Freedom In Movement Physiotherapy and Wellness

  As holidays approaching, whether we celebrate or not, whether we get together or not, that lingering pain or tightness is still there.  Let's encourage each other to not become complacent of taking care of our body and our health.  Amongst the rest and holiday feasting, regular cardiovascular and stretching exercises are more important than ever.  Hopefully we can also get to do some resistance training to gain some muscle strength as well as flexibility.   Here, we are highlighting some important stretches or range of motion exercises to lengthen our spine and reverse the tightness from sitting too long.  Let's keep moving and remember to avoid pain! 1. Neck   chin tuck levator muscle stretch   2. Mid-back      rotation      side bending (bend your neck as well) 3. Lower back extension flexion (let your neck drop forward as well) 4. Hip flexor 5. Hamstrings Merry Christmas and Happy Exercise from ours to yours!

  Have you started to feel the joy of this season? Despite the pandemic , I am sure Santa will be so happy to delivery the presents with the mask on!  Amidst the lockdown in Toronto and Peel Region , We are so honoured to have your trust to stay open and serve you when you have pain.   In this blog, we are going to talk about different injuries that happen more in the winter season and how we can prevent them from happening: 1. slip and fall on the ice       - good lighting when possible; if not, test the surface while holding onto something     - take it slow and slide along the ground     - wear  boots with good grit     - use pointy walking sticks when necessary 2. shoveling injuries       - choose an ergonomic shovel     - always bend the knees and avoid twisting the spine with good  body biomechanics     - always engage the core muscles (chin in, shoulder blades back and abdominal muscles tight)     - push the snow instead of lift     - plan ahead where to shovel first and where

  Stretching is so important to help us lead a healthy and pain free life.  As muscles and fascia get tight, the pressure on our joints and nerves also increases, which leads to pain.  Repetitive work nature , prolonged posture or strong force exertion could all increase tension in our muscular and fascial systems.  Aging itself can cause tightness in our tissues as well.  To prevent the tightness from becoming pain, we need to stretch!  Everyday.  Even three sessions a day to allow our tightened structures to stay lengthened.   My favourite daily stretch Physiotherapists will do a detailed full body muscle length and strength testing to see where you are tight and weak.  Then we can design a personalized targeted stretching and strengthening program for you.  It is not the same as doing yoga or pilates but it will prepare you to participate in yoga or pilates classes without risk of getting injured.  With progression, the personalized exercise program will assist you to partic

Have you heard of Golfer's elbow  (medial epicondylitis) or Tennis elbow  (lateral epicondylitis)?  Elbow pain is another common pain people have.  We certainly see a lot of it at our practice.  The funny thing is Golfer's elbow is rarely resulted from playing golf and tennis elbow is rarely resulted from playing tennis.  Of course any racket sport can cause upper extremity pain but the most common causes of the elbow pain we see is from lifting and computer use .   We need to address ergonomics for both causes of lifting and computer use.  Lifting technique with good posture control is important and can easily be practiced prior to return to work or daily activity.  Computer use ergonomics can be a bit more complicated due to it involving more than one items, i.e. computer, desk, chair, keyboard and the mouse.  Physiotherapists can help  you to arrange your work station that is safe for you to prevent repetitive injuries.   Just like any pain, we need to address the issue

  Are we going to have a second wave of the coronavirus    pandemic  this fall and winter?  Are kids going to get infected from the schools ?  How many parents are returning to work , which increased the risk of spreading, this fall?  So many questions without answers right now.  It is definitely creating some anxieties in our lives.  From our work at this small physiotherapy facility, we can start to sense that people are returning to work more as we are getting increased requests for evening hours.  We had a bliss during the past few months when we did not have to work in the evenings.  Now in the fall we will probably need to go back to a few days of evening hours again to provide for people who resume their  commute to work.  Or not - are we going to get locked down again? We have decided to keep our daughter, who is starting grade one, at home this September to see how things unfold and also to keep our family health risk at minimum.  My mom is 70 years old and lives with us. 

  Wrist pain is quite common and can be caused by a lot of different factors.  One common cause is from the carpal bones , which are small and very mobile to allow our wrist quite a bit of motion to accomplish our tasks. Sometimes with repetitive stress the bones might move into a position that it gets stuck and cannot return to its neutral position.  That could happen especially if the wrist muscles are weak or too tight in certain directions.  Lunate is the most common carpal to be pushed out of its optimal position.  Other than repetitive stress, it could also happen with a fall or a car accident when the wrist is impacted in a flexed position.   When people come in to see a physiotherapist with a wrist pain, we will assessment the wrist range of motion and strength and to find out where the pain is coming from.  When we determine the pain is from a loose carpal, most likely the lunate, we can often perform a quick manipulation of the carpal  to bring the small bone back to its ne

Lumbar Spine and Sacrum Lower back pain can come from different sources, muscles, joints, ligaments or discs and sometimes the source can be all of the above at the same time.  We need to identify the source and the level of the cause (L1, 2, 3, 4 or 5) and sometimes it could be at the sacrum level, where the sacrum and the pelvis form a joint, the sacroiliac (SI) joint .  In this blog, we are going to talk about the pain at the sacrum level specifically. Sacroiliac (SI) Joint - marked red at the right side Pain at the SI joint can be caused by tight muscles along the spine, like the superficial erector spinae or the deep multifidus that can run from the neck down the sacrum.  When the myofascial system becomes so tight from working out or prolonged posture, it can pull so hard on the sacrum and cause a shift of the sacrum position, which cause compression on the nerve root travelling through the SI joint and cause a lot of pain. Lumbosacral Nerves/Plexus      

Shoulder pain is such a common reason to seek physiotherapy and we see lots of it at our practice. Sports injuries, a fall or repetitive movement with a slouched posture all could lead to shoulder tendinitis or pain.  In severe cases, the tendons could tear or the bony structure of the joint could fracture and that would complicate the healing process for sure.  No matter what is the cause of the pain, maintaining a good posture is always important in shoulder rehabilitation  after the fracture is healed or after surgical tendon tear repair is needed. (This is a great video for posture correction:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R54QoUbbow ) The earlier you come for an assessment in order to start moving that injured or painful shoulder the better the recovery down the road would be.  When the physiotherapist suspects fracture or tear, we will refer you to your medical practitioner right away for further investigation.  Most of the time, we need to continue therapy especia

It's definitely a different time we are in.  SARS did not create such a spread like COVID-19 .  Most of us could continue the normal without much worry in 2003.  At first, I thought and hoped it would be the case this time as well with COVID-19 but boy was I totally wrong.  Maybe most of the public health officials were dumbfounded as well.  COVID-19 was a surprise and spread like a wildfire all of a sudden, causing businesses and schools to shut down and creating so much anxiety and uncertainty in our world. It all happened in mid-March when there was a huge spike up in number of cases in Canada. Our family was very lucky to be able to travel to Cuba in January 2020 when the Asian countries were starting to lock down.  The virus did not spread this way yet then.  It was the very first trip for our young family of four and probably would be the last for a while.  Taiwan was the first to take precaution and limited travel to and from China.  It served the public in Taiwan well

  It is the month again when we remember the importance of physiotherapy in our health care system and celebrate with our colleagues across the nation.  It is wonderful physiotherapy has been listed as an essential service during the COVID-19 pandemic.  It validates how we as physiotherapists are helping people and making a difference in their lives.  We struggle sometimes with our professional identity as different professions are doing parts of what we do.  However, the reality is that we are unique as a profession bridging the medial doctors and patients' recovery, with wide ranges of expertise from neurological, pulmonary, musculoskeletal rehab to wound healing.  Sometimes if not most of the time we serve an important role to guide patients when doctors are too busy to comment on patients' long road of recovery after seeing them briefly for a few minutes.   A perfect example that happened to our family recently was that my mother injured one of her right fingers, which r

     It feels like a new era that we are offering  Virtual Care  but in reality, some physios are offering virtual care for years as their regular day-to-day practice.  It's not something new but it's the only option right now for non-urgent cases during the pandemic season.  Some people embrace it as it is empowering and convenient.  They feel they are enabled to help themselves and not dependent on anyone else.  They also like the convenience of not leaving their home.  Some people though don't see how it would change their pain without therapist putting hands on them or providing modalities as treatment. What is physiotherapy exactly?  It has become a question for all of us to answer and to define again.  However, maybe nothing has changed; there are just different ways to deliver physiotherapy and different priorities to consider when choosing how to deliver the service.     As a physiotherapist practicing manual and exercise therapy for years along with modalities, i