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Where's the Money At

This is not a get rich quick blog. I don't have any expertise in the acquisition of large sums of money and honestly I don't have any ground-breaking information that's not related to the human body. I'm a dumb shit that likes to pontificate because I am a youngest child and could never get a word in growing up.


Happy Reading!


This blog is not about literal monetary currency, but therapeutic currency. In my last blog I touched on the notion that exercise and education are the only true sources of treatment for the cause of pain. I talked briefly about all the other "techniques" and treatment modalities that can complement a program, but do not actually contribute to complete and total resolution of the underlying mechanism producing pain.


Today, I would like to elaborate some. I will leave the multitude of research out of this blog because at the end of the day most of you will not read them, even the PT's out there don't care to read research. Half of it is garbage and the other half is so different from how you would have done it the relevance is severely limited. Reason being, humans are complex.


When I examine an individual I use a number of standard tests to assess postural control, and then break out into special tests that are relevant to the injury at hand. Postural control, what a term. For those of you who don't know, posture is a huge deal. Some very smart people will tell you it matters immensely for proper functioning of the human body, some other very smart people will tell you that's bullshit.


Why?


Humans are complex. You can tear your rotator cuff and never know it. A torn shoulder muscle, necessary for stabilizing your shoulder is just about gone, and you are still push-pressing 150 pounds. The guy next to you might have a mild strain in his shoulder muscle and be near in tears.


Why? Complexity.


So rather than delve into the what if's, the maybe's, and the let's try's; let's talk about what is real.


Your body is a complete system. Made of different tissues with different densities that absorb and produce force in many different ways at many different capacities. If anyone of these tissues is met with a force that it has not adapted to, it can get injured. Muscle tears, tendon inflammation, broken bones, stress fractures; all are the result of the lack of adaptation to force. In order to heal an injury requires elimination of the force that was placed on it that caused the injury (and maybe even more than that), an environment of inflammation containing the healing components of our blood, and time.


The issue with many persistent injuries is not the healing process, and therefore techniques and passive treatments like E-stim, ultrasound, dry needling, PRP, etc do not help. The issue is in the first step, elimination of force causing the injury. Here is where postural control comes into play.

Thanks to the folks at the Postural Restoration Institute, I have developed a thorough understanding of what our body's need in terms of muscular relationships (think quadriceps to hamstring balance and abs to back muscle balance) in order to have a normal distribution of force placed on our systems every day. When muscular balance is altered, bony position changes, and forces at muscles and joints is also affected. If an injury occurs at a muscle that is being leveraged for postural control beyond what is necessary, it will not experience the necessary decrease in force that is necessary for healing. (Is it necessary?! To drink my own... you know the quote) Tendonitis, tendinopathy, recurring muscle strain, rotator cuff tears are all common occurrences in individuals with postural control issues.


So where's this money we spoke about?


The money is in addressing the postural control dysfunction. The money gets you a massive long-term change that you can rely on for maintaining the gains you made in therapy, not just popping it back into place for 4 weeks. If you are experiencing recurrent pain or injury, I implore you to find a Postural Restoration Institute trained therapist, one who is truly confident in their understanding of the science that leads to incredible outcomes, so you can get past this phase in your biologic financial life.

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