Mrs W presented recently with a 12 month history of right elbow and forearm pain extending to her wrist.
This had come on gradually without any trauma. This was affecting her ability to write and use her computer, and was worse at the end of the day. She could not lift simple objects without pain, and even putting petrol in her car was painful.
A thorough whole body examination of her musculoskeletal system revealed particular dysfunctions around the front of her lumbar spine(through the belly), the front of the neck, as well as the upper traps, subscapularis and infraspinatus muscles around the shoulder. Her grip test was 24kg on the right (33kg on the unaffected but non dominant side).
Through systematic reasoning and manual testing (treatment trials), we found that treating Mrs W’s lower back through her belly gave us the best result. Within one session her grip strength improved to 41kg on the right side(66%) improvement, but when she returned she reported her ability to lift had improved over 80%, as well as her ability to work at the computer and write. This in fact had been painfree for the next few days after her session.
This case demonstrates how parts of the body are all interconnected, and that a systematic whole body examination and clinical reasoning approach (Ridgway Method) will often dictate which are the primary areas to work for the best results. These areas do not necessarily coincide with the area of symptoms.
We continued to address MrsW’s lower back dysfunctions(even though her lower back was not particularly problematic!) and showed her how she can manage this herself to achieve optimal musculoskeletal health.
