 An X-ray is a picture of your joint or your bone, but it doesn’t often tell us much about what is causing your pain. We know this because patients can have really degenerative and arthritic joints on X-ray, but don’t have pain. The opposite is also true; you can have a normal X-ray and be in excruciating pain. This is because there is little to no relationship between the severity of arthritis and pain.
Patients often come to our office very dejected after being told by the doctor that they have arthritis, as if they have been sentenced to constant pain for the rest of their days. Nothing could be further from the truth. In many cases, the onset of pain is recent but the arthritis has been slowly coming on for years to decades, so why now must they be saddled with constant pain? This myth of pain equals arthritis is something that PT’s work very hard to dispel with patients on a daily basis.
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 If not, it is hurting your performance on the field or in the office.
Having normal sleep patterns is something that many people struggle with, but having a routine can be a huge boost to your energy, performance, and pain levels. Research recommends that adults get 7-9 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night. This goes for those people that say, “I only need about 4-5 hours of sleep.” You may be able to function on less sleep, but that does not mean you are functioning optimally.  Do you understand your body's pain?
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Also it is important to know that all tissues heal at a relatively predictable rate even if there are other factors that might slow healing. Pain is often not very well correlated with how much tissue damage has occurred. In short this statement is False  Referred pain from the thoracic spine (mid back) and referred pain from the cervical spine (neck) can both make people feel as if they are having a heart attack.
This very thing happened to a friend of mine this week and that is why I thought it would be appropriate to discuss. She rose from the couch and immediately got a sharp stabbing pain on the left side of her chest/ribs. As she would take a deep breath the pain became sharper and more intense. The only relief that she could get was from bending forward but even that did not totally relieve her pain. The pain was so bad initially that she was feeling nauseous. Of course my friend immediately thought she was having a heart attack because of the chest pain and difficulty taking a deep breath. Was my friend crazy for thinking she was having a heart attack? Lets look at the “symptoms of a heart attack” as published by the American Heart Association.
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August 2018
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