, which we'll get into. But if you can reduce your screen time, if it's possible for you to print out that document that you're working on, and handwrite something on it or read a book instead or reading something on a mobile device or on a Kindle or something like that. Don't watch as much TV as you've been watching, find alternative methods to using the screen.

Literally having cut off times where you say I'm only going to be on my phone for this one task. And then that's it. I'm going to stay off of social media which might suck you in, get on to doing different things besides using the screen if you feel like you're using the screen too much, or have screens around you too much, you're probably right and you need to start cutting back on that because of the light that enters your eyes, it could be setting off those headaches and migraines.

And just another side tip about that. If you have to use screens, look at dimming your screen, see what amount of brightness you can bring it down to and still see what you need to see and do what you need to do. And then also there are more settings coming out of computers that control the types of light so that you can get rid of the blue light which is thought to make the which is thought to contribute to headache problems.

Number Four Posture Related To The Screen Time, Consider Your Posture

Whenever you're at a desk looking at a computer or using the mobile device or watching television, if you're slouched over, your head is sticking out particularly this part where your chin is sticking out and you're bent through your neck forward like that. Chances are your postures not good. And you need to find a way to sit up more or recline back onto something with your head, ideally resting on a pillow or some sort of head rest.

Recliners are excellent for this. If you can lean back and the recliner has a head support, that's probably going to be the most comfortable option for you if you're at work using a computer. Ideally, if you had a desk chair that had head support that would be beneficial for you as well. Now, if you don't have either of those options available to you, it's okay you can still improve your posture.

One of the easy things that you can do to improve your posture at a desk or any other time that using the computer screen is to get rid of this head sticking out forward by aaking a baby double chin. Let me just take you through that real quick. If you make a max double chin, okay, nobody's looking just you and me. Do this all the way, make a big double chin and what you should feel are those muscles behind your throat tightening.

Those are the deep neck flexors and they help to get better posture through your neck bones. Now back off on going so hard and do it lightly just to the point where you feel like they're turning on. So for me, it's right there, I can feel them just barely wanting to fire and that is better neck posture for me. So now if I can work at the computer like this, or work on my phone like that, rather than do this, it's going to be a much better situation for my neck joints to all be aligned properly and take pressure off nerves that can contribute to those headache and migraine problems.

Number Five, Exercise

If you are doing some sort of regular exercise, at least a few times a week, whether it's going for a walk or maybe you go to the gym or you partake in some sport or physical activity with your family or kids or whoever it may be. It is a big deal! Getting that regular motion where you sweat, where you work up a little bit of a sweat, you move quite a bit and it's consistent over time. And they do it for 15 minutes, or 20 or 30 or more than it is likely a big contributing factor to your headache and migraine problem.

The fact of the matter is that when we move our arms and legs, there are nerves that travel through our arms and legs that move along with our arms and legs and those nerves are connected to our neck and our brain. And if we're not getting adequate movement throughout our entire body and doesn't get the mobility that it needs, you can begin to get mobility issues within your nervous system.

I've seen it time and time again, once people get on some sort of regular exercise program, their headaches and migraines diminish and eventually go away if that's the biggest factor contributing to their headache and migraine problem.

Number Six, A Shrugging Exercise.

Shrugging is a huge deal for taking pressure off the neck joints, and the neck joints are so critical to have good mobility, and for them to not be stuck so that they don't pinch the nerves that go up and innervate the head. An easy quick thing you could do at your desk, or if you are taking long drives and you're in this posture a little too much, is just tuck that chin into that baby chin tuck, and then shrug and go as high as you can, and hold it there for 10, 20, 30 seconds if you can.

What you should feel is these muscles working in that you need to dig down deep and go as high as you can, without letting your chin jet out like that. Make sure you keep it in, and you might actually feel some pops and clicks happen within your shoulders, sometimes even in the neck. As long as it doesn't hurt. That's okay, you're freeing up a stuck joint that might have been contributing to your headache or migraine problem. Doing that shrug exercise throughout the day can be very beneficial for you to reduce the discomfort and avoid taking a pain medication.

Number Seven, Don't Stretch So Much

People come in to our clinic here that have had headaches and migraines and they've been stretching, they've been grabbing their head and pulling it over, looking down and pulling their head over like this, attempting to stretch out their neck joints and neck muscles. And oftentimes, sadly, they've been told to do this by other medical professionals who just don't quite have a good handle on how to treat headaches and migraines.

It tends to overstretch muscles that are already stretched, and it also tends to overstretch nerves that are aggravated. So even though it may feel good in the moment to get that stretch in long term, it keeps the headache and migraine problem their way longer than it should be.

Number Eight, Get Sleep.

If you're not getting enough sleep, whatever that is for you, because it's not an eight hours one size fits all situation. I can tell you for me, I'm more of a six to seven hour a night person. But if you're not getting enough sleep consistently, then work on getting enough sleep. Make sure you get to bed on time, or at a reasonable time for you and try to plan so that you have enough time before you wake up so that you slept enough.

If you don't get enough rest your nervous system, your nerves, which includes your brain, and all the nerves that come off of it that feed into the headache problems are tired and if they just are getting too much stimulus, like from lights from computer screens, from people talking to you, from sunlight coming outside from things, noises that are around you, all that can overstimulate a tired nervous system and contribute to a migraine and headache problem. So make sure that you track your sleep and get enough of it.

Number Nine Seeing An Expert

This is by far this the best recommendation because if you can see somebody who's a specialist in handling headache and migraine problems, you can speed this process up and get much better control of it. All too often. Whenever we get people with headaches and migraines here in the clinic, they've been dealing with them for years. And if we had talked to them, within a month or two after they began to have more severe headache and stuff migraine problems, they would have been done with it and save themselves all those years of trouble and heartache and taking ibuprofen and seeing doctors and getting injections and seeing specialists.

I've even had patients that go see dentists because they think that it's related to their teeth problem and get their teeth pulled out as recommended by a dentist. And then we get him here in the clinic and do some more specific guided strategic treatments and they clear up and then they have the realization that I could have kept my Moeller I could have avoided all those years, I could have had a better relationship with my spouse and family had I just gotten some expert help sooner.

It's a no brainer when you when you look at it that way. So I strongly encourage you to go get some expert help so that you can get really focused on making sure this problem is not something that's just pestering you throughout the day, and ruining relationships in your work quality in your life quality.

Thanks for listening to our podcast, guys. I appreciate your listenership so much. If you found that this podcast was helpful for you, please please please go over to the podcast platform that you're on, whether it's iTunes or Stitcher, Google playlists, any of those and give us a five star review and put a little blurb on there about why it was helpful for you.

If you got to try out the things here or another podcast just say that it helped or didn't help or whatever be honest, of course, ideally, it helped you and you're going to give us five star review and then share it with somebody that you think is needs to hear it there'll be they'll be thankful that you shared it with them.

And it also helps us to get a little more exposure for our podcasts here. Thanks for listening guys. And as always, if you want to reach out to us you can go to our website www.EPmanualPT.com or call us at 915-503-1314 Thanks and have a great day. Bye.

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The Most Important Exercise For Knee Cartilage Repair

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El Paso Welcome to the Stay Healthy El Paso Podcast. I'm your host Dr. David Middaugh, specialist physical therapist over at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. Today I'm going to be talking to you about the secret knee cartilage repair exercise. Oftentimes people with knee cartilage problems run into achiness, crunching, grinding and stiffness in their knee. They're having trouble going up and down steps, getting out of bed first thing in the morning is extremely painful and stiff for some of these people.

And treating knee problems like this is confusing. They just don't know where to get healthy people will go find their doctors and they'll recommend medications and injections. Of course, other people might recommend vitamins and supplements that might help out a bit but usually don't fix the problem. And stretches can feel good when doing them. But the knee problems might still come back pretty quickly afterwards. And some exercises tend to hurt more than others. Pain medications just take the pain away for a short period of time as well as injections they may take away for a longer period of time or you're talking more on the on the length of like weeks, or months even. And surgery is really what we want to avoid at all costs because it carries its own risks.

Let me tell you the secret knee cartilage repair exercise that you need to know, so that you can fix your knee cartilage. It's glute exercises. Now, there's a slew of different types of glute muscle exercises that you can do. There are all kinds and to give you a specific glute exercise to begin to do at home is a little challenging, because it depends on many factors, and it depends on how severe your knee cartilage problem is right now. It also depends on how active you are right now, how active you want to become in the future, and also how well you can activate your glute muscles. So, it's hard to tell you specifically.

I've got tons of videos that you can learn off of on our YouTube channel. If you head over to our YouTube channel and find more on our playlist for knee pain exercises knee pain videos, you'll find more glute exercises there.

Another option which is way better, it's going to be way more specific to what we're talking about with how to repair your cartilage, would be to look into purchasing our 28-Day Knee Health And Wellness Boost Program. This program, it's a 28-day program, where each day there's something for you to do, there's a rest day included each week. In this 28-day program, we'll go into heavy details on what good exercises to do, what time you should do them, depending on where you are and your knee cartilage injury, how often to do them, and all the details surrounding how to do these glute exercises in addition to other exercises. We'll go over how to repair your cartilage in your knees.

Now let me just backtrack a bit. Glute muscle exercises to repair knee cartilage is almost unheard of at this point. A lot of people focus on the quad muscles. Now let me just get my thigh bone here, my knee joint here. If you think about the quads, quads are on the front of the thigh right here. Here's the kneecap and they all attach to the kneecap. So the current thinking, that's been the thinking really, for decades, probably at least 30-40, maybe more years, is that if there's a knee cartilage problem, in other words, the cartilage behind the kneecap, and there's cartilage in the front of the thigh bone, right where the kneecap sits, that cartilage is injured or damaged somehow. The thought is to strengthen the muscles in the front of the thigh right here, the quadricep muscles.

Now a lot of people still do that. They still look for quad strengthening exercises. And what they find is that when they do those quad exercises that it kind of does feel good. It feels like you got to work out. You get that feedback that these muscles are tired, maybe even sore, but in the long term, what happens at the kneecap at the knee joint, where the cartilage problem is, is those quad muscles pull that kneecap harder against the thigh bone and causes it to rub it slowly over time further down and injures of cartilage more over time.

So one, avoid doing quad exercises. And if you're seeing a medical professional that's telling you to do this, I highly recommend you question them, show them this video if you want so they can think about it and critically think about what they're recommending to their patients a bit more.

The research is out there showing that glute exercises are more beneficial for the kneecap problems, then quad problems. It's important that they think about that, when we're trying to do by strengthening the glute muscles which would be over in this area relative to the bones is it pulls this this bone, the thigh bone in a certain way that allows for decreased pressure at the kneecap joint.

By avoiding strengthening the quads in the front of the thigh and strengthening the glute muscles in the back of the hip, it indirectly changes the pressure in a good way to alleviate the cartilage pressure behind the kneecap. That is how we can repair knee cartilage in your knee using exercise.

If you want to learn more about our 20-day Health and Wellness boost program, just go to the menu bar on the top of the website here and find the tab that says products and you'll find more about the 28-day knee health and wellness boost program. in that program, we go into detail about which good exercises to do, how to do them, how often to do them where you should feel during those exercises, and the focus is on reducing any discomfort in the knee. It should not hurt you for your knee as you're rehabilitating, as you're recovering the cartilage back there throughout the process.

If anything, you might feel a little bit of grinding, clicking popping, but nothing that should aggravate the knee feeling worse and worse each day. If that's the case, then you're doing exercises that are just not right for your knee at that time, or they may be not good for you at all.

But keep in mind that fixing knee cartilage naturally is a process. It's not just doing an exercise once or twice, or even for a short period of time, a few weeks, and you can't expect your knee cartilage to be repaired during that time. It's a process that lasts months, possibly for some that are more severe even a couple of years. So hang in there, be patient and talk to the right expert if you need some direct help about how to handle your knee cartilage problem.

Don't underestimate the weight of this problem. It's not something that's a quick fix them in the medical field. It can come off that way since people often prescribe medications or injections or surgery and they can lead you to believe unknowingly that it's going to be resolved within you know one treatment or a few treatments. But the reality of fixing a knee problem, a knee cartilage problem naturally, is it's a process.

It's a lot like brushing your teeth. If you brush your teeth once or twice, you can't expect to never ever get a cavity. It's a process that you have to maintain over time, and possibly do different. If you haven't been having the result that you're looking for. You might need to add flossing in there using mechanical toothbrush or using a different type of toothpaste or avoiding certain kinds of foods.

There’re all kinds of factors to look at and think about so that you can properly manage that problem naturally without having to get some sort of invasive procedure done or rely on injections or medications. In the same way, as you're progressing through glute exercises, you're trying different ones as you're finding the right one that works for you at the right time. You got to be patient and stick up the exercise program. The way that you should know that you're doing things right is your knees should be getting better and better. As the weeks go by, you should feel less pain, a better ability to go up and down steps, stand as long as you like, and do more things to love with family and friends, ideally. But the progress should be noticeable. As you're going through it, you should feel like you're getting better week to week.

 

Thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope that you found this helpful El Paso, so if you know of anybody that's got a knee problem, a knee cartilage problem specifically, please share this with them. Please get the link copy this and forward it over to them send it through the text or email or something and allow them to get some help. That way they're not suffering with this knee problem is just resorting to having surgery or relying on pain medications or injections for their knee problems. Let them know that it is possible to fix this problem naturally and get back to doing very active things.

I personally have had knee trouble off and on throughout my life. And it wasn't until now, when I'm older that I have it actually gotten under control. And I can do just about everything that I want, including running, lifting weights, riding bikes, picking up my kids, and my so my kids are getting big, I can do all that without worrying about my knee, I have complete confidence in my knee problems, that they're not going to get any worse than that they're going to be under control.

And I teach people that all the time our patients and other therapists when I train them, we teach them all that. So anyways, if you want to learn more about us, our company and how we help people, visit our website at www.EPmanualPT.com and check out the homepage there and you'll know exactly where to click on to go to the next Step depending on what you want to do, have a great day. Bye

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7 Helpful Tips To Help With Lower Back Arthritis

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Hey everyone, welcome to the Stay Healthy El Paso Podcast. I'm your host Dr. David Middaugh, specialist physical therapist over at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy, and today we're covering the top seven tips for lower back arthritis.

Now we see people here with lower back arthritis in the clinic all the time. It's one of the most common things that we help out. And typically, people have a combination of arthritis and stenosis and sciatica. When they're looking for help initially, they don't really know what they have going on. But maybe they've got an X ray and MRI, frequently people bring those in with them. And they'll point out on the MRI or on the X ray where it says Look, look at L-5 or L-4. I have arthritis, osteoarthritis!

When they've got that, then they are concerned because it's like I'm getting older and I've got arthritis, that stuff doesn't go away. It just stays with you for life. And they are always worried about how to begin to get help, and they're not sure who to see, or if they're going to need surgery someday. That's always a huge concern for people, especially once their back starts hurting, then they think, I don't know what to do about this and how am I going to protect this from getting worse, and I've seen my parents, they had arthritis too, and their backs are all messed up and they're on a walker on a cane or they're taking medications all the time getting injections.

If you have any of that stuff going on, you are going to want to hear these seven tips on how to get started on fixing your lower back arthritis problem. Now, just the way this works, it's not really fixing it. I'll tell you more about that here in a second. But arthritis is generally something that comes on as we age, and it can be painless. In some instances, it can be painful in other instances, it just depends if it flares up, but think of it more so as like getting gray hair or wrinkles.

As we age, we get gray hair and wrinkles and they don't really hurt. They don't hurt physically but it might hurt emotionally for some people. But if we look on the inside of our bodies with an X ray or an MRI, then you'll see that as we age and people that are older, they just tend to have more arthritis. And it's okay, it's normal. It's not it's not a bad thing necessarily.

What we're concerned about is when it becomes too severe, when it becomes out of control, that's typically a sign that there's a bad forces going through those joints, there's bad stuff happening. It's usually the way that the muscles are pulling on the joints. That's why there's bad forces on there. That's what makes the Arthritis situation progress faster and become more severe.

But anyways, I'm going to cover those top seven tips for you right now. And that way you can learn about what you can start doing right away at home. Right now, as you're listening to this podcast, you can try out some of this stuff for beak or your plan to stop doing that some of these things, because I'll tell you what to avoid as well. I think this will be helpful for you. So let's get to it.

Let's talk about the top seven tips to help out lower back arthritis.

Tip Number One Core Strengthening Exercises.

A lot of people say just go get exercise, but to be specific, we have to strengthen the core and it's typically the abs muscles, but I would also throw in the glutes, just about every single time. It's pretty rare, I'd say 9 out of 10 times, it's just an ab problem. It's an abs and a glute weakness problem that contributes to a lower back arthritis situation.

So, if you haven't really worked on your abs, and that's something you want to get going on. If you are confused about how to do it, or maybe you have already been trying it out, and it's been hurting your back more than helping your back. Then I encourage you to go over to our playlist on lower back videos in our channel for El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. There are tons of videos in there that talk about specific exercises for lower back problems and start with those. Those tend to be pretty safe and easy to do.

And if you are still having trouble, you need to get some professional help to make sure that you are doing your core exercises correctly. Because it is proven, I see it in the clinic all the time. That's how we help people is by strengthening certain muscles, in addition to all the hands on work that we do, but core strengthening is going to be your number one place to start fixing a lower back arthritis problem at home.

Number two simple stretches.

When I talk about stretches, you want to just stay in this forward and back motion. Like going towards your toes and going backwards can be beneficial. I would, there are certain stretches that I would want to avoid. That's actually tip number three. I'll cover that in a second. But its stretches where you feel like you are bending your back all the way forward or all the way backwards are generally okay to start with.

Now, what I want to point out with stretches is, they can be overdone and can actually become harmful after a while. So use them sparingly, but it's a good way to relieve the backache to relieve some tension off your back and possibly avoid taking pain medication in the short term. Just to kind of get you by for a period of time. But I wouldn't look to do stretches to cure a back problem. It's just going to get you started and allow you to avoid taking the harmful medications.

Number three, avoid twisting motions.

Typically, and this is related to those stretches, avoid twisting motions. Some people like to twist all the way around one way, and the other way, and maybe you enforce a joint to pop or click. And that can be relieving sometimes, but I would avoid it if you have a low back arthritis problem, because chances are, there's a bunch of stiff joints in the lower back because of the arthritis. And there's usually one or two joints that are compensating for all the stiff joints. And you might be over twisting that one joint that's moving way too much in creating a disc problem or a pinched nerve problem later on.

I would avoid the twisting motions. Our spines are just not designed to take a lot of twisting and repetitive twisting. So, make sure you avoid daily twisting motions, as well like twisting while doing little things, at home activities, like chores in the yard at home. If you have to stand with your feet pointed in one direction you twist over one way, or if you are sitting at a desk or cooking in a kitchen and you find that your feet aren't really going with the upper body, make sure to just reposition your feet so that they are in line with the rest of your body so that you avoid twisting through your spine. So, keep away from those twisting motions.

Tip number four drink lots of water stay very hydrated.

Our joints are reliant on our hydration so if you feel like you have not been drinking enough water over the past few months, and you are back arthritis problem is just getting a bit worse, it could very well be affected by your hydration levels. Cartilage is over 60% water up to 70% water and you have tons of cartilage. Discs in your spine are also highly dependent on hydration. And then there's fluid inside the little spine joints. The rosette joints is what they are called in the lower back. And that fluid needs to be there in order to properly lubricate the joint surfaces. So drink plenty of water.

I know the side effect is that you have to get up and go to the bathroom frequently. But I would weigh that if you are having a problem with having to go frequently versus potentially having some surgery some day because this arthritis problem was managed properly. You got to weigh those risks. So just think about that I would I'm always going to lean on the side of drink plenty of water and it's okay if you had to get up every now and then go to the potty. Just make that trip counted as exercise.

Tip number five, avoid shoes with heels.

Now this goes for both men and women. Of course, women are probably the ones that are typically going to wear heels more so than men. But men do wear heeled shoes here and there. You know smaller heals typically with like in boots or dress shoes, but that little elevation even if it's a small amount, it changes the way that your ankles are positioned when you walk, which influences the knees and hips and can translate all the way into the lower back. And generally, the bigger the heal, the more forces are going to be disrupted and affecting your back & neck.

Really, so it just doesn't allow the muscles that control the spine, the lower back to properly operate and give you the stability that is needed for everyday motions. If you have a chronic back problem, if you have arthritis in your back, I would definitely stay away from the heels until that problem gets resolved.

Now, let me put a disclaimer in here. I'm not against heels forever. I think if you are healthy, and if your back is fine, you don't have any other issues that are affected by the heels. Wear heels all you want, and it should be just fine for you. But if you are trying to avoid medications, injections and having a surgery, get off those heels in the short term and let's fix the back problems so that you can get back to her in the heels as you might like want as you want to later on in life.

Tip number six, avoid walking for exercise.

I put this tip in here because a lot of people that I meet here in the clinic and out in public, they say hey, I want to start exercising and stretches, start with walking, right? That's kind of the easiest thing to do. You just get out and put on your walking shoes and go for it. And yeah, it's an easy thing to do and it was pushed a lot back in, in the 90s and even early 2000s as a great way to start exercising. I think it's still generally accepted as a great way to start exercising.

If you don't have any sort of back problem, I'm okay with it. But if you are dealing with back arthritis, lumbar arthritis, it is not a good thing to go walking for 20 minutes, 30 minutes or more to cover many, many miles because there is a decent amount of twisting that happens through the spine when walking. And if your joints aren't moving properly, because you have arthritis in there that's preventing the motion, then you are technically doing a repeated twisting motion over and over again, and it can aggravate the back problem.

We have seen people come in here in the clinic that say, I started walking and it kind of felt better because it's stiff. I understand and my back eased up some. But then it started to bother me as time went on and I just didn't enjoy going for walks. So, if that's you stop the walking right now. There are other exercises that you should be doing. And then walking can begin to happen for regular exercising if you choose to. If you like to go hiking or you are just an outdoors person like to get out every now and then it's not a forever thing kind of like with the heels.

You want to just put a pause on the walking beyond what you'd have to normally do for everyday living, walking within your house and for work. But walking for exercise like where you go on a dedicated walk, I would avoid if you are trying to correct a low back problem, an arthritis problem in the low back.

Tip number seven, get expert help.

This is by far the quickest way to make sure that the lower back arthritis problem gets under control and managed properly. Now the reality of what we've discovered in the healthcare field over the past 20 years is that arthritis in the past, is actually Okay, as we age, it's expected as we age.

Think of it as like rust on a on a car, if you look under an old car like from the 60s or 70s, or even before that time, if there's bits of rust here and there, it's not going to impede the function of the car, your car's still going to run and you can go enjoy a cruise. But if there's a massive hole that is rusted out on the frame or on some important part of the of the undercarriage of the car, then you should get some concern and you should think Am I going to be able to enjoy my rider? Is something going to break or is this crazy? We're going to start then you got a problem. It's the same thing.

If you are looking at the arthritis in your spine, it's all over. It's just there's tons of it. Just like there's a lot of rust on the bottom of a car. You are going to have some likely long-term back issues and you can still get under control and manage it so it's not worse and avoid a surgery or having to rely on medications. But the fact of the matter is, it's just affected more joints, more cartilage in the spine. But if it's just a little bit of arthritis, in other words, if they told you that you have mild arthritis, even moderate arthritis, then I wouldn't get too concerned that's like looking at a 56-year-old car.

And if it just has mild amounts of rust or even moderate amounts of rusting but everything still works, then you have an excellent shot at getting back exactly to what you were doing before, without having to worry about having surgery one day or having to rely on injections or medications.

But getting expert help really just speeds up that process to make sure that you are doing the right exercises that you are not doing the wrong stuff. And that you are thinking about this properly so that you can learn how to take care of your back arthritis for the rest of your life. So I strongly encourage you to reach out to an expert like a manual physical therapists to make sure that your lower back arthritis problem gets under control and handled properly.

Hey guys, thanks for listening, I really appreciate it. If you thought that this podcast was helpful for you, I encourage you to leave us a five star review, that would be super awesome. If you tried some of this stuff and you had a good outcome then please leave us a bit about your story in a review, we'd love to hear that. That's always encouraging that we're helping people that are listening in El Paso, or in the area or even around the world, around the country.

We always love hearing people sharing their stories about how we might have helped them. If you are thinking that we might be able to help you out if you're in the El Paso area, call our clinic if you think that you want to get help by us, our numbers 915-503-1314 and if you just want to learn more, find out about us you can Visit our website at www.EPmanualPT.com and there's tons of free resources on there. Our blog is full of helpful information for back problems and other issues as well. You can go check it out and find more details. But anyways, I hope that you have a wonderful day and we'll talk soon.

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