Sports Injury Clinic Eastbourne
Are you looking for a sports injury clinic in Eastbourne?
Are you suffering with a sports injury from the gym, running on Eastbourne’s seafront or a new exercise class?
Either way, if you’re suffering this blog will help you understand more about how you can prevent injuries in the future.
You’ll learn about fascia, muscles and how parts of your body are connected.
I’ll introduce you to new concepts including tensegrity and regional interdependence.
Those words may appear complicated, but I will make them easy to understand.
If you’re looking for a chiropractor in Eastbourne, or you’ve got any questions, then contact us either to book a consultation or for a free complimentary chat.
Fascia
Firstly, what is fascia? Fascia is a densely woven system in the body. It resembles a spider’s web that covers every muscle, bone, nerve and organ.
These fascial coverings are not separate. Instead, they are part of one continuous structure that wraps us from head to toe without interruption.
We have roughly six-hundred muscles. However, it can be more accurate to say that we have one muscle and six-hundred pockets of fascial webbing.
In this way, you can see that each part of the body is connected to every other part by the fascia, like a gigantic spider’s web.
Tensegrity
Our bodies are made up of a huge network of tension relationships.
Each muscle works individually, but also functions within the spider’s web. This means that all tissues are interconnected, and all forces or strain will be ‘felt’ by all tissues to some extent.
This brings us on to the word tensegrity. The name is a combination of the words ‘tension’ and ‘integrity’. If all tissues are interconnected and all forces or strains are ‘felt’ by all tissues, our bodies act like tensegrity structures.
Tensegrity is a characteristic property of a stable three-dimensional structure. This consists of parts under tension that are connected and parts under compression that are not.
Buildings in Eastbourne do not act like tensegrity structures.
On a side note, this specific one in Brighton does.
To explain this further, if a tree comes crashing down on one side of the house it will damage the roof, but the rest of the building will remain in perfect condition. The building will collapse where the force is directly applied. If you smash the downstairs window of a house with a ball, you wouldn’t expect the upstairs toilet to shatter.
However, that is not the case with a tensegrity structure like the human body. A tensegrity structure breaks at its weakest point regardless of where a force is applied.
Therefore, as humans are tensegrity structures, a stress to our foot or shoulder may manifest as pain in the lower back or vice versa.
The human pelvis, which consists of three bones fused together, is a great example of the principle of tensegrity.
Without muscles, ligaments and fascia the pelvis would float somewhere around the middle of our bodies.
Luckily, this isn’t the case.
The pelvis could be compared to a house of cards. Equal tension prevents a house of cards from collapsing.
On the pelvis we have different muscle groups that attach. On the front of the pelvis, we have the hip flexors and on the back we have the hamstrings.
If the hamstrings lack tension the pelvis will tilt forward and give the hip flexors leverage.
Additionally, if one or both sides of the pelvis carry too much tension, it will be more prone to injury.
This will manifest where the tensegrity structure is the weakest.
Regional interdependence
Many issues, like back pain, are often not caused by tissue damage.
Because of this, we need to focus on the relationships between muscles and their functions in order to understand these issues.
This is directly related to the concept of regional interdependence.
Contemporary research on regional interdependence has shown that one part of the body can be affected by another.
This means that the body needs to be observed in its entirety if we want to understand it.
This runs in opposition to the traditional medical model where each component is assessed in isolation.
One way to view regional interdependence is through the relationship between mobile and stable segments.
The human body works in a pattern of alternating stable segments connected by mobile segments.
For example, if we work from the ground up, we can observe the following pattern of alternating mobile and stable joint segments:
Feet – Stable
Ankles – Mobile
Knees – Stable
Hips – Mobile
Lumbar Spine – Stable
Thoracic Spine – Mobile
Cervical Spine – Stable
Lumbar Spine – Stable
Thoracic Spine – Mobile
Scapulae (shoulder blades) – Stable
Glenohumeral Joints – Mobile
Elbows – Stable
Wrists – Mobile
You can see how a dysfunction in this pattern will have an impact through patterns of compensation.
For example, CrossFit athletes often present with low back pain, shortened hip flexors and a lack of thoracic spine mobility.
This is because lack of movement in the hips and thoracic spine, which should be mobile, causes a compensation.
As a result, the lumbar spine, which should be a stable segment, sacrifices that stability to obtain more movement.
These athletes can experience low back pain that is non-attributable to the standard diagnosis.
This same concept can be applied to other areas of the body as well.
Another example is an athlete that loses thoracic mobility and gets neck and shoulder pain, or an athlete that loses wrist mobility and gets elbow pain as a consequence.
Therefore, the examination of joints around the area of pain is a crucial concept of regional interdependence.
This explains why chiropractors don’t just examine the area of pain but look at surrounding areas too.
If you think a chiropractor could help you, give us a ring on 01323 722499. If you want to see me personally, remember to ask for Geoffrey Biarge when you call.
Not sure as to whether chiropractic treatment is right for you? We offer a complementary 15-minute telephone consultation with a chiropractor so you can discuss your needs.
We have free off-road parking at our chiropractors, and we’re close to the town centre bus stops with easy access to Eastbourne town centre as well.
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By Geoffrey Biarge
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