A muscle spasm is a strong involuntary muscle contraction, which is often quite painful. That’s the definition used by researchers and clinicians who study and treat what causes spasms and what can be done to treat them. Although the causes are not fully understood, there are things you can do
In 2005, a relatively healthy 88-year-old man in Taiwan sought medical treatment after falling down due to weakness in his arms and legs. He turned out to be experiencing acute kidney failure and fever as well. In taking his history, his healthcare team learned that he received massage therapy for
A cooldown is any recovery method that is supposed to help transition your body back to its pre-exercise state. Many people believe that a cooldown has many benefits, such as removing metabolic waste faster, reducing the risk of injuries, improving next-day athletic performance, and reducing muscle soreness and muscle tightness.
Tight muscles get blamed for a lot of things. Don’t feel good when you bend down to feed the dog in the morning? It’s because your back muscles are tight. Having neck pain while you sit at your desk to work or texting? It must be tight muscles. Pulled a
If you have been to a gym in the past decade, you have inevitably seen foam rolling. Foam rollers have evolved from long white cylinders to brightly colored tubes that vary in texture, density and length. The list of proposed benefits of foam rolling is long. Gaiam, one of the
Muscle soreness, sometimes called “delayed onset muscle soreness” (DOMS) is a dull, achy pain that you may have experienced after a hard workout, especially if you’re not used to exercising. It’s a “functional muscle disorder” without any obvious visible signs of muscle structure damage due to overexertion and eccentric muscle
Six years after releasing their initial recommendations on prescribing opioids for chronic pain, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) updated the federal guidelines last February, emphasizing on trying other treatments in the management of acute and chronic pain before prescribing opioid medications. The suggested non-opioid treatment options are both pharmaceutical
The San Diego Pain Summit resumed its first in-person conference since 2020 on Feb. 26 and 27, 2022 with a line-up of new and old voices that tackles the difficult (and often uncomfortable) topics that few manual therapy and medical conferences address. Speakers in this year’s event presented a range
Many healthcare professionals have teachers who have made an impact in their career and personal lives where their influence continues to thrive even after they pass on. One such teacher was Dr. Loren “Bear” Rex, who was an osteopathic physician and founder of the nonprofit Ursa Foundation in Edmonds, Washington.
For the first time in U.S. history, more than 100,000 Americans have died from opioid overdose in a 12-month period from April 2020 to April 2021, according to a report from last November from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Most data from each state show similar patterns
Living with chronic pain can leave you feeling overwhelmed and hopeless. Spinal cord stimulators are small implantable devices that are placed under your skin. They can help you manage pain and restore your quality of life and sleep by masking the pain signal before it can reach your brain. Spinal
Causalgia, algodystrophy, shoulder-hand syndrome, Sudeck’s atrophy: these are some of the names complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) was called since the late 19th century as each generation of physicians get a better understanding of the disease. Until the end of World War II, CRPS was called “causalgia,” stemming from the