In a previous article, I talked about phone and internet addiction being a major contributor to my own history of chronic pain.

I addressed the ways in which constant compulsive phone and computer usage can lead to a heightened statute of stress - which can exacerbate pain and get you stuck in a loop of chronic pain. We also discussed simple steps to loosen the hold your phone has on you, and how to eventually break your phone addiction.

In today’s article, I want to address something that comes up when you’re trying to break your phone addiction. If you follow the advice I gave in the previous article, you’ll find you have a lot of time to fill. All those hours you would normally being spending on your phone...

If you are an athlete with recurrent or chronic pain or hang around people with recurrent or chronic pain, you’ve probably heard of cortisone injections. They’re these wonderful injections that (when they work) take away pain. However, before you get your next shot, you might want to know that the world’s most respected medical journal just published a study that shows that cortisone shots actually HARM you more than they help you.

The study looked at a large group of randomized trials looking at recurrent and chronic tendon injuries, and what they found was about what you’d expect:

…cortisone injections did, as promised, bring fast and significant pain relief, compared with doing nothing or following a...

A lot of times people with back, shoulder, or hip pain are thinking about what they need to cut. Medical articles written by or inspired by surgeons promote the idea that surgery is the best answer to all kinds of chronic pain conditions.

So people are led to believe they need a surgeon to cut some bone, some ligament, some tendon, some muscle...

This comes from the medical/orthopedic model of chronic pain: if something hurts, it's because something is malformed or permanently damaged.

But this orthopedic model ignores the regenerative capacities of the body AND ignores an even bigger issue.

Scientific research consistently shows that "damaged" or "deformed" structures that allegedly cause pain are - wait for it - NOT...

If you’ve been told you have femoroacetabular impingement (FAI, femoral acetabular impingement, or hip impingement), you have probably heard that arthroscopic hip surgery is the only answer. The conventional medical approach to hip pain associated with femoroacetabular impingement bone shapes is surgery, after all.

We’ve successfully helped countless people beat their hip pain without surgery - despite having femoroacetabular impingement bone shapes. In this article, we'll look at how this is even possible. And we'll see why you and your doctors should be skeptical of the entire theory of femoroacetabular impingement.

An overview of the medical theory of hip impingement

In short, surgeons claim that misshapen bones lead...

If you have snapping, popping, and other cracking noises in your shoulders, you might be wondering what’s causing these sounds and what you can do to get rid of them.

People often get worried when they start experiencing clicks in their shoulders. They sometimes read stories about how the source of the clicking could be labrum tears, inflamed tendons, damaged muscles, etc.—all things that sound very serious and involved to fix.

First of all, you don't need to worry. Even babies get popping and snapping in their shoulders. As a newborn, my son had audible noises come from his shoulders - but they were not at all a sign of joint problems. And he STILL gets occasional noises!

What most people (including many doctors) don’t...

A 2018 study in the American Journal of Sports Medicine claims that surgery for hip impingement is VERY successful. It says that arthroscopic hip surgery for femoroacetabular impingement reliably produces excellent results for patients. They claim it helps the overwhelming majority of hip pain patients return to sports quickly.

Other studies about FAI surgery don’t show these utopian results – like this one or this one. We’ve also seen a recent study on hip impingement surgery versus physical therapy. Surgery led to patient disappointment in that study too.

This new hip impingement study, Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Outcomes After Hip Arthroscopy in Femoroacetabular Impingement, makes a bold claim.

It claims...

This post is written by Naushad Godrej, a friend of Upright Health.

Do you ever feel a pinch in your hip when you sit down for an extended period of time? Is it difficult for you to lift your knee towards your chest past 90 degrees? Do you ever feel clicking in your hip when you bend down for a squat? If any of these painful feelings resonate with you, there’s a chance you may have been told you have femoroacetabular impingement (FAI).

That's medical lingo for hip impingement.

An overview of your hips

The hip is a ball and socket joint that should allow your leg to move in all planes of motion: forwards and backwards, side to side, externally and internally. As you may know from personal experience, some of these movements can...

You’ve been told you have a rotator cuff tear, and you are scared that your shoulder is going to hurt forever. You’re afraid you’ve done damage that you’re never going to come back from. Maybe you’re wondering if there’s a way you can avoid getting surgery?

Let’s look at the ins and outs of rotator cuff tears so you understand what you’re dealing with.

We’re going to answer 3 major questions about rotator cuff tears:

1) What are rotator cuff tears?

2) Do rotator cuff tears cause pain?

3) Does surgery for rotator cuff tears get you back to doing things you love?

Along the way, we’ll address some other related questions as well, and figure out the best way for YOU to...

You’ve been spinning your wheels in chronic pain. Maybe you’ve got shoulder pain. Back pain. Hip pain. Knee pain. Whatever it is, you’ve been in pain for a while.

You keep thinking “I’VE GOT TO GET OUT OF PAIN.”

Every day, you’re obsessing about the pain you’re in and how to get away from it.

You’re in a hole. You’re in a hole of AVOIDANCE. An Avoidance Hole. Or an A Hole for short.

Nobody wants to be stuck in an A hole. It’s miserable. It smells bad. And it’s totally unproductive.

All your obsessing about avoiding pain doesn’t solve anything. You rest more. You use pain patches. You use pain pills. You avoid things you used to love. 

And still your body...

Femoracetabular Impingement (“FAI”) is a near and dear topic for us at Upright Health. We have had countless clients at Upright Health who wanted conservative treatment for FAI (meaning NO surgery). 

Unfortunately, many people diagnosed with FAI get pushed toward unnecessary hip surgery every day. There is plenty of controversy around surgery for FAI. Recently, researchers started to publish studies comparing the effectiveness of surgery with conservative treatment for FAI.  

The usual conclusion is that surgery is more effective than the non-surgical option. These comparative studies usually use the best available surgical interventions. But the conservative treatments are not what we consider...