Don’t Just Treat Impairments on the Affected Side

All right. Well, welcome, everyone, to the next episode of the Redefining Physical Therapy podcast.

I’m your host, Dr. Scott Gray.

So, today I want to talk about when you’re treating someone with whether it be lower back, knee pain, hip pain, plantar fasciitis to check the opposite hip.

Say someone comes in with right knee pain, right ankle pain, or plantar fasciitis, right hip pain, right side low back pain, I think we get lasered in, and we assume, “Okay, I’m going to check the joint above and below on the one side.”

In that case, you would just check the right side, but a lot of times what we’re seeing here at Back in Motion and with our approach, it’s usually something on the opposite hip.

So, you’ll miss this nine times out of 10, unless you’re looking at a function in a closed kinetic chain manner, usually, at least.

So, there have been multiple times where I’ll assess someone’s hip on the table.

I’ll do some MMTs. Maybe I’ll look at hit mobility, joint mobility of the hip, length test, and I might find a couple of little things here and there.

But then when I put them in a standing position, I’ll then have them do some different types of excursions, and for whatever reason, they’re lacking either function, mobility, or stability on the left hip in this case.

We seem to forget that the hip is adjacent to the pelvis, and it’s connected to the other hip. So, they talk to one another.

When one hip isn’t able to go through one part of the motion, the other hip isn’t to go through full loading on the other side.

The simplest analogy I can give you, in gait, so that when both feet are on the ground, and as I’m in terminal stance on the left hip, I’m going through a hip extension, abduction, and internal rotation on the right hip.

I’m, at the same time, going through hip flection, adduction, internal rotation. And so if I’m missing one of those component motions on the left hip,

I’m going to not load as much on the right hip, which means then I’m potentially not going to get the normal biomechanics and loading response on that side.

So, case in point, don’t be afraid to treat the other side and look at the other side in the clinic when you’re like, “Man, this isn’t clearing up.”

Chances are, you’re probably missing something on the opposite extremity or leg that is causing that back pain, the hip pain, that knee pain, or that plantar fasciitis or ankle pain.

So, that’s my point for today in Golden Gym. Hope you apply for that.

If you have any other comments or questions, put them in the comment section below, and my team and I will respond to them.