Physical Therapy

How to Recover from Neck Pain? A Little Muscle Holds the Key…

How to recover from neck pain? The status of a little stabilizing muscle in your neck may determine if you recover quickly or have long term chronic pain. This little muscle can also be easily seen on an MRI, but the likelihood that the radiologist reading your report knows to take a look at and…read more

Hip Impingement Exercises: Can You Fix It with Therapy and Avoid Surgery?

Can hip impingement exercises help avoid surgery? The diagnosis of hip impingement that leads to surgery has been all the rage lately, despite research showing that in some cases, what’s diagnosed as “impingement” may actually be protecting rather than harming the joint. What we don’t know is how simple changes in posture can impact FAI…read more

Does Meniscus Surgery Work? A Quartet of Studies Says It’s No Better than Fake Surgery or PT

Few patients ask the obvious question about knee meniscus surgery: Does meniscus surgery work? The answer, after many different high quality studies is that it definitely doesn’t work. Let me explain. The first major paper on the efficacy of arthroscopic knee surgery was published more than a decade ago in 2002. It compared “arthroscopic debridement”…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

Patella Alta Treatment: What You Can Do When You’re Knee Cap is Too High

Patella Alta Treatment is tricky because of the biomechanics of the knee, but we can certainly help. Patella alta is a condition where patients are born with their knee cap seated way too high. The normal knee cap sits in a groove and to work well, the cartilage of the groove has to make good contact…read more

Need a Knee Meniscus Surgery Alternative? Physical Therapy as Good as Surgery for Knee Meniscus Tears

We’ve told patients for years to avoid surgery for a torn meniscus and seek knee meniscus surgery alternatives. First, about 10 years ago, a well done study showed that there was no difference between the results of an arthoroscopic knee surgery (debridement) for knee arthritis and a placebo surgery. Then a recent study showed that…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

Getting Rid of Shoulder Trigger Points: An Effective Therapy to Help Avoid Shoulder Surgery?

A doctor discusses how a few acupuncture needles may be able to help you avoid shoulder surgery.