Range of Motion
Dec. 5th, 2012 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebChapter 2 of my physical therapy book has also been interesting. It says there are two kinds of range of motion: passive and active. It turns out that the amount you can move some body part in various directions might be different if you are moving it yourself using its own muscles than if someone or something else is moving it.
Immediately I checked how high Robin can lift my straightened left arm out to my side and then up towards my head compared to how high I can lift it myself. The difference is awesomely huge. I can't even lift my arm straight out to my side without it hurting. (I can do the full range of motion myself if I just make sure my arm is not directly out to the side but slightly forward of that, so this doesn't generally affect my life.)
Robin can lift my arm all the way up without it hurting me at all. It feels like magic. Once I thought it might be because I was cheating by lifting my shoulder, but he could do the same even when I deliberately "relaxed" my shoulder (held it down).
Actually there's a third category for range of motion called active-assistive, where you don't have to use your own muscle but you also don't have to bother anyone else to help you. I had thought I was doing this with a broom stretch I had read about: hold a broom with both arms straight and then use the good arm to push the broom so as to lift the bad arm up. That helps me get a bit closer to parallel to the floor than without the broom, but doesn't compare at all to the magic of Robin.
Most of the chapter is about how the therapist can move around various body parts to keep them from freezing up when the patient can't move around on his own due to things like "when comatose, paralyzed or on complete bed rest, or when there is an inflammatory reaction and active ROM is painful." This passive motion actually assists with the healing process for what sounds like anything but broken bones by keeping the blood flowing and keeping nutrients moving through joints and cartilage.
Another interesting this is that none of this is about stretching--that's a whole other chapter. Just keeping the joints oiled up, so to speak.
Cake of the Day
It's odd that I have only one shot of this cake:
That rope-like portion is some kind of snake--wonder what the head and tail look like. Is it a copperhead? Or a rattlesnake? And what's that animal on top? An armadillo? Probably with yellow roses. And the top layer of the cake might be a bandana pattern. I don't pretend to understand the middle layer (which is so not like me). The bottom is desert, with saguaro (I'm not totally sure we have that particular cactus, but it's recognizable) and probably cow skulls getting bleached in the sun (which we do have).
Immediately I checked how high Robin can lift my straightened left arm out to my side and then up towards my head compared to how high I can lift it myself. The difference is awesomely huge. I can't even lift my arm straight out to my side without it hurting. (I can do the full range of motion myself if I just make sure my arm is not directly out to the side but slightly forward of that, so this doesn't generally affect my life.)
Robin can lift my arm all the way up without it hurting me at all. It feels like magic. Once I thought it might be because I was cheating by lifting my shoulder, but he could do the same even when I deliberately "relaxed" my shoulder (held it down).
Actually there's a third category for range of motion called active-assistive, where you don't have to use your own muscle but you also don't have to bother anyone else to help you. I had thought I was doing this with a broom stretch I had read about: hold a broom with both arms straight and then use the good arm to push the broom so as to lift the bad arm up. That helps me get a bit closer to parallel to the floor than without the broom, but doesn't compare at all to the magic of Robin.
Most of the chapter is about how the therapist can move around various body parts to keep them from freezing up when the patient can't move around on his own due to things like "when comatose, paralyzed or on complete bed rest, or when there is an inflammatory reaction and active ROM is painful." This passive motion actually assists with the healing process for what sounds like anything but broken bones by keeping the blood flowing and keeping nutrients moving through joints and cartilage.
Another interesting this is that none of this is about stretching--that's a whole other chapter. Just keeping the joints oiled up, so to speak.
Cake of the Day
It's odd that I have only one shot of this cake:
That rope-like portion is some kind of snake--wonder what the head and tail look like. Is it a copperhead? Or a rattlesnake? And what's that animal on top? An armadillo? Probably with yellow roses. And the top layer of the cake might be a bandana pattern. I don't pretend to understand the middle layer (which is so not like me). The bottom is desert, with saguaro (I'm not totally sure we have that particular cactus, but it's recognizable) and probably cow skulls getting bleached in the sun (which we do have).