Diagnosis

Toe Cramps and Back Pain? My Mother’s Story

How do toe cramps connect to back pain? Most patients with toe cramps believe that they have some sort of nutritional problem, despite many of them actually having a low back issue. In these cases, small amounts of nerve irritation in the low back can cause the muscles in the toe to cramp. This is where…read more

Knee Nerve Pain? More Evidence that the Pain of Arthritis is Caused by Nerves

Is there such a thing as knee nerve pain? Your joint pain due to arthritis is caused by lost cartilage, right? Likely wrong. There’s been a mounting body of evidence that arthritis itself doesn’t cause pain, and in fact the pain of arthritis (and perhaps arthritis itself in some cases), is caused by nerves. The…read more

More Knee Replacement Side Effects: Bald and Itchy…

I’ve blogged extensively about knee replacement side effects. This has included microscopic wear particles that break off from knee and hip replacement prostheses that have been found in the blood stream. Studies have also reported that a surprising number of patients have allergies to the metals used in the devices. Now a new case report recounts the experience of a…read more

New Study: Your Meniscus Tear may be Caused by a Bad Nerve in Your Back

You don’t often hear meniscus tear and bad back nerves in the same sentence.  But we see patients all the time who have low level issues in their low back causing problems in the knee. Most of these patients don’t think they have a back issue because their back doesn’t hurt much. However, a new…read more

Deep Neck Flexors: If You Have Chronic Headaches with Neck Pain You’ll Want to Get to Know these Muscles

Do you have headaches with neck pain? Believe it or not, many headaches come from the neck. In fact, if the upper neck is painful, you’ll likely feel it in your head. In addition, many nerves in the upper neck that go to the head can get irritated when the neck muscles are tight, leading…read more

Read Your Own Back MRI for Multifidus Atrophy-A Major Cause of Low Back Pain

So now you know what a “multifidus” is and why it’s so critical that you find out if your major low back stabilizing system if off line. However, 99.999% of the time (in my experience), radiologists fail to read whether this muscle is normal or atrophied, despite copious research that a atrophied (read weaker) multifidus is associated…read more

Shoulder Impingement: Are You getting Trapped by Your Trap?

Should you be looking for a shoulder surgery alternative? For the last several decades, many of the patients who have been told that they have shoulder impingement have had surgery to “release” the shoulder. In many ways it’s this phenomenon which led to our current hip impingement surgery craze. So what is shoulder impingement? The…read more

Claw Toes and your Low Back

Is there a relationship between claw toes and your low back?  I often see patients with the dreaded “claw toes”. They’re usually middle aged or older and like the picture above, their 2nd through fifth toes have begun to look like a claw. Why? These toes look exactly like what we call an “intrinsic minus hand” that…read more