Michael Livesey

Who are you?

Hi, I'm Mike Livesey. I'm a specialist MSK physiotherapist and clinical lead at Bupa. Come and ask me a question about MSK conditions and injuries

What does MSK stand for and what are some examples of conditions?

So MSK stands for musculoskeletal, so that's anything to do with our body. So we're looking at the joints in our body, the muscles in our body, and anything that acts on it. So it's looking at your function and how that's adapted. So classically in clinic, we'll see lots of problems coming in with back pain, neck pain, shoulder and knees, and they're our top four. The main sort of breakdown of injuries we tend to see is more acute injuries, so they may be traumatic sprains and strains, or more chronic persistent issues like arthritis.

What's the difference between a ligament and tendon?

A ligament is a structure that fastens bone to bone. So we'll see these around joints to help stabilise the joint. These are inert structures so they don't move. They're set at a limit and they have a limit at what they can work to. So what I mean by that is if you stretch the ligament more than it can tolerate, it'll break down and cause an injury. So for example, we'll see that regularly with ankle sprains. If you roll your ankle off a curb, the ligament will be overloaded and it will go beyond what it can tolerate and it will tear and you'll start to get pain, injury and loss of function. Now, tendons are structures that fasten muscles to bone, and these are more contractile structures, so they're more active structures with the muscle. They act upon the joint and allow the joint to move for you to be functional or do the desired exercise that you want to do. These injuries or the injuries with tendons we see tend to be more with overload injuries. When you do too much too soon and the body can't cope with it and it breaks down.

What's the difference between a fracture and break?

What's the difference between a tear and rupture?