Latest News at PTX Therapy

Millions of us wake up each day with muscle, joint or back pain. From loosing your job to giving up your favorite activities, chronic pain can put a real damper on your quality of life. Sadly, traditional treatments, medications, and surgeries have not yet solved the pain epidemic afflicting so many. Fortunately, there is a new player in the pain-relief game. Posture Therapy is a promising new alternative for its low-risk, simple methodology that has been proven effective for a wide range of pain conditions. Posture Therapy really isn’t all that new. It has been around for over 40 years. It’s receiving new attention however, as thousands of testimonials(1) from patients of trained Posture Therapists and a recent clinical study provide evidence that Posture Therapy is worth a try. The Journal of the American Medical Association published a randomized clinical trial performed from 2017 to 2020 which determined Posture Therapy is “as good or better at treating spine pain than usual medical care.”(2) There’s even a book written about patients whose lives were changed by posture therapy. Many are patients who had not found relief anywhere else.(3) Not only does Posture Therapy provide better pain relief for all kinds of muscle and joint conditions, it is also risk-free compared to prescription meds and invasive surgeries. What is Posture Therapy? Posture therapy is the correction of posture to relieve muscle and joint pain. Each patient’s posture is analyzed in comparison to the ideal human posture. Special exercises which are specially sequenced for optimal results are prescribed to restore proper joint angles and muscle strength. A few key principles make posture therapy different from many other exercise or pain relief therapies that may have failed you. Posture Therapy Differences: Whole-body Treatment Focus Specific, Unique-to-each-patient Therapy Plans Simple, Easy To Perform Movements Focus on Posture Improvement 1. Whole Body Focus Posture Therapy is one of the only pain relief therapies to assess and correct imbalances from head to toe, no matter where your symptoms present themselves. Pain and symptoms in one area are often caused by something that is happening in another area. With a whole-body therapy plan, the root cause of the pain will be identified and addressed more quickly, so you won’t waste time chasing symptoms. 2. Unique-To-You Therapy Plan The Posture Therapy routines prescribed are never the same for any two people. Every session begins with a complete assessment of your pain history and a head- to-toe posture analysis. Photos and a gait analysis are used to assess your current posture and movement limitations. A series of exercises are then carefully assigned to each patient to bring the crooked parts of your posture back to square. Your past injuries, activity levels, jobs, sports, and more contribute to how your body looks at this very moment. Your body looks and moves differently from everyone else’s, so your therapy should also be specific to you too. 3. Simple, Easy To Perform Exercises Posture therapy exercises are specialized, but are simple enough to be performed at home by anyone. Many of the exercises use body weight and are performed against a level surface for frame of reference, like a wall, chair, or the floor. This is how the exercise positions themselves effectively square up your joints with no special equipment. When the muscles regain their proper length and tension, right to left and front to back, the pressure, stress, and pain from uneven joints and pinched nerves is relieved. Sound simple? It really is. 4. Focus On Posture Improvement The goal of every exercise used in a Posture Therapy routine is to straighten your load bearing joints, and return function to your entire muscular system. The exercises may look and feel similar to those in yoga, pilates, and other movement therapies. However, slight variations to these common exercises have a more pronounced effect on deep posture muscles. Performing a downward dog or squat with your feet turned out will activate different muscles than if your feet are pointed straight ahead. A Posture Therapist is an expert on the change that each variation of an exercise will elicit, and they will assign the version that is right for your body. Once the right exercises are selected, they are sequenced in a way for your body to regain function in the fastest way possible. With this combination, you’ll get your crooked posture back to straight again in no time. Your body responds to the stimulus you give it, you just need the right exercises in the right order to get you moving again pain-free. Posture Therapy begins with a complete, whole-body assessment that may involve photos, gait analysis, and functional tests. From the assessment, your therapist will assign a series of gentle exercises and movements specifically for your body. With the muscles functioning more properly in a balanced postural position, your body will move freely again, pain-free. Posture Therapy is risk-free, simple to do, and effective for relieving pain. Where can you find Posture Therapy? Start online at PTXTherapy.com or find a clinic near you.       1 Posture Solutions.com Testimonials Painfree Posture Clinic Testimonials Posture First Testimonials Align Pain Solutions Testimonials PTX Therapy Life Stories Exercise Therapy KC Testimonials Verticalign Testimonials Pain Free Denver Testimonials 2 Choudhry NK, Fifer S, Fontanet CP, et al. Effect of a biopsychosocial intervention or postural therapy on disability and health care spending among patients with acute and subacute spine pain: The SPINE CARE randomized clinical trial. JAMA. 2022;328(23):2334-2344. doi:10.1001/jama.2022.22625 3 Greenfield, E., & Ferrante, M. (2019). How Did I Not Know About This?: Becoming Pain-free Through Posture Therapy. North Atlantic Books.

Your neck hurts occasionally. Every couple of months you get this pounding headache right behind your eyes. Could your problem be text neck? According to Physiopedia, “text neck is overuse syndrome, usually resulting from excessive strain on the neck from looking down at any handheld mobile device, which can lead to headaches, neck pain, shoulder and arm pain, and breathing compromise.” Text neck looks similar to forward head posture. If you’ve been told you have either one, what can you even do about it? We’ve all seen pictures of it, and warnings about how we use our phones, but yet we continue to text all day and look down at them. I mean, is it even realistic to hold your phone at eye level whenever you use it? It’s really not, and luckily for you, there is a better solution. 20 Second Text Neck Test First things first. You only need 20 seconds to find out if you have a forward head or text neck. Find an empty wall or door, and do the following test described by Courtney at Functional Fitness, a PTX Licensed therapist: “Stand at the wall with your heels up against it. Allow your body to settle against the wall. Notice if your shoulders and head rest against the wall or if you have to push your head to get it to the wall (please don’t force your head) just notice where your head is.” My head is Forward, Now What? Once you’ve stood up for a moment at the wall, you will know whether your head is touching or not. If it’s not touching the wall easily, then chances are, your head, neck, and/or shoulder pain is stemming from your forward head or text neck posture. How To Fix “Text-Neck” Do you want to fix your text neck? You could try to lift your phone up to eye level when you use it. You might try to change your phone habits, but that probably won’t last. Fortunately there’s a much easier answer. You can correct your forward head position, and still be able to look down and use your phone all day. You see, the body just needs a little bit of ‘reverse’ stimulus to keep it in the right position. All you really need to remind the head and neck to stay upright are a few gentle exercises done up against a wall. When performed regularly, this will be enough to keep your neck from reverting back to text neck with a little phone usage. The most important thing you can do with the confirmation that you have “text neck” is to do SOMETHING. Anything. It’s worth 5 minutes of your day to reverse what’s happening to your head. If you don’t do anything, the pain will only get worse and more irreversible as time goes on. Your head and neck will continue to shift forward even more as gravity pulls it forward. Don’t let this be your story. A little prevention now will save you years of head and neck pain and medical expenses. Try this exercise from Functional Fitness to get your head back over your shoulders and fix text neck. If doing this one exercise daily isn’t enough, and it might not be depending on how bad things are, then you can get a custom-tailored program to straighten things faster at PTXTherapy.com or from the staff at Functional Fitness.

Wow, there is so much to blame moms for; emotional enmeshment issues, overweight (clean plate club) issues, and husbands and wives fighting about family vacations, to name a few. But, most moms instinctively tried to do one thing right for your back, and hips, and knees, and neck. She said,   SIT UP STRAIGHT! Yep, great advice, if you could pull it off. Of course, it isn’t just sitting up straight, it’s standing up straight as well. The secret to your back pain problem is POSTURE. Most doctors and physical therapist don’t really understand the Power of Posture because they are caught in the old adage that, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you’ll treat every problem as a nail.” You don’t go to lawyers for marriage counseling. You don’t go to surgeons for non-invasive natural solutions. And, oddly enough, you don’t want to go to most physical therapists for long-term physical pain solutions. Lawyers go to divorce court, surgeons cut, and physical therapists work on one part of the body at a time. The truth is that you need the right strategy that fits the right goal.   What Causes Pain? This is tricky because the word ‘causes’ is misleading most of the time. If you were asked, “What causes rain?” what would you say? Is it moisture in the air? Is it a front where cold air and warm air collide? Moisture can be fog and a cold front can be totally rain free. The key is that it is a combination, a system, that causes the rain. With pain, it’s quite similar. Of course, your nerves convey signals to your brain that say you hurt. So, no nerves, no pain. But also, it could be no brain no pain! The real key to your nerve pain is either that there is something wrong with the nerve all by itself, or the nerve is experiencing pressure from somewhere. That’s why posture is so important. You body is a system, so even pain is caused by some combination of elements or factors. If we think about it in simple terms, how could your muscles or joints really hurt if everything is lined up correctly (like when you were a child)? Frankly, your musculoskeletal system is fine when everything is in the right place. We can just as easily say that ‘being crooked’ is the source of your hurt. Over the years your body has gotten crooked because of your environment, injuries, and lifestyle; and that crookedness makes you hurt. Essentially that’s the problem. However, the problem is a little more involved than that. It’s not that your back hurts because it’s crooked (maybe), but it could have a lot to do with your neck, or your foot, or your hip. Since it’s a system, the solution has to consider everything. When a massage therapist rubs you or a chiropractor cracks you, you do get a little temporary relief. But in no time at all, aren’t you back to hurting? Yes, sit up straight if you can. But you can’t because you have a spasm-vs-weak muscle problem. If one muscle is stronger or busier than its partner muscle, then you are just going to be crooked. Think of tug-of-war where all the big guys are on one side and the puny guys are on the other. The answer is not trying to straighten up, the answer is getting your deep postural muscles back into shape, back into balance. At PTX Therapy we bring the solution home. Our patented technology allows you to follow a specific, gentle, unique-to-your-body exercise routine that gets the muscles back to balance and strength. Naturally, when your muscles are fine, your bones and joints will straighten up so inflammation and wear-and-tear can be stopped in their tracks. If you want to try the PTX Magic for 14 days free, we’ve got you covered. Just click below and learn how you can become posture-right and pain-free. Plus, your mother will be so proud of you. Get PTX Therapy