Don't label my problem!

A fantastic editorial written about the cascade of negative effects (and inherent inaccuracy) of getting a diagnostic label. This is an awesome summary of what we have echoed on these pages many times. Your imaging, that "diagnosis" you're seeking may not be as important as you think when it comes to finding a solution to your pain.

One of our favorite sayings is "the clinical response never lies". Meaning if we find the correct load, movement, exercise, or position that reduces your pain and restores your motion in a lasting manner, then that's the ticket. We can hypothesis about what tissue it was we affected, but there's a very good chance we would be wrong anyway. What won't be wrong, is the fact that we found a treatment and solution for you to reduce pain and restore your function.

In 25 years of doing this I have yet to meet a patient that wanted a pretty imaging study, but didn't care if they still had pain or not. People want pain reduction and a restoration of their function, not pretty imaging (ie' MRI's or X Rays). If they are functioning well and don't have pain the MRI findings become a moot point.

The problems lies in that patients think the imaging can lead to a solution. I can tell you that in most cases imaging is not required and often can send you on a road of unnecessary procedures and ineffective treatments. A good physical and mechanical exam like we do using MDT (Mechanical Diagnosis and therapy) will provide way more relevant and real time information for us to treat your pain than a static image of you laying in an MRI tube ever will.

So as your progress remember that name, or scary label, or diagnosis your provider gave you may actually be holding you back from getting where you want to go!

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