Your Hips Don't Go Out of Place (article)

This article came across my desk last week and I immediately knew it was the subject of this week's blog post.

The takeaways:

 - Health professionals, or even friends for that matter, who tell you that you;re back is out (out of what?) are contributing to your problem because if you hear something enough, then you'll start to believe it. Health professionals are not great at the language they use and will often diagnose issues you didn't even know you had but now all of a sudden that issue is now holding you back from doing certain movement and modes of exercise - even though you were doing them with no issue just last week!

 - What something "feels" like and what is actually happening are 2 completely different things. Frequent readers of this blog will now be aware that pain isn't what we all think it is and that we can have pain and no injury as well as injury and no pain - 2 completely different things.

 - Treatment professionals (chiro's, physio's etc)  are often sought out to treat these types of ailments but what are they treating? There's often no injury and you're back can't be "out" or you'd be in diabolical pain.

- The treatment can "work" as it's providing different and hopefully, positive input to your brain that can then send out different messages to the body that aren't pain signals reacting to a perceived threat.

- When episodes like this occur then you'll also tend to determine what was the cause and this leads to a fear avoidance of movement so you don't throw your hip out again. This can shift stress to a certain set of muscles or overload a certain movement and then you can have an actual problem of overuse and potential joint/muscle breakdown.

- If heading off to your treatment person for a mild adjustment is enough force to put your hip 'back in" then that implies that it's takes next to nothing to put it 'out" in the first place. This makes buying into strength training, that will actually help you a great deal, next to impossible

- Your body is made up of resilient structures  and it actually takes over 1000 pounds of force to deform fascia by even 1%...but that's light hands on treatment put your entire back into place...

- Treatments technique can decrease pain but not from anything physical but more psychologically. You believe that the treatment has put your back in, everything is well in the world, your mood improves and pain is reduced as the body has responded to your less stressful state and down regulated whatever threat it perceived prior to the treatment.

- If you believe strongly in a treatment type then it's probably doing whatever issues have good, but not for the reasons you think. If you an believe in something a lot cheaper, then you could save yourself a lot of money! In the end though the treatment does something that your brain likes and thus has a positive influence on your result but just remember it's often not changing anything physically.

- Once you are "aligned' then it's important to promote threat-free movement and loading as soon as you can to "cement" this position or state, a position/state that your body loves and perceives as safe.

I follow these types of pain management strategies in the studio all the while on my never ending crusade of pain education and stress management so if you need a hand with this type of thing then definitely get in contact with me.

You can read this article in full here.