Cheat #1: How to rule in/out a fracture.

Other than the important clinical signs like: traumatic injury, immediate swelling, inability to weightbear, severly limited range of motion.. how is a good way to rule in/out a possible fracture?

One of the items that I keep in my sports physio kit is a tuning fork - good ol' 128Hz low C - and my stethescope.

A recent cross-sectional study looked at a way to detect a fracture non-radiographically (ie: no X-ray, and without the subjective input of the patient.

They assessed 37 patients that had possible fractures in long distal bones (eg: fibula). The stethescope was proximal to the suspected fracture site, and the tuning fork was struck and placed on the bone distal to the fracture site. This is obviously working on muscles that are closer to the skin surface - a femur would be pretty hard to assess.

Diminished (as compared to the non-affected limb) or absent sound conduction would demonstrate a positive test.

Sensitivity and specificity values displayed significant results at .83 and .80 respectively. 

I do want to re-inforce that this should not be your only tool when confirming or discarding the diagnosis of a fracture. Radiographs are still a gold-standard for confirmation, but some may need a bone scan (depending on the bone). Some outcome measures can also be useful - such as the Ottawa Ankle and the Ottawa Knee Rules, both of which have solid research behind them.

You can check out the article (free) here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2681212/

Past and Current Workouts!

I'm going to try to keep track of workouts from now on so that I can try and improve myself on specific routines. Many of these workouts were thought up by myself or Ryan Stewart of Everest Training Centres, also a good bunch from a website called the WOD Shop. Try the workouts and post your times to the comments!

Menial Tasks and the Creative Mind!

Are you sitting in the office reading this? Trying to escape all the repetitive data entry you do? Do you ever wonder why, of why, has your boss decided to give you such menial tasks? Hate the long one-hour drive into work? You may be opening your mind to new ideas, and better critical thinking.

How many times have you been in the shower or on the throne and get that moment of total clarity. IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW!!!

(These are the people that are the most creative!)

The dorsolateral striatum (DS) is a part of our procedural memory centre, that initially uses our prefrontal cortex (behaviour, executive function, planning, organization, reasoning, abstract thinking). As we repeat a task over and over again, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) becomes less and less active, but the DS is still firing hard.

Think of the DS as the gateway to the PFC. Mindless tasks will open the gate, but because we don't have to use the PFC to complete the task, we are able to critically assess other topics in this area of our mind. Use these moments to your favour!

If you want to read more, good blog post here: Menial Task