It's felt like a long time... but the summer seems to really slow things down...
Muscle of the week is the Transverse Abdominus. The main core muscle. It originates from the deepest layers of the thoracolumbar fascia and will come forward to pass deep to the rectus abdominus (the 6-pack muscle).
It's action is to compress and support the abdominal viscera (your guts and such :).
In 'activating your core' this is the first muscle to fire during trunk flexion and extension for stabilization.
Strengthening this muscle can help with a multitude of diagnoses including low back pain.
Speaking of diagnoses I will be evaluating a patient with complaints of ankle pain. While her symptom that it hurts most in the morning is usually very indicative of plantar fascitis, we will still be going through as thorough an eval as is possible in the hour we have.
Differential Diagnosis (DD) can be very tricky mainly because there are so many things that can go wrong. There are generally four categories that many musculoskeletal pathologies can fall under: connective tissue issue, inflammatory process, a combined 'disorder,' or fractures. Just for the ankle and foot in a very simplified DD approach we can break those 4 categories into about 30 possibilities. That's when we start playing detective.
I am almost at the end of my morning commute so I bid you adieu and look forward to sharing more with you :)
