Information please on MRT treatment for OA

Just to add - golf could very well set up the kind of imbalance that I'm talking about. The one sided rotational nature could over time cause your body to 'stick' with a twist in the spine/pelvis. This WILL result in an apparent leg length discrepency and can cause restriction, discomfort, pain - even impingement of the hip joint. And of course degenerative changes. But fix the cause and chances are the degenerative changes won't really be an issue. Degenerative changes in joints are only an issue if they're giving you problems or if they're getting worse.

My problem was caused by one-sided karate practice.

Physios, hip specialists and so on AREN'T traing to detect or treat problems like this. They denied it existed in my case!

Susan, Thaks for your comments.  I do follow your  comments regularly with interest.  I had hoped that my problem was all in my body  imbalance, but recently had a 2nd x-ra doney, and can see the degeneration in my lift hip.  The joint is changing shape and I have less cushioining between the ball and socket joint.  So unfortunately there does seem to be OA present.  I must admit, and I don't know  why,  but the last couple of days have been wonderful and have been walking without a limp (consciously, of course).  I do live out in Spain during the winter and the weather has become very warm of late, I just wonder if this has an affect. 

I certainly will check out Function Patterns.  Thanks

Carole, I too have degenerative changes in both hips - clearly shown on x-ray. That x-ray was done 10 years ago so I've no idea what my joints look like now, but I have no symptoms now.

Stress can be a factor in soft tissue imbalances. My problem developed during a time when both my parents were dying. I used to walk into the nursing home to visit my mum absolutely fine and on the way back out everyone would say "have you hurt your hip?" - the stress / emotional upset locked it right up. I'm sure heat could have a similar effect - maybe just because you're more relaxed/happy?

The thing to remember is that there is no correlation between x-ray evidence of degenerative changes and symptoms. Some people have little no evidence of OA on xray yet severe symptoms and others have dreadfully degenerated joints and no symptoms. I'm sure your doctor will tell you this if you press him.

This suggests to me that soft tissue is the likely cause of many/most of the problems.....with the joint damage possibly being a result?

At the end of the day you can't do any harm exploring the soft tissue possibilities. Due to the way that the body works, even if the primary cause of your problems is the joint degeneration you WILL have soft tissue problems making symptoms worse. So I would have thought that in all cases improvement is possible. Possibly in some? many? cases, complete resolution of symptoms. My experience though is it's VERY difficult to resolve these soft tissue problems. So persist. Don't give up. And good luck!

Thanks once again for your reply.  I will perservere.  I think I spoke too soon and I am back limping yesterday, just trying to analyse what I did.  Played green bowls which I suppose didn't help.  I know you don't have the same problem, but what would you recommend on the soft tissue area - a massage? not sure where to go on this one.

Take a look at this video graphic of how the sacrum (base of the spine), inominates (wings of the pelvis) and spine move through the gait cycle.

https://vimeo.com/107191637

It's known that there's a set pattern to how all the parts of the spine and pelvis move in relation to each other during gait. Think of the sacrum (base of the spine) as being the foundation with everything moving in relation to that. When you step forwads with your right leg the sacrum tilts right and rotates right; as your sacrum tilts and rotates that way your lumber spine tilts and rotates the opposite way; your thoracic spine tilts and rotates the opposite way to lumber spine and cervical spine opposite to that. Scapular (shoulders) move in relation to thoracic spine. And as you can see from the diagram the wings of the pelvis move in relation to the sacrum too and this affects the whole leg.

When you get a movement impairment - so when your muscles stop firing in the correct sequence, your sacrum (and therefore the whole spine, pelvis and shoulders) will be held in the wrong position. With the boney structures of your body in the wrong place, the attatchement points of the muscles are also in the wrong place. Some muscles are in a compromised position and can't work as they should; other muscles try to take up the slack and do jobs they weren't designed to do. This will cause tension, pain and 'trigger points' in muscles. Because muscles designed to stabilise can't do their job, other muscles designed to move limbs have to act as stabilisers - this can prevent them from doing their job of moving limbs, further adding to joint restriction. Over time it will also cause joint wear. 

Symptoms can be relieved with trigger point therapy / myofasial release. You can do this yourself and there is plenty of information online to guide you. In time you'll get a feel for where your tight muscles and trigger points are and you'll be able to relieve them with self-massage.

Loosening off those trigger points is part of the solution, but on it's own all it'll do is provide temporary symptomatic relief.

The 'cure' is to get all the muscles firing correctly - so to restore normal gait. That will restore correct posture, align joints correctly and take the pressure off of the soft tissue.

I've mentioned a few methodologies in this thread that can help, but as I said earlier, I really do think the most promising is Functional Patterns. They center everything around restoring correct gait - they are I believe unique in this respect and I think they're onto something special!! Their stuff is a bit hard to follow if you aren't used to exercising - it's aimed at athletes. But I think their gait training program is very doable. Ideally their entire 'human foundations' package. But if you were to get the gait program first (only a few pounds) and if you think you're likely to manage it then you can get the price of that taken off the full package.

I hope this makes sense.

Of course, other things can go wrong. But generally speaking, because of the way the entire spine, scapular and pelvis are tied into the position of the sacrum then anything that goes wrong in your body will typically upset the gait pattern. Fixing gait should bring everythign back into line.

If you're interested in the theory behind this I can give you links to some more info describing how being 'stuck' somewhere in the gait cycle causes an apparant leg length dyscrepency. Just let me know.

None of this is accepted or understood by mainstream medicine, but mainly I think because the 'cure' is complex and unlikely to be succesful with many people. Therefore there is little to be gained in teaching it to health professionals. That's essentially what one of my physios told me anyway! Chiropractors are very familiar with this theory, but their attempts at cure fail because they focus on 'clicking' the skeleton. What's needed in most cases is to retrain movement patterns so the muscles move the skeleton correctly during gait. VERY complex and difficult - but Functional Patterns seem to have cracked it. I recommended the videos, but perhaps their e-book on posture would be better for you? That will explain all you need to know to restore posture, gait and relieve pain. It's called "The Power of Posture" - not expensive and you can download it from their website.

The ideal would be to go see someone trained in Functional Patterns - I honestly think they could help. But you're out of luck if you're in the UK. Although they are planning on running a course here this summer (I'm hoping to go to it).

 

Once again thank you for your comments.  There's a lot to digest and will certainly look into your recommendations.