SI joint awareness is growing– check out this article from TIME Magazine

My God.  We have come so far from the days when I could hardly find any information on the SI joint, and felt like such a freak.

I recently discovered this awesome article on the SI joint from TIME magazine: How your butt can hurt your back (what a title!).  It’s kind of accurate, though.

I find it so validating to find more and more articles like this out there, on such reputable sites.

I thought it had a great explanation of the function of the SIJ:

“The body has two sacroiliac joints, one on each side of the spine. Each joint’s role is to act as a shock absorber and support the weight of the upper body, while remaining relatively stable.”

Well said.

The article also pointed out that SI joint dysfunction, if untreated, can permanently damage the inside of the joint itself, leading to arthritis.  This isn’t something that I had ever heard or considered.  My guess is no one bothered to tell me because they figured I’m so young that it isn’t relevant.  But I think things like this are always something to be aware of.

Anyway, despite that last piece which is slightly gloomy, overall I was really happy to find this article!

***

Also, this is probably going to sound so obvious, but it took me a long time to figure out that the specialists who write interesting articles about things online are also doctors with offices where you can actually go see them.

If you’re looking for help, you can read articles like these not just for information.  Actually look and see where the different doctors quoted practice.  Once I started doing this, I was shocked at how many of them actually practiced near me.

This may sound like kind of a fairly obvious point, but in my experience, nothing is truly obvious when you’re struggling and in pain and it’s hard to even walk.  So I just thought I’d point this out 🙂

Hope this was helpful!