Paths in Healing. Bodyworks.

Paths in Healing. Bodyworks.

Benefits and Services. Causes of Pain and Bodywork Solutions.

 

Paths in Healing Addresses Pain and Pain Sources. Arthritis Pain.

What is arthritis pain?

Arthritis is an inflammatory condition that has the capacity to affect any of the joints of the body. Osteoarthritis is caused by degeneration of the bones. Repetitive impact and joint trauma will subject a joint to arthritic development. The body reacts to such trauma by engaging the “guarding response” and “inhibition”.

“The Guarding Response” is a way to protect the joint. When the articulating cartilage of the joint starts to wear unevenly, the joint starts to move bone on bone contact which causes pain in the joint. The muscles around the joint will tighten and loosen appropriately to position the joint so that it is not moving on the area that is moving bone on bone. If the unbalanced condition is not addressed the joint continues dysfunctional movement and becomes more compromised leading to more pain and dysfunction in the joint. Time and life leads to compressive forces, muscles that surround the joint go into an isometric contraction and lead to compressed joint space. This reduces mobility (inhibition), and will often create an uneven force distribution around the joint. As the joint becomes unbalanced, the joint fit becomes compromised and the overall posture of the person starts to alter. With no correction over a period of time, the cartilage begins to wear away and starts to articulate bone on bone leading to arthritic conditions that will aggravate and accelerate over time.

Arthritic joints need mobility to encourage synovial fluid production and cartilage health along with correct movement to encourage normal wear and tear of a joint.

How does Paths in Healing address arthritic pain?

Massage is helpful in many ways. Movement and exercise is now encouraged by many Health Care Professionals for arthritic joint pain. However when affected with this dysfunction movement may be extremely painful. Massage and joint mobilization are ways to encourage movement which will promote circulation which will nourish joints. This simulates a passive non-load bearing type of exercise. As the client progresses it becomes possible to introduce more load bearing exercises. During this time proper identification of tight muscles around a joint will let the therapist address these muscles in a manner to release these specific muscles. Overstretched muscles will be addressed in a manner to strengthen these muscles. As the muscles around a joint become more balanced the pressure inside the joint becomes balanced leading to balanced wear and tear inside the joint.

When a client comes in with arthritis pain we look at the overall postural balance of the person. Our joints are designed to move efficiently over the period of a lifetime. As we age and our posture and biomechanics become inefficient, then joints becomes misaligned leading to abnormal tightening of muscles around the joint. This leads to abnormal wear and tear of the joint or joint degeneration leading to pain and dysfunction.