Dealing with a very aggressive cancer diagnosis, then a mastectomy, then complications during the reconstruction process with abnormal tissue infection response, it must have been very rough on my client, second time fighting breast cancer…she’s definitely a tough fighter 💪🏽💕
For a year doctors suggested her to sleep in a sitting position to avoid the infection expanding…
From orthopedic perspective, the side effects of this year sleeping in a sitting posture, my client have developed a significant fat pad/mass right behind her lower cervical/upper thoracic also, complaining thoracic/cervical and scapular pain even though she kept herself active at the gym.
Thanks to an FRA Assessment it was easy to obverse the cervical spine abnormally positioned in a deep extension and highly limited in flexion. For a year the weight of the head compressing the cervical vertebrae changed her cervical posture towards more extension and very limited mobility in flexion and rotation, the upper thoracic vertebrae revealed more flexion and lacking extension capacity (already a natural tendency to kyphosis).
This opposition brings to an interruption of mechanical tension (insufficient joint torque variety) and force transmission between cervical muscles that cross the upper thoracic vertebrae.
Without force contraction felt in that area of the spine, fatty cells infiltration increased proliferation and forming what we commonly call buffalo hump.
The @functional_range_conditioning program combined with @functionalrangerelease treatment have helped my client tremendously (especially because a very diligent person) not only improving posture, cervical degrees of freedom, thoracic spine extension absence of pain overall improving quality of life but also visibly decreased the size of the fat pad behind the neck with more strength felt into those tissue. In addition, experiencing a decreased scar tissue restriction, scars of double mastectomies and 4 failed reconstructions (same scar cut every time), scars crossing the entire anterior body from left ribs to right ribs…working currently to rebuild new pectorals connective tissues and increase sarcomerogenesis.
Following the same thought process where areas of the body lacking joints torque variety for prolonged periods of time and missing directional stress and strain, we may observe neck fat pad formations to breastfeeding moms where need to sit long hours nursing, a surplus of the Infrapattelar fat when knee is missing flexion, pre-Achilles fat pad, posterior ankle joint, anterior to the Achilles tendon when the tendon lack extensibility and the ankle joint missing dorsiflexion, popliteal fossa fat deposition when missing significant knee extension, etc.