ACE Blog

Review our past newsletters below and stay up to date with hot new topics.

Click the blue ‘Subscribe’ button along our menu so you don’t miss out on exclusive news and special offers.

TMJ in clinical practice - Part 2

Welcome back to this series on the TMJ in clinical practice. My goal in this series is to introduce you to different factors in the assessment and treatment of TMJ related pain. Today I’d like to bring your awareness to the temporomandibular…

TMJ in clinical practice - Part 1

Temporomandibular Joint Dysfunction… Where do we start?! Such a small joint, but so much to understand and consider when assessing and treating this presentation. I hear from so many of you that the TMJ is just so complex and difficult to…

Reconceptualising pain with a plastic brain

Can your brain change? Have you every changed your mind, or changed your opinion? Even when you believed something so strongly, but you were still able to change. What about that bad habit that you were able to shake? Have you…

Leadership - personal perspective

Firstly, let me start out by saying I am no expert in leadership, nor do I think I am a great leader. But over the years I have had some great leaders and some not-so-great leaders. I am lucky enough to currently be led by one of the best,…

You have a bad posture..

Does pointing out postural discrepancies help or harm? I, like many of you were taught to assess a patient’s posture, and was taught that if someone had an anterior pelvic tilt, then it must mean their hip flexors are short and tight and…

I think, therefore I am

Often there is a lot of attention directed towards the ‘condition’ or the ‘pathology’ in chronic pain, and while this is a component, we need to zoom out and look at the whole person. It is common to think and believe that the…

Don't build something for sake of building it

In my travels I get the privilege of speaking to lots of clinicians from all over the world, and something that often comes up in conversation is their desire to build a big clinic with lots of practitioners.It makes sense of course……

The Danger in Confidence

I bet you can think of someone like this…It is the person who is so very confident in their ideas or opinions that they are incapable (or perhaps unwilling) to see that there may in fact be flaws in their perspective. Don’t…

Stress, pain and resilience

We all talk about stress, But what is stress? The World Health Organisation defines stress as any type of change that causes physical, emotional or psychological strain. But is all stress bad? Stress is a common and normal physiological…

The wrong advice

Ok, picture this… True story. I was in a shoe shop a few days ago, and happened to overhear a conversation with one of the shop attendants (SA) and a customer (C). It went something like this. SA – Hi, how can I help you today.C –…

What kind of a plant is painful?

A faceplant.. Ok that’s enough jokes... But it does link in with today’s topic so I couldn’t resist. Our bodies and our aches, pains, injuries and overall wellbeing can be a bit like a garden. You put good stuff in, you get good…

The Trigger Point

A trigger point is something that you will deal with in everyday clinical practice when treating patients with musculoskeletal pain presentations. Unfortunately, the myofascial trigger point is often an overlooked contributor to chronic myofascial…