Physiotherapists in Banchory treat many different conditions including the issues profiled below.

Bone Metabolism

Bone, like muscle, is an adaptive tissue and bony mass and its structure changes to resist the forces which are applied to it in activity. Changes in the bone require that a large number of cells which are quite far apart join in to perform a particular activity and they do this by chemical messengers but also by long outgrowths from their cells connecting with others. How fast bones can strengthen or become weaker is not clear, although experiments have shown that a bone can increase its mineral content by 40% in six weeks if it is frequently loaded. A loss of 10-15% of bone mass can be expected if a bone is kept unloaded for eight weeks.

Cortical bone may be 35% greater in mass in the playing arm of a professional male tennis player and bone can react even more strongly as its density is very high in expert weight lifters. Sclerosis, an increase in density of vertebrae adjacent to discs which are suffering degeneration, is less beneficial a process and may impede nutritional transport through the bone. Osteophytes, bony outgrowths, may be an attempt to stabilise a joint but can also get in the way and cause nerve impingement.

Discs and Height

Physical activities change the nature of the intervertebral discs throughout the day and night. The volume and the height of discs can change by up to twenty percent, with a person.s height varying by anything from fifteen to twenty five millimetres. Most of the change in height happens during the first hour after getting up as the body weight loading is applied to the spine. During the night the opposite happens with the disc being unloaded so it sucks in water from the tissue around it until it reaches a balance of pressures on both sides.

This daily cycle of pressure variation changes the water content of the disc regularly and may be part of the explanation as to why back pain sufferers have more pain in the mornings due to the increased tension present in the disc complex. Resting or performing heavy work can cause changes in the hydration of the disc, carrying a twenty kilogram backpack for three hours has been shown to reduce the volume of the discs by 4.5 percent. The amount of water content in the disc does not achieve a specific resting level; it depends on how much loading is going on and for how long.