What is this sacroiliac joint?
00:23
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Welcome to tissue talk today. Today, today is all about the fabulous yet notorious SI joint sacred iliac,
00:32
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
What is this sacroiliac joint? What, what are we talking about that? Why is it notorious?
Like what is, I know I wanted to do that. I was like, I don’t get sued and don’t wrap it. Yeah. Cause Michael started doing the whole like biggie wrapping that we’re in.
00:48
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Trouble.
00:49
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Okay. The notorious SIJ. SIJ. I know you can’t help it now. Now you want to go? No, no tool. We’re old, but it’s okay. It was a good song.
All right guys. We have all had this at one point in time or another most of us, almost all of us that have been on the planet have heard our back at one point in time or another.
So, so here’s the story. Start, start your story. Oh, how does you gotta, you always start your story.
01:22
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
That’s not how you start the story. So there we work. All right. So there were. You’ve just finished your leg workout, right?
You’ve just finished your height. You’re gardening. You were moving. Like everybody has moved at least one time. You’re packing boxes. You’re doing the kitchen.
You’re putting it in. You’re lifting. You’re moving and you’re right. Everything is hunky-dory and you’re doing it all day long.
You’re grinding. You’re hustling. You notice that your shoe is untied. Everything’s good. You go and you tie your shoe or your shoes on tide. You reach down to tie it. There it goes. You’re back.
02:03
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
You’re on the ground. Like.
02:05
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Pain shows up like, boom, Hey, there it goes. Or don’t or reach in to get some milk or we tend to get some water.
02:14
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
I’m having a post-traumatic stress moment right now because I’ve been through that too many times.
02:18
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Yeah, me too. I mean there’s times where I throw my leg up and I’m like, Aw, here we go. It’s starting.
Now you’ve got this giant pain in the middle of your back, right. It creeps out to both sides. Sometimes it’s sharp. Sometimes it’s dull.
02:32
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
And we’re working it short. It can show up right at the site, right back here one side, one side or the other close to the spine, or maybe you hit down on your thigh can hit your knee, can be down on your foot.
02:42
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
And you’re growing and.
02:44
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
You’re generating from that one.
02:45
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Yeah. It could go up to the upper back. So listen, it’s all across you. Right? It normally starts like food, like just overloads everything on everything. And it’s pain, pain.
You’re like, oh my God, what did I do? And why? Because the gods of anatomy hurt so much. They hate me. They hate me. And then it starts to creep. It creeps onto the down the button. It creates, like Mike said into the groin and it creeps into the hamstrings and it creeps up to the upper back.
It usually locks itself into one side of your back and that, or the other. Most of the time you’re like, oh, so much on the right side. And you can reach right for it. It’s right below your waist. It’s right at the very top of your butt.
It’s usually right on those two bones that are sitting right directly into the back side of your body.
03:36
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
No,
03:36
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
We’re not there yet. We’re not there yet. It’s always trying to rush this with program. Okay. So listen, this is always wind too. We go, do I need surgery? Oh my God. Do I need surgery.
03:47
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
To complete a sentence?
03:49
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
And it is that intense. This is when we get called all the time. Like, oh, I hurt my back. I can’t walk. I can’t take a breath. I can’t move. I can’t lift my leg up. What is happening?
And we’re like, breathe. You’re going to be okay. You’re gone and be okay, it’s coming. And it was like birthing a baby. It’s your birth in the back.
04:05
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Yes.
04:05
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
As you would show now, so what actually happens to your bath? What actually happened?
04:12
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Well, what’s happening is that joint is Not moving on the little bit of motion that it does have. It is not doing that anymore. Pain receptors are fine.
04:22
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
This is a really, this is a common injury. You guys, this is 15 to 30% of people who hurt their back. It’s an SSI joint issue.
It is, it is actually really prevalent in the world because we’re moving all the time and our bodies are built to move there.
We’re not built to sit. We’re not built to stand for a long period of time, not being or not built to be sedentary. We’re not built to be static. We are built to move so low back pain, 15 to 30%.
Not only that you guys, but remember the number one source of low back pain in America. I mean that pain, no back pain is the number one source of back pain in America. And it’s a billion dollar industry.
It’s $1 billion for people that are spending to try and alleviate low back pain. Now this is one of many parts of low back pain, but this is a really common, common injury.
05:24
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
It’s got its notorious nickname because it seems to come out from nowhere. It’s literally like I was literally doing nothing. All of a sudden I woke up and I went to put on my pants and my back hurt. Oh, there it goes.
05:43
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Exactly. It’s usually coming from what happened prior the day before or a few days before how you stand, how you move the whole thing.
So what the heck is it? We have literally heard your cries and we are here to break it down for you.
Break it down for you. What is this SSI joint that we speak of? Now? You may hold up. Now this is you as your non skinned, non muscular self. This is you booming. Hello posture.
Yes, Sadie. Okay. So look, this is your spine. Okay. Hopefully it looks more like this than what we had seen in the past.
You have your cervical, you have your thoracic and then you have these big lumbar vertebrae. In-between remember these vertebrae sit your intervertebral discs.
That’s like where most people go first and foremost is, did I do something to my desk? Chances are you did it.
How The SI Joint Is Constructed
06:41
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
If you follow these lumbar vertebrae down, these are your spinus process that you can feel in the low part of your back. You’re going to feel your sacred, right?
This is the very end to end the train line. As we move all the way down, it goes all the way to the end. That’s your sacrum on the side. You got it. Okay. The sacrum, what the sacrum does is the sacrum supports the spine.
In turn, it’s supported by these big ilium bones that are the top part of your pelvis that are sitting on either side of the sacred. Okay? The joint is what’s in between where the sacrum and the ilium come together.
The joint is not a joint where it’s like, we’re thinking joint, like elbow joint. It’s the articulation where the two bones meet. It’s called your S joint or your sacroiliac joint.
07:41
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Now this joint right here, it supports the entire weight of the body,
07:45
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Which means it’s going to be a highly stable or should be a highly stable joint. I mean, he doesn’t have a lot of whole lot of b******t. It only has about four degrees of motion at any one plane. Doesn’t move a whole lot. And it does move,
07:57
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Right. It’s a stable joint. And it’s just really strong guys. Its job is to carry the weight of your body when you stand or when you walk.
When you shift that load down to your legs. This is doing a whole lot of work and we take a lot of this for granted. So, so yeah. Why does he go out so much? Because think about it, okay.
Let’s think about the pelvis before we even go into it. Let’s break that down so that the pelvis is made up of three bones that are fused together. You’ve got these big ileum.
If you turn it around, you’ve got the issue which is down here and you’ve got the pubis.
All three makeup, one big pelvis, the ilium, the issue and the pubis. And now think about this guys. These are surrounded. Think about it.
08:52
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
This.
“The lumbar vertebrae and this big old pelvis”
08:55
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
If you look back, you’ve got the sacrum and the coccyx that are coming down from it, right? You’ve got the sacrum, the lumbar vertebrae and this big old pelvis.
This is super cool at all, but this doesn’t move your body. What moves your body muscles? Good. Very good. Now also I will say this, like Mike was saying, it’s a stable joint. It is not built to move it.
We’re not built for movement here. This is a stable joint too. This is a low, mobile joint. These big hip joints down here are super mobile because we move right. And so the mobile joints, stable joints.
We got a stable joint in between two mobile joints, which is how the body is supposed to hold up because that’s how we move and stabilize through our day. If you think of the pelvis as a pail of water, this is your chain, right?
09:59
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Sitting here is your pale. And this is where the water is. The water is sitting right in there. The goal of the pelvis is to keep the water in the pail, right.
To keep the water in the pail, besides have to be even. If you have one side that’s tipping that way, or one side that’s dipping that way or one side’s tipping that word this way, it’s going to drop the water out. Correct? Right.
No, we don’t want to lose water. We need water. Now this pelvis that we love that serves us so well attached to it as muscles, we have tons of mover muscles on the front, the back and the inside of it.
These guys are what’s keeping us moving because they are the dynamic muscles that attach to these guys that are the stabilizer muscles. Correct? Correct. Yes. Thank you. Hold on.
The Quadriceps Group Is The Front Of The Thighs
10:54
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
I know, I know like we’re interacting right now. Like give me a thumbs up if you think it’s correct. I feel like I’m teaching all of a sudden I’m like, Hey everybody, give me a high five.
That’s right. Okay. So listen. We thought all these mover muscles that are pulling it forward and back, right? You’ve got this big quadriceps group that sits in the front. Those are the front of your thighs.
Those are what sits in the beginning or in the front. What they do is they actually attach like right here, you’ve got this big rectus femoris, the top part of your quadricep, which is their thigh that attaches here and will actually flex the hip.
It’s job is to kind of flex that hip. You have these hamstrings that are sitting on the backside that are attached to these guys on the back side of the hip and they flex and extend the hip.
11:49
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
You have some that flex and some that extend. The quadriceps and the front flex it, the hamstrings extended, right? On the inside, you’ve got this adductor group and the adductors are there to kind of stabilize and hold the light on because otherwise we’d be all over the place.
And we wouldn’t be very stable. These big stabilizers are on the inside of your legs. If you’re sitting down and you reach down on the inside of your thigh, though, your groin is your adductors.
They’re attached literally here from in here, down here into your leg. So we have attachments here. We have attachments here. We have attachments here. We have attachments everywhere. And then you got your big glutes.
Then you’ve got this big core. We can’t forget these deep core muscles of the abdomen that provide the structure and the stability. How am I holding this all the time?
12:44
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
All you’re doing is just sitting here. I’m doing all the talking and I got to do the manual labor. Like, what is that all about? Oh God, it’s hot too. I mean, that’s what, over here, don’t hit yourself with a splice.
Listen, there is a lot of tug of war going on with this pelvis. Your pale is constantly being fooled, being pooled, being pulled. What do we do the majority of our day guys? We’re not, we’re not moving every second of the day.
In fact, the majority of us are doing what we’re doing right now, sitting on our rear ends. If we’re doing that, we’re shortening the front. We’re lengthening the back. The adductors are being shortened and compressed, the glutes aren’t doing anything and we’re not.
Yeah. We’re not actually helping those abdominal muscles either because they’re not really supporting us either. We have this crazy imbalance of musculature that if they attach in here and here, let’s say we do a lot of crossing our leg or standing one leg.
Imbalance In The SI Joint
13:56
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
All of a sudden you’ve got an imbalance in the front. Where do you think it goes and relates itself to the back?
Now you’ve got one side that’s all of a sudden tilting forward more or higher than the other side, or pulled back, or let’s say you’ve been doing this for a while and that you’re slow.
Like I had a client the other day, he was surfing and slipped off his board and his leg whoop. Where did it end up right here? Because one side went down really too fast and the other side contracted to hold him up.
It caught him right in the SSI joint.
14:36
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
How many times is there already something going on prior to that happening? So there’s already something getting stuck. He’s not even aware of anything. Slams at home.
14:44
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
And remember, look like what? Mike said, four degrees of movement in any plane. Right? So, we’re talking about the pelvis does this and this, and this.
That’s four degrees, this and this it’s undulating. It moves this way, very slightly undulates in order to hold the pressure. It’s held on by ligaments because that’s what holds joints together. These ligaments are sitting there like this, trying to hold the structure.
Overstretched Ligaments And The SI Joint
Now what happens if you’ve been sitting funky for a long time and you’re off all the time, your ligaments, which are normally really strong. Overstretched, think about this. A good example is the color of your shirt. You know how it’s always doubled up?
Like it’s it’s so, and so it’s a lot more, what do I want to say? Solid? Yeah. It’s like, it’s like reinforced. That’s what I want to say. Let’s say you’re pulling on the collar of your shirt all the time.
15:53
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
The first time you do it’ll pop right back. Right? Because it’s there to support you after a while. If you just do this for a long period of time, I don’t know what you have to do this, but you do this eager to stretch it out.
You’re going to put it on like that guy in the commercial. It’s going to be like completely loose. And that’s what happens to you.
16:12
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
And you’re like, what are you doing? You know, over there.
16:19
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Really are, you are reminiscing, like you’re, but I digress. Okay. So, and remember, or remember the time you sprain your ankle a long time ago or hurt your knee a long time ago, and you lived for a long period of time trying to get that guy back together.
You are not evenly distributing the weight. What you’re doing is you’re clumping everything down on the opposite side. There’s compensatory patterning going on where one side is taking the majority of it.
SI Joint Dysfunction
Remember our kinetic chain, everything goes from the foot to the head and from the head to the foot. There’s a difference in how the balance is. If you’re walking with a lift, it’s going to end up in the pelvis and vice versa.
It’s going to go up and it’s going to go down. That can be part of this S I joint dysfunction.
17:10
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
How.
17:11
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Do we fix it? I’m getting there. Sadie, I’m getting there. I got free. I got time. Don’t rush me lady.
17:16
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
You need to come in for an assessment.
17:18
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
I guess assessment is always part of it. Also, listen, there’s another reason why this kind of happens sometimes for us, ladies, maybe some men, but the ladies for sure.
This whole childbirth thing, right? You’re carrying this child for nine months, birth in the babies. You have a humongous belly. You’ve got all this weight distribution going into the front of your belly. Not only that, but as we get ready for birth, the hips expand, right?
They’re getting ready to blow that child right out of there. Not only that, the way I speak romantic, and then you have, what’s called these hormones that come in, they’re called relaxing and relaxing come in. They soften the joints, which means that, yeah, which means the ligaments now can expand where they couldn’t before that happens.
It stays with you for six months after childbirth. What happens is we have all this change in the pelvis.
18:19
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
After every woman seems to want to jump back into the gym five to seven days a week and get it right back.
Their body’s not ready for it. It throws it off because their body can’t hold the movement patterns that they’re giving it’s. The core isn’t strong because their core has been stretched out for nine months.
There’s things like that keep coming up over and over again. So, listen, here’s the question, safety. How do we fix it and make it go away?
Stabilizing The SI Joint
18:52
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
The key, the whole key, I was actually talking to a gentleman last night, the key to stabilize. This is balanced, filing the balance back through all your structures, getting this structure, realign.
Now some of this you can do on your own. Sometimes it gets so locked in. You need a little help. I am the master of trying to fix myself at times cannot because I get so locked in.
You need assistance. Getting that assistance, getting that straw, all the structures, bounce back again. The quarterback on the paint will go away.
19:23
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Yeah. And, and part of it is having somebody help you because remember, we’re not all in this position all the time for us. We see this all the time for you guys, especially when you’re in pain, it takes over your world.
The other thing too, if it’s a chronic issue, your brain remembers the energy flows where the attention goes. If you’re not getting any attention to certain areas for a long period of time, these are too short. These are stretched out. These are not working.
These are not really working. They stopped talking to the brain and then we stopped activating them. If we’re not activating them, you can try like crazy to get this thing going. But it’s going to constantly reset itself.
It’s going to constantly reset itself. There’s a couple of ways that we can do it, where we’re activating certain muscles and Diaz, not deactivating, but calming the other side down.
Dominant And Dormant Muscle Patterns
20:17
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
There’s dominant and dormant muscle patterns that we’re changing. The job for you guys is keep the pale steady. So the water doesn’t fall out. Now, if you don’t come to somebody and see it, what can you do on your own first and foremost is you got to pray.
You got to pay attention to how you stand. Your job should you choose to accept it is to actually be part of the proactive part of your body, because only you can fix you. Right? We’ve said that pretty much like every Wednesday at 1230.
If you start paying attention to how you walk and how you move and how you stand, are you standing one leg when you’re sitting, are you sitting kind of over to the side?
Do you sit forward? Do you sit? How much do you sit? How much do you stand? Do you squeeze your butt?
Do Your Hamstrings Feel Tight?
21:04
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
How do you squeeze your butt? How do you feel your hamstrings? Do your hamstrings always feel tight?
I know this sounds like it’s droning on and on, but the more that you pay attention to this little area, even your belly are you pulling your belly button in and pulling your pelvis up so that everything tilts back in so that you can go into a neutral pelvis, like just that alone will start to stabilize you.
There’s a lot of stuff that you guys can do on your own to help the pelvis stay balanced and activated because a balanced pelvis is a happy pelvis. We want you guys all to have happy, healthy choices.
Remember the hamstrings, the quadriceps, the adductors, the core, the glues teamwork makes the dream work. If you have them all working correctly and in symmetry, then all of a sudden you will have less and less of an issue back here.
22:01
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
The other thing too is when you were doing your walking, hiking leg, workout, gardening, packing, what’s your body doing?
22:12
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Are you holding yourself?
22:13
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Pay attention to that. Because carrying boxes like this is not phenomenal form.
What’ll happen is that everything starts to work. When you start to get tired and you fatigue, it’s going to go what it knows. All it takes is one little movement. And there was your back again. Outside of having to come in every other minute to have somebody in here, do this for you.
You can easily do it yourself. For one, you’re not going to die. It’s going to be okay. Your back is going to get better. Because after a while, when you go from sitting to standing, it hurts.
When you go from standing to sitting at first, when you lay down, it hurts, but you’ll notice it starts to drop into one side more than likely. It’s an SSI joint issue. Now, when in doubt, go to the doctor, just have somebody check you out.
23:08
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Because if they even touch your pelvis or you touch your pelvis, your thumb should line up.
The tops of your pelvis should line up. If you’re touching the top of your pelvis, you should see your hands like this. If you see your hands like this, or your see your hands like this, there’s something going on the inside.
You can actually do a lot of the assessment on your own.
23:30
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
You didn’t actually clue into what’s going on. You may not know how to found a sip. When you can start to work with different things.
I find out what’s working, what’s not working and start to correct at least lay on the ground and get flat. Let’s let gravity bounce around a little.
23:43
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Bit. Yeah. Sometimes it really is just calming the muscles down.
The joints, when the muscles are calmed down, the joints will start to go right back to where they need to go.
So hi, mark. You’ve enjoyed Mark’s asleep. Okay. I hope you guys really enjoyed that. I hope you guys got something out of it as I joined is really not as bad as it is. It sounds notorious, but it’s really just your sacroiliac.
24:12
Mike Julian LMT, CAMTC
Awful chronic conditions that can happen later on as your balance is maintained over a long period of time. Yeah. We’re not talking about those.
These are one disc kind of spur of alums that come up out of there out of blue. Yeah.
Chronic ones conditions can really, but may need to be lead to more, a necessity assessment from a doctor, really getting their way orthopedic surgeon, that kind of goes over horrible conditions.
These are more than just the chronic ones. Excuse, keep popping up.
The Body Is Always Alive And Changing
24:39
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Yeah. And, I will say to you guys, if this is bothering you over and over again, you get to take care of it with somebody because that will lead to potentially something not so great, because remember the body is always alive and the bones are always remodeling.
If this stays like this for a long period of time, it’s not just the pelvis. We’re worried about it going up the chain and down the chain. We really want to keep these as healthy for as long a period of time as we can.
If we can keep this, even these get a chance to not degenerate the way that they normally would with all the stress. Because if you don’t recall any type of change in the structure puts a change in the stress.
That’s put onto the structure and therefore changing the bone, the change in the bone growth, bone spurs, calcium deposits, you name it, degeneration.
25:40
Julie Pitois LMT, CAMTC
Everything starts to happen. Let’s keep this pale of water full for as long a time as we came. Shall we? Let me know if this works for you.
Hey, if there’s, if you guys are, if you guys have something like this, go into the comments and let us know, we actually have a real quick fix for you that we will send to you.
If you connect with us and want us to show it to you. So we’ll send you the video. Anybody who is interested, share this with your people who have chronic issues in the SSI joint.
If you’re interested, send us a comment and we’ll send you a video on how to correct this one on your own. Okay. I hope you guys had a great one and we will see you next Wednesday.