Tendinitis and Bursitis- What to Do?

Tendinitis, Bursitis and Bowenwork

   As we start into the warmer months we rush to increase our exercise and healthy activity. Unfortunately, however enthusiastic we are, we may be trying to build our exercise and activity level too quickly, as if we were trying to go 60 miles per hour immediately from a dead stop.

   The result is often mild to severe joint and muscle pain. While some soreness can be a natural product of exercise, when we have pain that doesn’t respond quickly and easily we pay a call on our physician. The physician may say that we have a case of Tendonitis or Bursitis, depending on whether the area affected is between a muscle and a joint or directly at a joint. The most common recommendation will be rest, ice and anti-inflammatory medication, together with the suggestion that “it should clear right up”. We dutifully begin our rest and ice applications, pick up and begin to take our meds and wait for the pain to decrease.

   The story can be picked up a few days later, with no change in our pain level, except for increased stomach upset from the medication. We ask our physician what else to do and are told there is nothing else to be done, either “it will improve” or “it is just a part of growing older”. This is not what we wanted to hear, or keep feeling. Where is our healing capacity? Where is our resilience? Are we becoming decrepit?

   Of course we are not falling apart even though we have begun to think so. It may be that we have been given a series of what can be called “arms-length” diagnoses. “Arms-length” meaning the physician is keeping us at a safe distance when they have no concrete answer to our problem. This isn’t to criticize the doctor; rather it is just an example of a profession-wide gap in training on musculo-skeletal and soft tissue issues. Physicians don’t have tools in their toolkits to address these issues, so they may resort to the arms-length suggestions to pacify their patients.

   If we use a system like Bowenwork or Voila that was designed to address structural imbalances and soft-tissue problems, we immediately have the tools in our toolkit that can provide solutions that are fast, safe and effective. Bowenwork or Voila can take the “heat” right out of a joint or muscle. What may seem to be tendonitis may be a muscle imbalance on either side of a joint or an over-contracting muscle, in either case they can help. What looks like bursitis may be a misalignment of the joint surfaces, which they can help, and without any joint manipulation, or “cracking”. If it is truly tendonitis or bursitis, there are specific protocols for each issue in either the Bowenwork or Voila toolkit.

   So if we are looking to start correctly and to keep going with our exercise resolutions, Bowenwork can be central in insuring that. Bowenwork can also be great as a tune-up to keep us humming along well after we have gotten fully into our warm weather activities. 

Stress- Causing you Distress? Stress Responses and Health

   Stress is a term coined by Hans Selye to describe the stimulus that an individual receives from either inner or outer sources.
That is to say, any input, whether physiological, psychological or environmental, we receive is a stress on us. The problem we have is that we confuse the input or stimulus with the response.
   Selye also said that there were different types of stress. One type that resulted in unhealthy responses he termed Distress. The other that resulted in positive effects he named Eu-stress.
   Dis-tress may be a case of a physical input. A noisy neighbor causes us to lose sleep and feel tired and unfocused at our work the next day. Eu-stress can be having a neighbor that has us over for a lively get-together that lasts until the wee hours, which we savor with fond memories the next day.
   As you can see by the way Selye categorized the different stresses that it is not a matter of what the input is, but rather a matter of its outcome, our response to it, that dictates whether stress is positive or negative. Popular culture has dictated that stress is bad when it actually has neutral value. The most important issue is what Selye termed the Stress Response. How do we respond to the inner and outer messages that we receive moment-to-moment, day-to-day throughout our lives?
Will we over-react with dramatic life-or-death responses, or will we calmly take in the stimulus and react appropriately?
   A central component of how we react and respond to stress is the organization of our nervous system and organ systems. We have what is called an Autonomic nervous system that controls 80% of the functions in our bodies. It has two major aspects. The Sympathetic and the Parasympathetic.
   The Sympathetic controls the immediate survival, “fight or flight”, functions like breathing and heart rate, glucose and adrenaline production, muscle tension and pain response.
   The Parasympathetic controls long-term survival functions like digestion, elimination, tissue regeneration and healing. Each works interdependently with the other, balancing their functions like two people on a see-saw. When one side is “up” or active, the other is “down” or quiet. So if one side is over-active or “stays on” too long, the other side can suffer. If there is too much Sympathetic reaction the long-term health of the body suffers. If there is too much Parasympathetic reaction, we could get run over by a truck.
   In our hectic society too much attention is paid to “fight or flight” so we are conditioned to react to stress as if it is an imminent survival issue. This results in over-stimulation, exhaustion, and malnutrition, along with the delay of our tissue repair functions for our circulatory systems and other organ functions.
  We need to practice our relaxation, where our calm response helps the Parasympathetic function can swing into action. Learning that a relaxed state is normal and natural state and maintaining that state is an integral part of a healthy lifestyle. Finding a balance between the Sympathetic portion and Parasympathetic portion helps our bodies operate in harmony.
   Using ways  initiate activity in the Parasympathetic, is an integral part of protecting our capacity to accelerate healing. Meditation, and visualization, can be powerful self-care tools to restore parasympathetic balance. Bowenwork is a modality that has a natural shift for the body into the parasympathetic state. Each session of Bowenwork begins by deeply relaxing the body, bringing the Parasympathetic into action to jump-start healing. These methods remind us of our natural healing state and of our powerful capacity to heal with the proper response to stress.


   I hope this article has provoked some interest and thoughts on the subject od stress and our various healthy and healthy responses to it. I hope to hear from you readers on the subject. I welcome your comments and contributions.
Kevin Minney 2011

Low Back Pain- A Misdiagnosed Epidemic?

Low Back Pain is a problem that is said to affect 80% of the United States population at some time through their lifetimes. Even the common cold would be pleased to reach that many people. There are billions of dollars in lost productivity, medical expenses ranging for prescriptions of anti-inflammatories through the strongest painkillers to Physical therapy, exercise, chiropractic and osteopathic therapies and even surgical intervention. Yet there is no clear understanding in mainstream medical practice of the real causes of low back pain.
Modern MRI imaging can show us the picture of a bulging or herniated disc with the physician’s focus being on the repair or removal of the injured tissue.The disc injury has the potential to mechanically press on a nerve root and its herniated material is inflammatory and toxic when in contact with the nerve, resulting in pain and debility for the client but the treatment for the injury often does not address the cause of the disc injury or the lack of recovery after the disc injury has been addressed.
The explanation of how and why the disc came to be in that state is usually omitted. An analogy might be when our front tire shows abnormal wear, getting the tire replaced without seeing if we have an alignment problem that is causing the wear. We can continue to replace our tires or have on-going therapy, epidural injections and even surgery without addressing the issue that fundamental to our problem.
Our spine not only carries the central communication cable of our nervous system, the spinal cord, it is the structural “suspension bridge” for our body. As the central structural member, it is intrinsically linked to our lower body movement components, the legs, through the pelvis and sacrum, and to our breathing and upper body support, the ribcage. These links mean it is susceptible to influence from an imbalance in the pelvis, sacrum and ribcage.
In the case of the pelvis an imbalance can mean that the halves of the pelvis are not level leaving the lower back to have an uneven force acting on it, tipping it as if standing sideways on a hill. This puts a force on the lumbar vertebrae and opens up more space on one side of the spine than the other providing a space for the disc to herniate into.
In the case of the sacrum it can rotate to support the spine but fail to return to neutral, putting a torquing force into the lower back.
The ribcage can sustain an injury or restriction that limits its normal movement during breathing. While the body is taking its 11-13,000 breaths each day a side-bending or torquing signal is sent through the spine with each breath.
In very few cases are these basic inputs to the imbalance and injury of the spine considered, let alone addressed. The result is greater costs for the client in terms of continuing pain and debility and in increased medical costs.
Bowenwork addresses all of the areas mentioned with minimal intrusion on the body. It addresses the spine and its cooperative actions with the pelvis, sacrum and ribcage. This provides a comprehensive method of quickly and powerfully addressing low back pain for long-term relief and significantly reduced costs.