Weekly Cup of Joe - Episode #22

Read the transcript for this video:

Good morning. Happy new year! Welcome to the first edition of 2021's Weekly Cup of Joe. Thanks for joining us this year. We definitely hope that 2021 will be a significant improvement over 2020. One of the questions that I get asked a lot, especially this time of year, and I know most therapists do, and we get it asked all year long is, "Hey Joe, should I get my hip replaced or my knee replaced now, when should I do it?" Obviously, that's a very tough and personal question to answer. And, if you go to the Orthopedic Doctor, most of the time, they're going to tell you when your hip or knee is affecting your life enough, that's when you're going to come to find me and tell me that we need to replace it. Most of the time, what I do, with my clients, is I basically ask them some more questions, is are the good days outweighing? Or I should say, yeah, are the good days more than the bad days? Or are the bad days getting to be more than the good days?

So if the bad days are getting more then that's not a good sign or are you missing significant personal or professional events or activities because of the hip or knee? Are you favoring or compensating for that hip or knee enough that other body parts or joints are being affected and bothering you more now? So those three questions are very telling if you need to get that replaced or help make that decision for you. One of the things, I'm going to show you today is just going to basic easy treatment, things that you can do to help that if you're not already doing so. And we'll go over that over the next few weeks in talking about hip and knee replacements. So, first is just ice, and elevating. So icing your knee or hip down 15 to 20 minutes, two to three times a day, that natural on pain and anti-inflammatory of the ice really works well, especially with our thirty cases.

So, I know you don't like it, it may be cold outside, or you're having aversion to it doesn't mean you can't use an electric blanket on your upper body or warm yourself up top while you're having ice on your knee or hip. So I said 15 to 20 minutes, two to three times a day. And I'm going to show you about elevating it, just trying to keep the leg up, especially for your knee, to help that swelling go back into and reprocess that as much as we possibly can to control that as much as we can throughout the day. So, I'm going to show you three exercises we're going to do as well.

So if you're going to elevate, if you're icing, laying on the couch or laying on the floor on your bed or whatever, just propping your leg up and making sure the ice gets all the way around on the top sides and back of the knee, if you can, one on top and bottom, and if it is your hip, you can just be in the same position just to control that swelling and put that ice on the hip, wrap it up with a towel or blanket if you need to as well, you can do some ankle pumps while you're icing. You don't have to do them all during the 15 minutes, but you can do about 15 to 20 of those. Take a little break, do 15 or 20 more just periodically throughout that 15 or 20 minutes. So going to move that out of the way.

One of the easy exercises that we have people do, and we start everybody off is basically doing a Glute set or butt squeezes, so you just want to think about tightening your butt cheeks together. You're not picking it up and bridging off the ground. You're just tightening and squeezing your butt cheeks together and you're trying to be equal, especially on the side that's affected. So if it's your right hip, that's really bothering you. You want to make sure you're getting that right butt cheek to squeeze the same as your left butt cheek. So we call those Glute sets because your Glute muscles are your butt muscle. The next one we're doing is what we call a quad set. And we typically roll a hand towel and it doesn't have to be really super thick, but just enough. And we put that underneath the knee and you're trying to tighten up that quad muscle and you're trying to press down and squash that towel.

So you're trying to tighten the muscle on top of the thigh and press down and squash that towel. A lot of times we'll tell our clients, pull that foot back towards you and then do it and relax, pull the foot back, tighten the muscle-up, press down and then relax, pull the foot back, tighten the muscle up and then relax, doing lots of those throughout the day if you can work really well so you can start to gain control of that muscle again because the pain, a lot of times we lose the ability to fire it like we want to. So do lots and lots of butt squeezes or Glute sets doing lots and lots of quad sets as well, and then progress to it. We do what we call straight leg grays and you can do it in multiple planes. But the first one we wanted to work on is doing what we call a hip flexion. So basically is raising the leg up and then down, the same thing. If you want to pull the foot back, tighten that top of the thigh up and then lift it up and then down, up and down slow, it doesn't have to be super high. You don't have to go too way up high. You can just go up to this height of your other leg, you don't have to go point that high if you don't want to. As long as you go up and down, slow and you're able to keep that muscle tight as you do it and you could relax in between each one or you can go up and down and just keep it tight if you want to. But you have to go slow doing a couple, two or three sets of 10 of that. Every day is also going to be very beneficial for you to start gaining some strength in that leg muscle that has probably become weak because you've been favouring and compensating and not using it appropriately.

So we're going to do some more in the next couple of weeks, talking about more hip and knee replacement information, and try to help people make those best decisions and maybe get through this a little bit better. You can always contact us at (630)- 892- 8003, If you have questions, you can set up a time to ask me, Julie or Shay, we're always available to do that by email and or a phone call. So we are going to be having a Total Hip and Total Knee Replacement Workshop at the end of the month, January 26th, Tuesday. Shay is going to be talking about the pros and cons and what goes in with it and exercises and everything else. On Tuesday the 26th, 6:30 PM, there's a link going to be below this video, if you want to register for it or you can call the clinic as well (630) 892-8003. Hope you guys start off your 2021 and have an amazing week. And we look forward to seeing you next week for your Weekly Cup of Joy. Bye.