Do you get a sharp pain in your chest, ribs or upper back when you move or breath? Could it be that one, or a few rib joints in your rib cage aren’t sitting quite right! Read on to understand if your pain is comign from the rib joints. Indentify the symptoms and the cuases, and 2 simple things you can do to gain relief…now. If you have rib pain due to joint dysfunction, don’t suffer needlessly

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Rib Pain & Joint Dysfunction

Symptoms, Causes and What You Can Do!

📍 If you’ve ever had a jab of pain in your rib cage, when reaching or breathing deeply or twisting, this might be? What’s going on?

Hi, I’m Alexis Weidland, osteopath and co-founder of BlossomingMe and Healthy Learning Lounge. Today. Let’s talk about rib joint dysfunction. One of the most overlooked but common causes of rib pain.

Anatomy

Each rib attaches to two joints at the back where it meets the spine. If these joints become restricted or irritated, they can throw off the alignment of the rib itself.

You might feel

• a deep, sharp pain when turning, bending, or breathing.
• You could feel a tight band right around the side of your chest or all the way around.
• Pain that worsens with certain movements, but eases with others.
• Often people will describe it as feeling like they can’t quite take a full deep breath or that something stuck,

Important

but it can also mimic gallbladder or lung related pain, especially if it refers to the side or the back.

Causes

Common causes would include

• lifting or twisting with heavy load. For example, carrying kids, moving furniture,
• repetitive overhead reaching or awkward postures,
• poor desk posture, or sleeping , in a twisted side, bent possession,
• injury, or impact like a fall or a sports hit.

What happens

When the rib joint becomes irritated, it also pulls surrounding tissues like ligaments, fascia, muscles, into a guarding pattern, and that’s why the pain can linger. Or sometimes seem to move around.

What to do

So how do you help it settle and restore proper movement?

Here are two strategies that I’d often use with my clients. You can try them at home.

Positional release using breath and rotation 

You sit on the chair with good posture, your feet flat on the floor. And you gently rotate your torso towards the side that’s less painful, and you place your hand on the opposite side of the rib cage and just guide it forward gently. Then you’re in, inhaling into the back of those ribs and exhaling fully to get a gentle relaxation.

You can repeat this with three to five slow breaths, and this can help to reset the nervous system and the tension all around the joint .

Thoracic mobility

So you roll up your towel as thick as you like, but you want it to be about this long. You want to roll up that towel and you want to lie on your back on the floor with the towel at your back from around here to around here, so that it does your whole rib cage right in the middle of the spine.

Then you’re lying flat on your back, on that rolled up towel, and you’re bringing your knees up so that your feet are flat on the floor. That helps to support your lower back. And then to improve it even further, you can extend your arms out and just relax that way for up to 10 minutes.

But the aim here is to make sure it’s comfortable. Because we want to relax the nervous system as well as get that increase in movement in the rib cage and the thoracic spine and relaxation of all of those muscles. So if you feel any tension, any aching, any discomfort at all, then just stop even if that’s only been 20 seconds or so.

It’s also best to do this in the evening because this position helps our spine to elongate and allow the invertible discs to rehydrate – as during the day, our invertible discs do start to , dehydrate and get smaller, and our body does tend to sort of collapse into a compressed position. So doing this at the end of the day helps to counteract all of that.

When you’re doing this, it’s great to have your head flat on the floor, but if you need a little pillow or cushion, that’s totally fine as well.

So this technique creates space and mobility, not just of the rib joint, but of the surrounding spine, fascia and muscles. And this is key to lasting relief.

Just take care though, because when you do have a really sore rib, this might be too painful. And if it is, don’t do that at this moment in time.

Where to from here?

If your pain is sharp, one sided, worse with breathing in or out, and improves with specific movement. It may very well be a rib joint restriction. Inside my new ribcage Reset mini-course, we go deeper into these techniques with full guided videos and step-by-step support. You’ll learn how to track your progress and restore proper breath and postural mechanics.

So if you’re interested in this, click the link below and let’s get your breathing easy again and feeling freed up comfortable and mobile.

Got Questions?

So that’s it for today. Did it raise any questions or aha moments? If so, I’d love to hear them. So please put those in the comment section. I love answering questions. I hope you found today useful. And if you know someone who could use this information, please share it. Remember to comment, like and subscribe.

Until next time and in health, bye for now.

Click the Button Below for my RibCage Reset min-course

Interested in further reading?

1. 1. Slipping Rib Syndrome
   2. Slipping Rib Syndrome Symptoms
   3. Costochondritis
   4. Costochondritis Review
   5. Musculoskeletal Chest Wall Pain
   6. More Serious Causes of Rib Pain

About Blossoming Me

BlossomingMe offers a fully integrated approach to your wellbeing. Located on Sydney’s Upper North Shore. Sarah is our Cranio-sacral and Remedial Massage Therapist and health and lifestyle coach. She can help relieve those problematic knots, tightness and other specific ailments to promote a healthy recovery. These complementary massage therapies can be combined to suit your needs, and include: craniosacral therapy, shiatsu, acupressure, reiki, remedial, swedish, and body-mind-massage. 

Our qualified Osteopath, Alexis, offers a drug free, minimally invasive, “hands on” treatment focusing on the musculoskeletal system with its associated muscles, tendons, ligaments, membranes, bones and joints. Alexis takes a functional approach. This means that she focuses on the way a component (body part, tissue or group of tissues) performs its role, as well as the way the body works, performs and integrates as a whole. Our team can support you to improve your posture and therefore your overall health.