Why Some Injuries Seem to Take Forever

I had to take my car, a Ford Flex, to the dealer a while back. There was this loud THUD as I accelerated from 0 to around 20mph. If I accelerated more quickly the thud was barely noticeable.

I don’t even try to guess what’s wrong with a car. It’s a computer with wheels.

So the dealer says they’ll hook it up to their computer and find out what’s wrong.

A computer diagnosing a computer.

Turns out I was the problem.

Yeah, the computer couldn’t figure out my driving style and that’s why it shifts hard at 20mph.

Huh?

The computer in the car learns your driving style and makes adjustments. I guess my style is too erratic. You know, those James Bond moves one day followed up by more of a horse and buggy style another day.

He said they adjusted the computer in my car and it should be fine.

It’s not. The THUD is back. My car still can’t figure me out.

Welcome to the club.

People like to compare cars to the human body. Wheels out of balance and the wear on your car are like having legs of unequal length wearing out your knees.

And that analogy sort of works except for one small detail. Cars are bioinert. Cars are not alive. Bodies are alive, dynamically responding to multiple inputs. Car parts are interchangeable. Body parts are not.

But it would be nice to plug in a computer someplace on your body and do a body scan to figure out why you’re complaining of, for example, back pain.

I imagine the readout might be something like this:

• internal organ systems clear
• blood panel negative
• heavy wear on lumbar discs 3, 4, 5 along with the associated facet surfaces
• support ligament hypertrophy with nerve root effacement
• myofascial support system structural integrity loss extending from the upper gluteals to the lower lumbar and up to the left periscapular region
• Asynchronous firing with weak signals from the Gluteus Medius and Maximus on the left
• Mal-alignment of the pelvis secondary to mild valgus at the knee, right worse than left
• Weak signals of the spinal stabilizers, multifidus in particular.
• Inadequate motion in the lumbopelvic region
• Severely restricted movement in the thoracic segments
• Right great toe lacks a full range of motion
• A victim mindset detected along with a disturbance in the strategic thinking module in the cortex
• Recommend overhaul of affected systems or upgrade system

Man, where do you start? Thing is, this list isn’t all that far off from reality. Any professionals reading this will probably recognize a problem or two in that list.

And any students reading will recognize the feeling of overwhelm when you finish an interview and exam, have a ton of data and no clue what to do.

That feeling of oh crap, now what do I do?

The body is not bioinert. You can’t replace the fascial system as if it were a couple of struts.

What to do? Start simple. Ignore the noise and go for the low hanging fruit.

Because, the simpler you make the problem, the better you’ll understand it. The better you understand it, the more successful you’ll be in solving it.

Most of the time, if your back hurts when you sit, walk, bend, turn or basically move within the gravity plane and that same pain vanishes, or nearly does, when you lie down, the problem is you’re weak.

And the stuff that’s weak is the connective tissue – fascia, disc, ligaments, tendons. Yes, muscle strength is important. But the system that connects muscle to your spine or connects spinal segments to each other, what I call your suspension system, must be strong.

Your suspension system must be stronger than the muscles that attach to it.

Problems show up when the suspension system is weaker than the muscles. Like patellar tendonitis of the knee or Achilles tendonitis of the lower leg or a much less discussed problem of multifidus tendonitis of the lower back. These are all situations where the muscle is stronger than the associated tendon / connective tissue.

The suspension system is composed of biologic tissues which have a low metabolic rate (the rate at which they use energy). This is because of reduced blood supply (in comparison to muscle tissue).

A reduced blood supply also means slower healing times. Low metabolic rate tissues need more stimulation than higher metabolic rate tissues, more repetitions. The challenge is finding the proper load levels to both achieve the repetition goals and avoid pain.

When there’s a mismatch, a low metabolic rate tissue with exercise intended for a higher metabolic rate tissue, the recovery time can be longer than necessary because the tissue is understimulated.

Thanks for reading.

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