Things We Commonly Treat

What types of pain do you have the most experience with? ( back pain, wrist pain, migraines, shoulder pain, etc etc) Why are these so common?

This is a list of complaints we have worked with in the past year roughly in the order of frequency.
Back pain is the most common complaint. The hip is the fulcrum for many movements so even problems not immediately associated with back will migrate there. Combine this with the heavy use in this region it is not surprising that it is the most common site of pain.

Neck pain is also quite common. Repetitive use is a primary cause of muscular pain and with time we spend on computers and television the neck is often under heavy use.
Generally feeling achey, stiff and like old age is setting in. Everybody works hard, usually doing the same old things, while enduring the psychological stress of our modern lifestyle. The standard is that you should not hurt anywhere, you should move easily with full range of motion. You should be able to rest comfortably and sleep well. If you don’t, it’s not necessarily because you are getting older, but that you have been coping with life long enough for your body to begin having difficulty compensating for the stresses embedded into your muscles. Massage can restore a lot of what you feel you lost.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is one we see in waves. Someone will come in with this diagnosis and then tell their friends about finally getting relief. We see a lot of this until all their contacts have been treated then the frequency of this complaint drops off for a while. The most common cause we see for wrist pain is failure to support the elbows when typing. This requires the shoulders to hold the weight of the arms in a fixed position which often results in either wrist pain or neck/shoulder pain.

We see a lot of shoulder pain usually as a result of injury. The level of injury varies from simple strain to pre and post-operative conditions. In the case of joint capsule damage relaxing the muscles often relieves much of the pain by decompressing the joint and reducing the guarding of the joint. The causes of the strain injury to the shoulder muscles varies from lifting at awkward angles to sport specific activities.

A fairly sport specific complaint we see often is tennis elbow/golfers elbow. This is often a result of repetitive use or minor muscle strain from a missed hit or poor form. This often responds readily to massage so when we fix one we usually get several referrals.

The remainder are mostly clients who point and say that they hurt right there or demonstrate that they can no longer do “this”. Our job here is to stop the pain and restore function. Kind of our specialty. People lead busy lives doing a multitude of tasks, some infrequently, and don’t always use the best body mechanics or form. This may result in minor injuries that left untreated can manifest into major problems as your body tries to compensate. Remember that just because it quit hurting does not necessarily mean the problem has gone away. Your body may have compensated and stored this problem with the others till a limit is reached.


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