What’s happening when our joints crack and is it bad?

What’s happening when our joints crack and is it bad?

We’ve all had the experience of standing up and hearing a loud pop in our back or hip, or trying to tiptoe through the house only to have our foot make a cracking sound each time we take a step. So what’s happening in our joints when this happens, and is it a bad sign?

Read More

Massage Therapy and Concussions

Massage Therapy and Concussions

This year has been my third year attending the annual See The Line Concussion Research Symposium. Every year there is something new that I learn and someone brings up old information that I have forgotten, so here I put together some of my notes so massage therapists can have a reference page if they are looking to get into working with a patient population who have suffered a concussion or is suffering from post-concussion syndrome.

Image Credit: Andreas Vesalius' Fabrica, published in 1543, showing the base of the human brain, including optic chiasma, cerebellum, olfactory bulbs, etc.

Read More

Acupuncture for knee pain

Acupuncture for knee pain

This week, I came across a new study published in The Clinical Journal of Pain, this study looks at the effect of acupuncture on patients with osteoarthritis, reading through the study I was impressed because the treatment approach is similar to the neurofunctional approach taught by Alejandro Elorriaga. Slowly but surely modern approaches to acupuncture are being evaluated in a scientific manner. This is a good thing, because there is a plethora of anecdotal evidence that acupuncture is effective and a growing body of scientific evidence that patients benefit from evidence based acupuncture treatments.

Read More

New Research: The Effects of Acupuncture on Chronic Knee Pain

New Research: The Effects of Acupuncture on Chronic Knee Pain

Here is a link to a new meta-analysis, published in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery, this paper draws some parallels with what I have seen published in the past. Time after time it has been shown that acupuncture often has favorable results and that there are multiple mechanisms of action including, but not limited to the placebo response.

Read More

The Coming Age of Quantum Biology

The Coming Age of Quantum Biology

This week I got my hands on Life on the Edge: The Coming Age of Quantum Biology, I have been waiting to read this book for awhile now after seeing Jim Al-Khalilis' Ted Talk on Quantum Biology. Things get weird in the world of Quantum Biology this includes the collective intelligence of active matter. This has opened up many new fields of studies and now biologists are working to understand how these groups self-organize. An excellent introduction to the fascinating world of active matter is this recent paper on collective cell durotaxis.

Image Credit:  Bare Dreamer - Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

Read More