Top Posts Tagged with #muscle test

Anatomy and Beyond

By Alina Tousseeva, MD, RAc

When I was studying to become a medical doctor, I learned anatomy the way it had been taught for the last 2 centuries! I really respected that at the time, however, working with many patients over the years has changed my mind.

I’ve always thought that there was a problem with our knowledge of anatomy. Something was missing from the picture and I could not figure it out. I discovered what that was during my more recent exploration and practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Now, I am integrating into my practice more complex theories of the structure and function of connective tissue and muscles. Pioneers in this area are people like Matt Callison and Thomas W. Myers, who are teaching more integrated perspectives.

Looking back I can say that our knowledge of the human body has many grey areas. This lack of clarity results from the reductionism that dominates western medical analysis. Synthesis, the opposite of analysis, has been largely ignored by medicine until recently. Now more obscure and interrelated systems have appeared on the map, such as the neuro-endocrine and immune systems, and more to the point in this blog, the vast continuum of connective tissues embracing the musculoskeletal and all organ systems.

For example, for a shoulder injury, classically a practitioner would test range of motion of a joint passively (without assistance from the patient), and then test muscle strength in arbitrary planes or axes (sideways, forwards/backwards, and rotations, etc.) without motion. Now, in addition, the muscles controlling the shoulder joint are also tested with resistance while in motion, and not only in arbitrary x,y,z planes. Often a patient is assessed dynamically reproducing the motion during injury (for example, a javelin thrower will be assessed while slowly pretending to throw a javelin). This seems rather obvious and intuitive right? But it has the disadvantage of not being standardized and reproducible, which the old system was good at. However, the two systems are complimentary, since dynamic muscle testing can reveal a muscle or associated connective tissue problem not revealed by static testing. Dynamic testing becomes an integrated combination of both joint range of motion and soft tissue functioning simultaneously. It can quickly reveal if the opposing muscles are in balance in context to the joint and soft tissue functioning.

Dynamic muscle testing can also expose complex involvement of more distant muscles/sinews (the anatomy train idea), which would less likely be exposed in testing each joint statically and independently as it was done traditionally. Interestingly, oriental diagnostic systems traditionally used distant points on the limbs to diagnose and treat a shoulder problem. I like how this new approach does not ignore our traditional knowledge about muscles, their functions and movements. It just extends and evolves our knowledge and enables a more complex assessment of a problem.

Trending Tags

Last Seen Tags

#muscle test

Trending Tags

Last Seen Tags

#muscle test