What Tiger Woods Doesn't Know That My Patient's Do

For those of you who don't know who Tiger Woods is, he is a golfer...a very famous and successful golfer.  Unfortunately, golfing at as high a level as he has its hazards, not the least of which is back pain.  This year, he has pushed himself pretty hard and has won 5 tournaments....that's a lot.  He is getting older; he's 37 and his body is breaking down.  The latest problem is his back.  He suffered a back injury (soft tissue, primarily) and received allopathically-mediated ( PT and meds) care and I think he believed he was fine, as the pain had subsided.  Here is what he doesn't know....your body can mask up to 70% dysfunction before you ever feel pain.  Pain is the end result of multiple systems imbalance...in this case, multiple soft tissue function imbalance.  When the pain subsides, without re-balancing the neuromusculoskeletal system (or any system, for that matter), the amount of residual dysfunction is still about 50-55%.  What that means is, Tiger will continue to re-injure his back and it will continue to bother him with greater and greater frequency and take longer and longer for the pain to subside.  After a time, his back problem will become chronic and involve even more areas of dysfunction.  This is simply the way our bodies function.  Ignore the problem=deal with even greater problems, later.  This is a truism I try to convey to all our patients.

I compiled a check list for those who would like to know when it's time to no longer ignore what your body is trying to tell you:
1.  You no longer "move" the way you used to...walking, kneeling or regular activities are difficult.  I once had a patient who hadn't been able to put on his shirt or coat for a few months.  Yet, he waited until his shoulder hurt before he came in for care.  It would have taken much less time to treat him had he come in when the problem first started.
2.  You keep injuring the same area, over and over and it never really heals.
3.  Old injuries are bothering you more and more frequently and take longer and longer to heal and there is less and less time between re-injury.
4.  You are taking pain medication on a regular basis and it isn't really helping.
5.  You have pain.  Most would have put this problem first on the list.  However, we know that pain isn't the causative factor.  Lack of function, changed function or partial function all precede pain. By the time you feel pain, the body has been forced to compensate to the point that the original area of trauma is nearly hidden.  Multiple years of micro-trauma (repetitive movement) is equal in the dysfunction caused by one macro-trauma (significant injury).

Remember:  The longer the dysfunction continues, the greater the pain will be and the longer it will take to resolve the cause. 

I was thinking back to the time I was doing my chiropractic internship.  Our clinic would offer chiropractic care at a considerably lower cost to the public as a way to help us become better doctors and serve others at the same time.  One of my new patients was a little girl of about 8 who had asthma.  When I asked her mother about her decision to have her child receive chiropractic care, she told me that she had been bringing her to the clinic for two years.  The child hadn't had an attack in that time and she wasn't on any medication.  My first thought was how lucky that little girl was to have a mother who looking to address the cause and not just the symptoms associated with asthma.  I often wonder if this child, who is now about 35 years old, continued to choose chiropractic care.  It's a choice we all have to make, sooner or later.

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