After my post on weather and joint pain, I asked myself next: can the weather give you a headache? So we went looking. The research says they're linked, and more clearly than for joint pain. A review of 31 studies found that temperature and air pressure were both linked to migraine attacks (Li 2025).
If your knee or back seems to know a storm is coming before the forecast does, you're in good company. In a study of older adults with osteoarthritis in six European countries, two out of three said the weather affects their pain (Timmermans 2014).
A trigger point, or myofascial trigger point, is simply a knot in a muscle or myofascial unit. Trigger points are quite common and are hyper-irritable spots within and between tight muscle(s) and supporting fascia. When pressed – or sometimes when at rest – trigger points can produce a local or referred pain (pain felt in another area of the body), tenderness, and restricted movement. There are two types of trigger points – latent, and active trigger points.
Another summer has flown by and classes are starting! This may also mean your child may be needing a sports physical for their upcoming sports season. Schools require this as Kansas state law wants them to pass a physical exam prior to participation in their sport(s).
If you’re like the average American, you probably already failed your New Year’s Resolution. If one of your goals was to be more “healthy,” it might not even be your fault that you’ve already failed; this is because we don’t have an accurate description of “health.” How is it measured? What goes into being "healthy?"
We are in the end of fall season and winter starting soon which means the weather gets colder and makes for prime napping. This gets us on this month’s topic: sleep. As many of you have seen, when you fill out intake paperwork with us there are questions on sleep. We know that a main question that may pop in your head can be: “how can sleep relate to my pain and overall health?” We want to answer that as well as give you a few tips we like to use to help address sleep issues you may be having.
One of the most debilitating complaints we will see in our office is headaches. This can either be from the intensity, duration, or both. The location can also be variable from person to person, with correlating jaw or neck pain not uncommon. We usually see a combination of these complaints as compounding factors that overlap each other, with each one needing to be addressed to help the patient best.
"Knowledge is, by far, the most powerful tool to treat and cure pain. More powerful than any pill." - Dr. David Butler, author of "Explain Pain".
About half of the running population is thought to be injured at some point in one year. These “are defined as any damage or disorder that causes significant change or even cessation of ones normal running routine.”(1) So why is this so common? Although there will never be any solution to completely prevent pain, we can try to limit the likelihood and even the severity of the running pain with the following tips. (Additionally, this may focus on our demographic of runners, but some of the same concepts can apply across all spectrums of athletics).
An internationally researched system of assessment and rehab for spinal and extremity musculoskeletal pain. Clinicians that have training in the Mechanical Diagnosis & Therapy (MDT) system are able to assess, classify, manage, and properly refer out when indicated for all complaints of the musculoskeletal system. This means that if a pain complaint is coming from the spine, extremity joints, muscles or tendons, then a MDT evaluation is appropriate. A clinician with MDT training will be able to identify what management strategy is best and outline a predicted recovery plan. All using movement and patient education as a guide toward self management.
Limited Ankle Dorsiflexion (foot going toward shin) is shown to be a low to moderate risk for developing plantar fasciitis. Why? Our body is incredibly smart and even when it is lacking joint range of motion in the ankle it will still accomplish the task at hand like running, squatting, lunging by compensating and increasing strain up and down the chain. This commonly means increased demand and force placed upon the plantar fascia over time.
Treatment and rehab for plantar fasciitis can involve everything from foot, ankle, hip, and core based on your individual presentation. We will start from the bottom and move on up in an succeeding blog.
Many times, pain in the bottom of the foot or heel can be pushed into a blanket diagnosis of “you have plantar fasciitis”. But is it plantar fasciitis? Could it be another condition like tibialis posterior tendonitis, stress fracture in the heel, radiating pain from the low back? While getting a blanket diagnosis of plantar fasciitis based on zero exam with some basic rehab and soft tissue techniques thrown at it may work, there is a good chance it probably will not. You must know what you are aiming at. And in the same boat, what is causing the plantar fasciitis? Just because there is pain and inflammation in the plantar fascia does not mean that the CAUSE of the pain is coming from that area as well. In fact, it rarely does. This is why seeking out help from sports chiropractor or physical therapist is important to get a proper diagnosis and most importantly find out the main cause of the pain.
When patients present with pain, we can usually put each patient in one of two categories: they weren’t doing enough activity, or they were doing too much. Let’s give you two examples. The most obvious is in the springtime, when the weather is nicer, people will take up running; but this is after not running for months because of the season and weather. When the person tries to run the same amount of miles, or as fast as they did prior to their hiatus, is when they get in trouble. This is a simple case of "too much, too soon": the amount of excessive load on the tissues causes strain and will send a signal to the brain for help because something is wrong.
Stress loading is use of active traction and compression exercises to produce stress in the extremity with minimal motion of the painful joints. Stress loading follows the basics of exercise physiology: Your body adapts in response to demands placed on it. Your response to pain has been changed, so now any stimulus is interpreted as a painful stimulus. Stressful exercise is needed to override what has become "abnormally normal" for that area. An overload is required to achieve a training effect and to break the pain cycle that you and your body are experiencing. This means you need to do something to overload your neural, vascular, sensorimotor, and musculoskeletal systems to break the existing pain patterns your body is feeling.
Overuse pain is one of the most common forms of musculoskeletal pain. Muscles and joints of the body do not receive proper blood flow or oxygen. The lack of oxygen allows acid and chemicals to build up in the muscles and joints, causing local tissue irritation and pain.
I am always asked “When should I come see you” or “When should I see a chiropractor”. These questions are not always clearly outlined by the chiropractic profession. If you ask 5 different chiropractors and you’ll probably get 5 different answers. For this blog, let us tackle “When should I see a chiropractor” based on my symptoms.
References: "A World of Hurt: A Guide to Classifying Pain"
There are a lot of misconceptions and confusion that come with rehab and recovering from an injury. Some common questions we have pop up or know people are wondering are: why am I having to do exercises at home? Can’t you just “fix” me with your treatments at your office? Why I am doing these low-grade rehab exercises at the beginning? Why am I continuing to come and progress with exercises if I am out of pain? These are just to name a few, and we will try to answer each as best we can.
