About This Episode

Episode 129 Keep moving to maintain flexiblity as you age with Brian Murphy, Doctor of Physical Therapy and owner of Pinnacle Physical Therapy

Physical therapists are capable of really helping patients avoid surgery, avoid the need for medication. We are going to discuss the need to invest in the body’s ability to move and to be strong and to allow people to do the things they really enjoy. 

People are on devices and social media so much now that positions where your head is forward and rounding of your upper back. What’s interesting about the human body is that there are alternating patterns of joints that are supposed to be very mobile. And joints that are supposed to be very stable. So when you think about your back, your neck is a mobile joint. It’s supposed to be able to rotate. a lot. In those circumstances with those prolonged positions, unfortunately we we lose the mobility because we’re only working in one plane of motion.

We’re working in the sagittal plane. Our head stays still. We don’t ever work in the frontal plane and we don’t ever work in the transverse plane  we don’t have to.  That is a particular area that I see a lot of patients who are having neck pain complications with neck pain, headaches. And then also low back is another great example. The low back is a very stable joint. It’s only meant to bend forward and extend,  but the areas above it, the thoracic spine and your hips are both very mobile joints, or at least they should be.  I have seen clinically numerous times patients will come in complaining of pain in their low back. But the problem is arising from the stiffness in their hips and in their thoracic spine, from base of your neck, kind of down to the lower back. If you lose mobility in those two areas,  your low back has to do a lot more work. It’s doing some things that it’s not meant to do. So Instead of just treating where the pain is located, we’ve got to get those ball and socket joints moving again.

Motion is lotion.

We’ve got to keep mobility in our hips. We’ve got to keep rotation in our thoracic spine.  got to get out of these rounded postures  flexed postures and work on the opposite motions. A lot of times we have to work on extension.  So  some of this stuff isn’t rocket science, but unfortunately patients just don’t realize that. Once again, the human body is meant to have this beauty of variety of movement, and when we relegate ourselves to very stringent movements,  we lose those capabilities that are inherent,  that is going to be problematic.

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