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Texas Orthopedics, Sports & Rehabilitation Associates

Monday, June 27, 2011

Texas Orthopedics Celebrates 25 Years of Providing Orthopedic Care



Founded July 1, 1986 by two orthopedic surgeons and one physical medicine and rehabilitation specialists, Texas Orthopedics has grown into the largest provider of orthopedic services in Central Texas, now comprised of twenty-one physicians and six locations.

We'd like to thank all of our loyal patients and referring physicians for letting us care for your orthopedic needs over the last 25 years. We look forward to continuing our relationship with all of you!

Monday, June 20, 2011

Congratulations to our doctors listed in Super Doctors!



Nine Texas Orthopedics physicians have been named by his/her peers to the Super Doctors list.

- Bradley Adams, DO
- Barbara Bergin, MD
- Donald Davis, MD
- Robert Foster, MD
- Peter Garcia, Jr., MD
- Tyler Goldberg, MD
- Richard Lutz, MD
- Scott Smith, MD
- Archie Whittemore, MD

To learn more about the physicians at Texas Orthopedics, click here!

Monday, June 13, 2011

Be Kind to Your Hands


Post provided by Barbara Bergin, MD


Here are some tips on how to ease the load on your hands. Follow these recommendations and maybe I’ll be seeing less of you!

1) Invest in a nice electric can opener. It’s hard to open cans and once you get arthritis, it’s nearly impossible. So why not start using the electric can opener before you get it? I used to hate electric can openers because of that greasy, black coagulum of old tomato juice and pork and bean gravy that collected in its little gears. But now you can remove that piece and wash it! Using an electric can opener will spare your thumb a lot of stress over the decades.

2) Use jar opening gadgets and bang the lids on the counter top before trying to open them. Spreading your hands out and doing something as strenuous as opening large jar lids and tight bottle tops really strains those delicate joints. Again, once you have arthritis, you won’t even be able to try. Don’t wait until you have pain to start using these handy little devices. I also like to use those little rubber pads.

3) Notice how you grab the steering wheel in your car. Do you hold it with your four fingers wrapped tightly around the wheel and your thumb hyper-extended like a hitch hiker? Try to relax your hands on the wheel. This position puts a lot of pressure on the base of your thumb also. Many of my patients have pain when they drive. I encourage them to wear driving gloves and even to put a sheepskin cover on the steering wheel. You can grab tightly while using these items, but they’ll create a subconscious reminder to loosen your grip.

4) Get smaller milk cartons, or the cartons with a handle instead of the big square half gallon cartons. Again, that wide grip is the perpetrator of harm to your thumb.

5) Same goes for big books, notebooks, dictionaries, and family Bibles. Don’t just grab them with one hand from the shelves. Lift them with two hands; one pulling from the top and the other supporting the bottom of the book.

6) Use an electric toothbrush rather than an old school brush. Again, that grip with the thumb hyper-extended should be minimized. You grab an electric toothbrush with your fist and you don’t have to manually move it up and down like you do with the old school brush. Cavemen didn’t brush their teeth.

7) I’m going to pull my first plug against pushups and I know I’m going to get loads of hate mail, just like I did when I came out against squats. I love the idea of pushups. It’s a cheap, easy way to get a full body workout. You can do it when you’re out of town and have no access to a gym. You can do it if you don’t want to go to a gym or buy your own weights. You can use them to help count scores at a football game, even when the scoreboard works just fine. They’re just fun! But I see tons of patients who have injured their hands and wrists doing pushups. I know someone will ask about using pushup bars. Yes, they help reduce some of the stress of pushups by loading the wrist in a more biomechanically advantageous way, but there are other issues to be further discussed later. Remember, our little hands and wrists evolved away from being weight bearing structures to being dexterous structures; best used for delicate manipulations. So don’t go four-legged on me.

8) Use gloves when doing dirty or heavy work; weight lifting, gardening, construction. They protect your hands from injury and infection, but also allow you to loosen your grip.

9) Don’t try to carry 10 bags of groceries from your car to the kitchen. I used to sling one bag on every finger, two on some if the bag was light. Believe it or not, I’ve seen patients develop finger tendonitis and “tennis elbow” from doing just that. Take your time. Frankly, taking your time is a good adage in general. Often we injure ourselves because we’re in just too dang much of a hurry.

10) Don’t persevere with any activity that causes pain in your hands, thinking you can just work through it. Give it a rest. I’m thinking of my patients who spend an entire day cutting paper or fabric with scissors, all the while developing a numb spot on the side of their thumb. That can cause permanent damage. Stop. Use different scissors. Rest. Get some gloves. Let someone else do it for awhile.

11) Always try to negotiate with others by using your words and not your fist. The fist almost always loses against teeth, walls and windows. It sometimes wins against noses and tummies.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Transitional Stretching



Post provided by Barbara Bergin, MD

One of the most common complaints I hear from patients is that they experience pain in transitions; going from sitting to standing, standing to sitting, getting out of chairs, getting out of bed. Now let me say, I never hear that complaint from 20 year olds. I only hear it from those over forty.

As you age your soft tissues get toughened, thinned and stiff. They’re in a state of degradation. So my recommendation is that you begin to develop a habit of doing a little stretching before transitioning from one position to another. After forty. Now look, you don’t have to do some thirty minute Jack LaLane stretching program every time you get out of your car or out of bed. Just make sure the joints are ready for it.

Bend and straighten your knees and your back. Just a covert movement. You don’t have to pull your ankle around your neck or do a sun salutation. Just bend and straighten your knees. Make sure they’re ready to go there.

When I’m riding my horse, going around in circles or whatever, I never just take off and make a big sliding stop with my horse. I sort of introduce his body (and his mind) to the fact that we’re going to start making big stops. I do a slow gentle stop first. Then bigger and bigger. That seems logical, doesn’t it?

Frankly, when you’re 60 and you’ve been sitting for an hour, you’ve got to introduce your body to the idea that you’re going to be standing up in a few seconds. And getting out of bed is a major culprit. People are always so surprised that they hurt when they get out of bed in the morning! Think about it. You’ve spent the whole night horizontal to gravity. Most of the night you’ve been curled up in some variation of the fetal position. Now you want your body to just jump up and stand. Hello disagreement.

And you can actually hurt yourself getting out of bed. That’s the beginning of the curse of plantar fasciitis for many people. It’s the movement that results in a degenerative meniscus tear for others. So introduce your body to the fact that you’re going to be standing up now. Again, this doesn’t have to be a thirty minute program.

-Roll over onto your back.
-Bend and straighten your knees and hips.
-Rotate your hips in and out.
-Stretch your feet up and down.
-Then turn over on your side, curl up a little and push yourself up into a seated position. This is important. Most of us use our legs and weak abdominal muscles to kind of yank ourselves from a face up position in bed to a seated position. This really aggravates the muscles and joints in your pelvis and back.
-Now wait for a few seconds. Stretch your feet and knees again.
-Then stand.

If you get into the habit of doing this when getting out of bed, I promise it will improve the quality of your rising!

I know that if you try to do more of this kind of quick stretching, and I frankly wouldn’t even go so far as to call if officially stretching… more of an introduction or preparation for what is to come…it will improve the experience of going from one position to another and lessen your likelihood of suffering pain…not all pain…but some.