The quick fix mentality lives on strong in 2020. How do I know this? Just paying attention to the marketing ads that fill our social media feeds and television will reveal this. One promising a gizmo for muscle tightness, another for quick pain relief, and another for a magical cleanse or diet.
In my professional realm, I see MANY patients with chronically tense and sore low backs, necks, and hip flexors. Pelvic floor muscles that are too tense and painful. Abdominals that are weak and/or have a separation.
It would be EASY to JUST focus on the tight, painful, or weak muscle or tissue. We could help to ease pain and tension and both our patient and we would feel good about the therapy session. But sadly I know that their tension or pain will come back. WHY? Because this would be ignoring the WHY their body was tight or painful in the first place.
The question that HAS to be asked is WHY is a muscle or tissue working so hard or being stressed so greatly that it gets into a state of perpetual tension and possibly pain?
When we find the WHY, we can actually help to truly heal the body. Finding the real cause of the physical symptom and then address that along with measures to calm pain down or reduce tension in the short term is the best medicine.
It takes a LOT of convincing with some of our patients who have never worked with a healthcare provider that worked with them in this way. It may be confusing to a patient when we aren’t devoting the entire treatment session to the “diagnosis”, and instead we are talking about their whole body.
An example includes pelvic floor pain. It does the patient no good to only focus on their pelvis and pelvic floor when we find that there are many contributing factors to their pain in other areas of their body. I have in fact worked with many patients with chronic pelvic pain where they had been to other pelvic PTs that did NOT pay attention to other parts of their body that were definitely influencing their pelvic pain.
Another very common issue is excessively tight hip flexors (the muscles in the front of the hip). They will get massages and use a foam roller regularly, without seeing any lasting improvements. When I help them see that their core muscles and glutes may be mostly to blame for not being strong enough or activating well with day to day movements, we can finally unlock the puzzle that is excessively tight hip flexors.
Note: figuring out the why is step #1. Step #2 is actually resolving the WHY which is where the hard work is!
So if you have been dealing with something that is just too tense with massages and stretching and it just doesn’t seem to go away, back away from the foam roller and find out what needs to be stronger for you! If you have been dealing with bladder leaks and kegels are just not seeming to help? Then STOP the kegels and work with a pelvic PT to help you find what is REALLY going on.
Not sure if we can be of help to you? Schedule a free virtual consult with one of our expert pelvic and orthopedic specialists to find out!
