Neck & Shoulder Knots

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Hey there! I’m Dr. David, Physical Therapist from El Paso Manual Physical Therapy.

I’m Dr. David, Physical Therapist from El Paso Manual Physical Therapy.

I was just doing some paperwork on the computer right now & answering some emails from some current patients of mine.

I was getting a little knot developing right here in my neck and shoulder area.

This is the space between my shoulder and my neck.

I exercise and I do some things to make sure I take care of it, but here’s one of the tricks that I use because I have to work at the desk quite a bit, and I know many of you out there probably have desk jobs where you’re working at the computer or maybe doing like paperwork at a desk.

Here’s a tip that you can use to help prevent those knots from getting worse.

You’ll even help prevent the knots to begin with, and be able to get through the end of the day so that you’re not just flared up by the end of the day.

Those knots might just be killing you, and you just want to go take some pain medication or get a massage or something, so you can get to the end of the day and feel pretty good.

First, make sure that your computer and your desk is set up so that you can put your arms on the desk like this and actually shove your shoulders up just a little bit. And it’s okay to slouch from time to time so that you can move your shoulders up. You see how when I lean forward a little bit, it raises my shoulder?

And it’s okay to slouch from time to time so that you can move your shoulders up. You see how when I lean forward a little bit, it raises my shoulder?

You see how when I lean forward a little bit, it raises my shoulder? Well that takes some tension off this area.

Part of the problem in getting these knots is that if I’m not supported from here pushing my arms up, the weight of my arm pulls down on these muscles right here, and it starts to stretch them out over time.

Now, it’s no big deal for a little while, 15, 20 minutes, especially if you don’t have a problem going on. But let the hours pass by. Say an hour or two, three, four hours, eight hours passes by, and this is hanging down, this is going to start to get really, really tight, and you can start to develop some spots in the muscle where it bulges up, and you create a knot.

Say an hour or two, three, four hours…. eight hours pass by, and this is hanging down, this is going to start to get really, really tight, and you can start to develop some spots in the muscle where it bulges up, and you create a knot.

Another thing that can be setting up a knot … Well, let me back up a little bit.

Have you ever had that type of knot that is hard?

You dig in here, and it just feels like rock solid, like it might even be a bone. Well, sometimes it is a bone. Let me show you what I mean on my skeleton here. So this is the shoulder right here, collarbone.

Well, sometimes it is a bone!

Let me show you what I mean on my skeleton. So this is the shoulder right here, collarbone.

So this is the shoulder right here, collarbone.

The first rib is right here, and your second rib is right here. Those ribs can actually pop up and contribute to that knot.

You might actually have a bone from one of these ribs sticking out.

They’re about right here, and they can pop up a little bit, and they can be really painful.

It can be really tender. It can feel really hard as well.

And that’s something that you’re not going to massage out. It’s a shifted bone up in the neck and shoulder area, and just rubbing it might make it feel better temporarily, but what needs to happen is we need to find a solution to get that rib to sink back down.

It’s a shifted bone up in the neck and shoulder area, and just rubbing it might make it feel better temporarily, but what needs to happen is we need to find a solution to get that rib to sink back down.

There’s a ton of reasons why those ribs can pop up. That’s something that we look at here, we talk to clients about all the time. And we can get them to come back down and settle down so that they’re not a recurring problem.

That’s something that we look at here, we talk to clients about all the time. And we can get them to come back down and settle down so that they’re not a recurring problem.

And we can get them to come back down and settle down so that they’re not a recurring problem.

But it’s just something I wanted to tell you about today. Now, if you work at a desk, make sure, just to review, your arms are supported like this, or if you have a chair that has some armrests, especially if they’re adjustable, make sure those armrests push your shoulders up a little bit from your elbow down here.

Now, if you work at a desk, make sure, just to review, your arms are supported like this, or if you have a chair that has some armrests, especially if they’re adjustable, make sure those armrests push your shoulders up a little bit from your elbow down here.

I hope this helps you out.

I hope that if you have a desk job, you’re not running into those shoulder knots.

If you do have knots in your neck and shoulders, try these things.

And if you’re still getting problems, you might have a shifted rib, or there could be some other problem.

There’s nerve problems that happen up there too.

Sometimes there are muscular problems that need a specialist’s help as well.

Give us a call. Reach out to us. Contact us on Facebook.

Contact us online, and we’d love to help you out and talk to you more about it.

Thanks so much. Have a wonderful day.

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September 11, 2020/in Blog/by dmiddaugh

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

September 9, 2020/in Podcast/by dmiddaugh

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.

9 Natural Remedies For Lower Back Pain

September 8, 2020/in Blog/by dmiddaugh