Most neck pain is caused by poor posture.  This can be from many things such as school work, poor computer set up and poor reading posture.  Neck pain can range from either an achey, stiff feeling in the neck that you rub all the time, to a severe sharp pain in your neck that causes pain to radiate down your arms and into your hands.  Did you know that pain in your wrist, hands and fingers may not be caused by a problem with these areas, but can be caused by a pinched nerve in your neck?  Proper evaluation of your neck and mid back can help you with your neck pain as well as your arm, wrist, hand and finger pain.  If you have any of these symptoms, please give Muldowney Physical Therapy a call and we will get you in to assess your problem.

Pain in the hip can be caused by either arthritis, a labral tear or something called trochanteric bursitis.  If you have pain directly in the hip that radiates to your groin, this is usually due to some type of arthritic change or a labral tear.  But, if you have pain on the outside part of your hip that radiates down the side of your leg to your knee, you may have something called trochanteric bursitis.  This condition is sometimes misdiagnosed as low back pain or sciatica.  Take your fingers and poke on the outside part of your hip and if it causes you pain that shoots down the side of your leg, then you may have bursitis.  If you do have bursitis or any other kind of pain in your hip, call our clinic and we will be happy to help you.

If you have pain on the outside part of your elbow when you touch it, you may have what we call tennis elbow.  If you have pain on the inside part of your elbow when you touch it, you may have what we call golfer’s elbow.  Both of these conditions are due to repetitive motions which cause a tendonitis in the muscles around your elbow and forearm.  Place your arm straight out in front of you with your elbow straight.  Then, move your wrist down toward the floor.  If you have pain with this, then you may have tennis elbow.  Next, move your hand up toward the ceiling.  If you have pain with this motion, then you may have golfer’s elbow.  If you have either one of these conditions, give our clinic a call and we will get you in right away so we can help you.

Tennis Elbow

Golfer’s Elbow

Dizziness can be coming from many places including your brain due to a concussion, your neck, your TMJ, which is your jaw, or your inner ear.  Justin Laferrier is a professor at UConn and teaches in their Doctorate Physical Therapy Program.  He also works in our North Smithfield clinic.  Justin is excellent at diagnosing and treating people who have problems with dizziness.  If you have been having dizzy spells, first call your doctor to see if physical therapy can help your specific problem.  If they say yes, give our North Smithfield clinic a call and ask to be scheduled with Justin Laferrier to see if he can help you.

The rotator cuff consists of four muscles that wrap around your shoulder to help give your shoulder stability while you are moving it.  The problem is, when your shoulders are forward due to poor posture, your rotator cuff muscles do not work as efficiently as they should.  Therefore, you will lose stability in your shoulder with overhead movement and may cause injury to the rotator cuff.  If you have an injury to your rotator cuff, you will have pain in your shoulder which can radiate down the outside part of your arm.  You may have pain at rest, but your pain will increase when you move your shoulder, especially with overhead projects.  If you have pain in your shoulder and you think you may have a rotator cuff problem, give our clinic a call and set up an appointment to see if we can help you.

I would like to talk to you about pain in your foot, which is called plantar fasciitis.  Plantar fasciitis occurs when a ligament on the bottom of your foot called your plantar fascia gets irritated, causing pain on the bottom part of your heel.  This heel pain is usually more intense when you first wake up in the morning or first rise from a chair after sitting for a while and is usually relieved when you start to walk.  So if you are getting pain on the bottom part of your foot near your heel which is worse in the morning, but begins to improve as you continue to walk throughout the day, then you may have plantar fasciitis.  Give our clinic a call and we will set up an appointment to help you.