Good People Having a Bad Day

Charlie is my son and this weekend he had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

In general, he’s a nice, playful and helpful three year-old. This past weekend he hit a rough patch. He recently transitioned to nursery school, moved into a new home, tolerated a sick brother getting too much attention, and it was raining. His internal and external environments were raucous.

Throughout this past weekend much whining, many tantrums, and misbehavior ensued. Pam (my wife) and I did our best to keep our cool. We tried to recognize his feelings with much empathy. We tried prevention in the way of removing hazards or emotional triggers. We tried giving him more one-on-one parental time. It was all for no! At the end of the day, we accepted our and his situation and acknowledged our son was just in a bad mood.

Although none of our interventions improved his state over the weekend. We are hopeful through ensuring his mental, emotional, spiritual and physical needs are being met our tumultuous toddler will turn into a gentleman.

On to the PT analogy!

In our practice, we work mostly with people who have back pain, knee pain, and shoulder pain. Many of these folks have seen the best doctors in town. They’ve gotten the MRI’s. They have received diagnoses like "bone on bone" "arthritis" or "full thickness tendon tears."  They may have even seen the pictures of the joints on MRI and know something looks different. Alas, this leads to much worry and concern they are broken.

In most cases (no trauma or broken bones), these folks have good tissues that are having a terrible, rotten, no good, very bad day (or week, or month, or year).

So how can I be confident that these individuals have potential to improve without medications, injections or surgeries? 

Well, we have large population studies(1, 2, 3 ) showing what you see on MRI does not always mean the structures are damaged. Odds are the changes on MRI likely preceded the pain. Also, just like we get wrinkles, and gray hair on the outside, our tissues change on the inside manifesting in "arthritis" "thickening" "degeneration". 

There was a moment in time with those tissues were happy and it could likely happen again.

How did the bad day develop? Perhaps there was a change in movement, lifestyle or diet that disrupted their environment. Small changes can have large ripple effects changing our bright sunny days into darkness.

Fortunately, simple solutions can yield big improvements. Here are the basics!

1. Rest is rust and movement is medicine. Movement is how our tissues get blood and other nutrients to the painful locations as well as expel waste products. Groceries in and garbage out. Movement may be something simple like going for a walk or a swim or a local yoga class!

2. Sleep. This is the bodies natural anti-inflammatory. While we sleep is how the body recovers from stressors and repairs. If you find sleep is painful, then check out this blog and this blog! for our best recommendations.

3. Eat well! See #1 and #2 :)

What if you are doing those and still have pain? Enter Joe Norton Physical Therapy!

Physical therapists are masters at diagnosing movement related issues and finding movement oriented treatments. We identify what hurts, how you can make it feel better, and then get you stronger so you can be a healthier and happier human beings.

We fashion ourselves as human body consultants. Our role is to understand client’s needs, motivations, stressors as well as their pain and movement capacities. Through the holistic treatment of everyone as an individual, we are able to help our clients facilitate the return to activities they love.

Warmly,

Joe