Do you have pain, discomfort, or an uncomfortable feeling of tightness between your shoulder blades?

Here are a few stretches that I myself use - especially when I have been on the computer for a long stretch of time.

In the stretch shown in the next image, the trick is to keep one arm bent as shown below, and use the opposite arm as a lever to pull it towards your body. Vary the angles to stretch different areas. 

The next stretch is a bit hard to understand from the picture.
-Sit down, bend over a bit, and cross your arms, placing your hands on the outer sides of your knees.
-Push your knees outward--you should feel a lovely stretch across your shoulders.
-Vary the angles; you can stretch different areas by bending over less, or more.

I love this neck stretch!

That's it for now-hope these help!

Heel Pain-Plantar Fasciitis and Neurodynamics

This is a fascinating read on a subject near and dear to me.
It was pain diagnosed as Plantar Fasciitis that sent me on a path that eventually led me to study massage, and my fascination with painscience and neuroscience
In my case, I may have had inflamed plantar fascia--but I definitely had a neurodynamic disorder/nerve entrapment, which was relieved by a medical massage therapist (my hero!) and self-massage and mobilization.

Some key points from this article: https://www.neurodynamicsolutions.com/neurodynamic-aspect-to-heel-pain.html

>However in relation to the more physical and benign causes, there are some key facts about neurodynamic problems at the ankle that are important when considering foot pain:

• clearly not all foot/heel pain comes from nerves, but some does.
• nerve abnormality is an underestimated cause of foot pain. Research shows that patients with foot pain can show reduced nerve conduction in various nerves in the ankle/foot region (Schon et al 1993)).
• nerve problems can masquerade as plantar fasciitis and other local causes of heel pain.
• there should be a distinction between 'nerve entrapment' and 'neurodynamic disorders' around the ankle and foot. Nerve entrapment is frank trapping of the nerve which is mostly likely a compressive lesion (eg. tarsal tunnel syndrome). But, whilst the term 'neurodynamic disorders' includes 'nerve entrapment', the term should be used to denote other types of mechanical and physiological problems in nerve function at this location, eg. nerve irritation and inflammation due to excessive use of the ankle combined with excessive pronation. This may produce a neurodynamic disorder (probably neuritis) caused by mechanical irritation.
• tissue changes in the foot/heel eg. swelling and tenderness DO NOT EXCLUDE a neurodynamic cause. This is because the nerves can produce inflammatory changes in the tissues they innervate by a mechanism called 'neurogenic inflammation'.<

>Nerves that are exposed to excessive or repeated mechanical force may become hypersensitive and produce impulses in both afferent and efferent directions. Afferent impulses may cause pain and efferent ones may cause inflammation in the tissues innervated by the sensitised nerve (neurogenic inflammation).<

Antidepressants Work for Major Depression! Not so Fast...

A recent article in Medscape states:
>The latest attempt to trick ourselves into believing that the past few decades of prescribing antidepressants has been an effective strategy comes from one of the most prestigious medical journals, The Lancet. The published meta-analysis' basic finding—since repeated all over the press—is that antidepressants work because they are all better than placebo. What they don't tell you is that they are hardly any better than placebo, and that the only drugs with clinically meaningful benefits are the ones that are used rarely today, the older tricyclic agents.<
>The effect sizes seen are about a 2-point improvement versus placebo on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, which is lower than the minimum threshold of a 3-point improvement for clinically meaningful benefit set by an earlier 2004 guidance by the UK's then-named National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.^[3]They have found, repeatedly, that antidepressants either are not more effective than placebo, or they are slightly more effective.>Because of this, their results are not limited to or mostly influenced by the published literature, which is known to be markedly biased in favor of antidepressant drug efficacy. (This is because pharmaceutical companies usually have not published negative studies of antidepressants.)<

Wow

Read it all:
Antidepressants Work for Major Depression! Not so Fast

About the older tricyclics:
from Mayo Clinic: Tricyclic antidepressants and tetracyclic antidepressants

An excellent TED talk explaining chronic pain

This TED talk does an excellent job of explaining chronic pain.
It includes a case study with a happy ending: CRPS..allodynia...horrid, unrelenting pain, that was resolved.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ0gIiwjk_0

Why taking morphine, oxycodone can sometimes make pain worse

This is the best article I have seen on the subject of opioids and hyperalegesia.
The fact is that the phenomena of pain is still poorly understood.

>Ten days after that injury, half the rats received a 5-day treatment of morphine. Then over about 3 months, the researchers periodically measured the rodents’ threshold of pain by poking their hind paws with stiff nylon hairs of varying thicknesses. (The finer the hair that causes the rat to withdraw its paw, the logic goes, the more sensitive it is to pain.) After 6 weeks, injured rats that had received no morphine withdrew from the same kind of pokes as uninjured control rats. But morphine-treated rats remained sensitive to pokes with much finer hairs. It took them 12 weeks to return to the same pain sensitivity as the control rats, the team reports today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Even after the physical injury had presumably healed, they were in pain.<

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/why-taking-morphine-oxycodone-can-sometimes-make-pain-worse

Fooling the nervous system to make a temporary change

A fascinating video on how easy it is to trick the nervous system into making temporary changes - and how easy it is to trick ourselves into thinking these changes will last.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=441&v=mvW2lj194MQ

However, repeated exposure to stimuli, in the form of:

• treatments - including massage, physical therapy, or functional therapy given by a therapist or trainer,
• self-care, including self-massage and carrying out your exercise assignments from your therapist or trainer,

these can retrain and reset the nervous system to improve your functional movement and  reduce pain


This is a short clip showing a 75-year old tennis player who did not have surgery - the injury included a full-thickness tear of his shoulder joint and shoulder muscles  and joint fusion (glenoid humeral capsule, humeral head displacement supraspinatus + long head of biceps tendon, humeral space).

Two weeks after injury, he entered therapy--and 6 weeks later, was playing at 80% capacity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8ir14-V-vs

What Causes Foot Cramps?

What Causes Foot Cramps?

This lists the common medical reasons for cramping, and the role that footwear can play – this is valuable information for anyone who…has feet.

Whether you only use them for your day-to-day getting from place to place, for running, for dancing, you can help - and I believe, avoid – a number of common problems.

I suggest the toe extensor stretch that is shown about halfway through. If this induces foot cramping, it will give us information on how to tailor your treatments – I can do effective work without knowing all of the factors involved, but it of course helps to know J

https://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=nQ4A7Vo9Pf8

This is a detailed demonstration of the toe extensor stretch itself.
Toe Extensor Stretch with Dr Ray McClanahan

https://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=h2kaEOd3GcI
Dr. Ray McClanahan, Natural Sports Podiatrist shares a simple, profound stretch for toe extensor muscles, tendons and soft tissues. Restore proper toe tension and balance to aid many conditions including: hammertoes, plantar fasciitis, plantar fasciosis, plantar fibromatosis, capsulitis, metatarsalgia, and neuroma
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2kaEOd3GcI

The product he offers, the toe spacer at https://www.correcttoes.com/, is the one that I have used, and I can recommend it. 

Comparative Study Of The Feet Of Barefooted And Shoe-Wearing Peoples

This is a fascinating (well, to a nerd like me) paper on the study of feet in primitive, barefoot populations from 1905.
If nothing else, the pictures are interesting – theses are photos of different populations that have never worn shoes.
http://refs.ahcuah.com/hoffman.htm