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Taping Ankle Pain
January 8, 2009

I had an interesting client the other day who has had inner ankle pain for 2+ years. This alone is unusual as I have only seen outer ankle pain before.  She has been treated by chiropractors, accupuncturists, cold laser treatment, massage therapists etc with no change. Finally she went to see an orthopedic doctor who, in spite of finding no evidence for a fracture, placed screws in her ankle. Still the pain persisted.

This was an unusual case to be sure only because nothing made any difference to her ankle--better or worse. I began with her hip evaluation and found several problems there as well with the lower leg. Correcting these, however, made no immediate difference in her ankle pain.

Finally I began testing the influence of her arch on her pain. Still no change. I then mobilized her ankle bone forward and backward. This almost always elicits a positive response for pain relief. No change. Then I tried something I'd never done before and mobilized her inner ankle bone upward or cephalad. Her pain disappeared.

But how could she keep the ankle bone up like this? I decided to try taping it, essentially cradling the ankle bone while pulling it up and completing the tape by partially spiraling it around her shin. This relieved most of the pain, which wasn't good enough. I wanted her to be completely pain free when she left my office. So I took a third strip of tape and, holding the bone in the corrected position, taped it in a cephalad direction. She was completely pain free after the third piece.

This is very unusual because taping the inner ankle is taping the tibia--a weightbearing bone. To think the the tape would hold a position against the tremendous force of the body weight is something interesting. I tape feet successfully all the time but that is correcting a pronation force directed rotationally so the tape has a better chance to hold the correction. This is much different.

She is doing much better now. I believe the hip issues I discovered set her up for this alignment issue and she will need to correct those to remove the stress to the ankle bone. But for the time being, she is snowboarding and hiking without pain. The first time in more than two years.

To me this is an amazing example of just how little a change needs to occur in order to correct pain. I don't believe I actually even moved the tibial mortise but instead just unweighted it a little.


Turning 4
January 6, 2009

My son is turning four years old tomorrow. It's a strange way to mark time, having kids. Tonight was the last time I hugged my three-year-old boy. I'm so proud of him!


Fixing You
January 6, 2009

I have been writing a book detailing some very powerful self-treatment techniques I use to treat patients with chronic pain. It's been an interesting venture because, in the process of writing the book, I now understand how my subconscious or intuition has been working to guide my treatments. This understanding, in turn, has helped guide my treatments.

Each chapter of the book addressed a different area of the body. For instance neck pain & headaches, shoulder pain, elbow pain, back pain, hip pain, knee pain, foot & ankle pain and back pain & sciatica during pregnancy. The feedback I've received is that the information was too technical for laypeople (who happen to be my audience). In the process of breaking the information down even more, each chapter has expanded to become its own book.

The title of the series will be Fixing You. The first book out will be Fixing You: Back Pain and will be followed by seven other books all to be published this year. It will be a busy year for me! My sincerest hope is that these books help the thousands of people out there living with chronic pain. So often with just a little attention to the right areas, pain will vanish. I hope the Fixing You series can guide people to pain-free lives.


Treating Tennis Elbow
January 6, 2009

I've recently stumbled on, what I believe, to be a successful treatment for the elimination of tennis elbow or golfer's elbow. I was working with a golfer with a history of severe elbow pain. It was so bad that 2 years prior, he had one of his forearm muscles severed by a surgeon to reduce his pain. This worked to some extent but he could still not swing a club or exercise with weights.

Typically my treatment involved painful digging into the forearm muscles to release deep trigger points and gain temporary relief. But the pain from tennis elbow always returned. I would've done the same with my golfer but the surgeon severed the very muscle I usually targeted! Obviously the pain was coming from somewhere else.

I was working with his shoulder, fixing problems there when I noticed a subtle change in his club head angle. After evaluating his forearm I found his forearm rotators were not working correctly. I developed a treatment for them which I thought should remedy the issues I encountered and he was completely pain-free within one minute. His pain returned slightly next week so I treated him again and the pain was gone for good.

I've since tested this treatment out on a few others with similar results. I'm writing a series of books and one is about elbow pain, in which I will include this new simple treatment. I'm very excited and hope others have similar results.


Distracting Knee Pain
December 9, 2008

I just began working with a man scheduled for right knee replacement surgery. He wanted to know what pre-surgical strengthening he might do to help him recover from his surgery. When I examined his right knee, he was unable to extend it fully--lacking approximately 10 degrees. It was swollen and painful. During the course of my examinating I found several things wrong with his left hip, namely poor gluteal function and hamstring dominance. My initial thoughts were he was compensating for deficient strength of his left leg.

Then I decided to try and alleviate his right knee pain through a few alignment tests I like to perform. None of these had any effect. That is until I distracted the knee. Immediately he felt pain relief so we stayed with it for a few minutes. I asked him to stand up and he could almost fully extend the knee! I educated him about activating the gluteals while walking and we practiced that. Within 15 minutes his knee began to flex again so  we tried the distraction again, this time lying on his stomach so I could anchor a small weight on his ankle to assist the knee into extension while I provided the traction. The result was dramatic. He could fully extend the knee and walk correctly without pain.

We've since had two treatments (1x/wk) and he is now calling off the surgery and contemplating skiing this season. Again, my thoughts return to the fact that by improving his biomechanics by both fully extending the knee and correcting his gait dynamics we are able to improve pain free function. I do not doubt that his cartilage is still missing but it begs the question once more that just because we see an alteration in the structure of a joint or soft tissue, it doesn't mean that is where the pain is coming from. To me it is an indication that something is wrong biomechanically. If we correct the mechanics, pain eases and function returns.


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