John,
I took at least 20 or more lecture with Gwen Jull, and about 8 of these were
on the Transversus and multifidus. So from what I have in my notes, she did
state (and I still have these notes from a few years ago) that transversus
and multifidus muscles do weaken and atrophy in back pain patients.
I agree with you, whether TA is the chicken or the egg still requires a lot
of research. Up here in Brisbane, they do teach you to activate TA whilst
treating the actual pain itself.
However, the theory behind TA retrainning had always been out there for
decades, and the research in Brisbane basically helped to confirm and
clarify what physiotherapists were already doing, especially in the fields
of paediatrics. When I went down to South Australia (which I must add was
one of the first places to emphasize on back stability using muscles and not
braces), many physiotherapists (including Aileen Jeferris) stated to me that
TA will not work if the person has pain and/or has active psoas trigger
points. Therefore, they treat the pain and then work on back stabilization.
It is similar to the fact that the VMO tends to weaken when a person injures
their knee, so we must re-train the VMO to stabilize the knee whilst
treating the pain at the same time.
I only know about 1% of the work that Aileen Jeferris has developed based
around the psoas muscle, and continually learning new things daily. As I
said, the exact mechanism still requires research, but when I was down
there, the success they were getting was phenomal!!
Henry***
>
>A few issues here.
>
>Does Jull talk about 'weakness', maybe she does but I would love to see
>a quote.
>
>Similarly the research is equivocal on whether TA dysfunction is chicken
>or egg in relation to back pain. To be sure we would have to do a
>massive prospective study in a non-LBP population, assess their TA
>function and see who goes onto get LBP.
>
>The Brisbane researchers seem to argue that TA retraining can and should
>start as soon as possible after injury, not somewhere down the line. On
>the other hand they don't suggest it is done in isolation (ie without
>the benefit of other techniques to ease pain).
>
>What do you mean by Psoas becoming 'active'? Surely, that it is an
>'active' muscle is normal. Do you mean overactive? Do you mean active
>trigger points?
>--
>John Spencer
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|