The body is a wonderful thing – a complex piece of machinery with a set of instructions that even allow it to fix itself. Underlying this machinery is a system that works within its operating conditions.
Unfortunately, the ways in which we stress our body today pushes us past those operating conditions far too often. Everything from bad posture, to excessive or improper engagement in sport, can lead to chronic injuries that cause people grief through their lifetimes.
The sad thing is that people don’t do the right things to fix the issue: they either accept these ailments as a part of life, or place their bets on short term solutions like drugs and therapies that only serve to fix the symptoms and not the underlying fault in the system.
This article does not discuss the specific methodology required to fix some of the problems presented. Firstly, it cannot possibly cover the necessary depth. But more importantly, this is a field where wisdom prevails: sometimes we know how to fix something without knowing why it was fixed – too many variables to control for.
Hence I’m not going to present a methodology grounded with science, but rather, an attitude grounded with philosophy.
Let’s begin.
*Words you should know before continuing (Skip if Familiar with Terms)
Chronic – persistent and lasting medical condition
Acute – rapid onset medical condition, usually with a short period to resolution (days/weeks instead of years)
The Problem
Anyone ever involved in sport will be familiar with the consequential pains that physical activity brings.
I’m not talking about the soft aches of a sore muscle, but those pains that border on the verge of becoming an injury: A sprained ankle from playing basketball, a tender adductor (groin muscle) after dance practice, ailing knees after a run, a clicking shoulder after a game of tennis, a dodgy hip after a Sunday round of golf … the list goes on.
We can even extend the list with non sports-related ailments. An aching neck, tired eyes, a runny nose, lower back pain, etc, are all signs that something in the system is disrupted.
The Wrong Way To Solve the Problem
The absolute worst way is to hope that the problem just magically disappears. That may have worked for the bumps and bruises you sustained as a young person, but it’s not going to work forever. Sooner or later, the consequences will come back and bite you, just as it has for me (more on this below).
The next worst approach is to just apply any old solution that your buddy Joe recommended, and hope for a quick fix. Unfortunately, most chronic injuries don’t get fixed overnight. Most people (doctors included) also don’t have the adequate knowledge to fix the issue.
Better but still inadequate, is to solve all symptoms and then continue to beat them down as they crop up. The downside to that is that the underlying problem isn’t solved, and can cascade to ever worsening situations.
An example of this is diabetes. One way is to curb the effects of the disease is to inject insulin to dampen blood sugar spikes. This brute-force solution works for awhile, but as aging takes its toll and issues start to crop up. Eventually, the disease leads to other complications, such as glaucoma, gout, and heart disease.
The best solution is to change the lifestyle to fit the disease: eating a diet low in carbohydrates that reduce or eliminate sudden blood sugar spikes in the first place, decreasing your chances of complications and increasing your chances of resolution (even if by sheer “brute-force” of living long enough for a solution to appear).
The final, “from first principles” approach is the best one. More importantly, practicing is more a matter of philosophy than anything else.
So the actual solution to the problem is a philosophical one, and as a result, is something that young people like me tend to avoid discussing; young folk can sustain a fair amount of beating and still be fine.
However, it’s more often than not that chronic injuries stem from acute ones, and when the body finally breaks, the consequences are both painful and sustained.
Acute Injuries that Turn into Chronic Ones
I’m still a young guy (20 years at the time of this writing), and I already have a significant list of chronic injuries. Most of which occurred because I made the mistake of letting an acute injury turn into a chronic one.
But to be fair, some of them were brought about by poor coaching – I was led down the wrong path when I couldn’t have known better.
One example was when I suffered a left adductor tear doing some sprints in my high school track and field years. My coach simply recommended rest, assuring me that it would fix itself.
It didn’t, and instead went on to cause me some knee and hip problems down the road. Specifically, the weakened adductor led to overcompensation of the glutes and inhibition of my left quad; the Mind-Muscle Connection to the left was very weak.
What that meant was that I’d use the posterior chain for knee and hip extension, leading to a weak Vastus Medialis (VMO), the teardrop shaped muscle right above and to the inner side of the knee. The weakened VMO wasn’t recruited well in everyday activities like walking and cycling, leading to a lack of knee stability, and therefore, chronic knee pain. Worse still, I had suffered an ankle injury before, reducing my ankle dorsiflexion and putting more knee strain during squatting movements. And to add insult to injury, I was engaged in a sport (shotput) that emphasised use of only my dominant right side, further reducing awareness of my left quad.
If you’re not really following the last paragraph, then that’s testament to the complexity of the human kinetic chain. It’s no wonder I took awhile to diagnose the problem.
Still, diagnosis was only the beginning. Now came the hard part of actually fixing the problem. This was a conscious and constant process. Mind you, it got to a stage where every single downstroke while pedalling my bike made my left knee click painfully.
Eventually, it took me about 1 year or so of activation drills, mental cueing, targeted workouts, and consciously controlling every step taken to fix the issue. This issue is just one of many; I’m still fixing my hip imbalance. But with many years left to live, I’ll get there =).
Recap
Let’s take a paragraph to recap.
Through a specific activity (shotput), I was put in a situation where pathological movement patterns were emphasised. I (subconsciously) favoured use of my right leg over my left, leaving the left leg weak and inactivated.
I sustained an injury on my left leg, further inhibiting proper movement patterns. This led to a cascade of events that manifested itself as what the layperson would refer to as knee pain.
To fix the knee pain, I had to fix the entire system causing the pain. ie: Treating symptoms was not an option, I had to work upwards from first principles.
It took more than a year to fix, but I now have healthy knees again.
Extrapolating
Many chronic injuries follows this sort of pattern. The ingredients for injury accumulate over time, and then due to some unforeseen event, manifest itself as an acute injury that eventually becomes chronic unless the underlying systemic issue is resolved.
Examples:
1. Degenerative Hip that requires hip replacement surgery after sudden fall while doing the dishes. Cause: years of playing golf without corrective exercises to correct movement imbalance
2. Kidney Stone removal after recurring onset of gout. Cause: years of drinking and overeating.
3. Torn glenohumeral ligament (shoulder socket) after over-exerting oneself carrying boxes. Case: years of crouching over a computer terminal, leading to anteriorly rotated shoulder blades that restrict shoulder range of motion.
Once such conditions occur, it’s imperative that we target the acute symptoms first and foremost. Do whatever it takes to get that right, be it be surgical means or otherwise. Needless to say, this is where some research should have been done prior, instead of jumping blindly into recommendations made by “professionals” (who haven’t read their medical texts since they started practicing).
Once those problems are fixed though, it’s time to start thinking longer-term. Where did the issue spring up from? What are the usual treatments given my situation? Could something be improved? Who are the people who have walked away fully recovered from such an injury? How to I obtain such information? And therefore, what do I do right now?
To be fair, there are some ailments which do not benefit from adequate research and knowledge. Most cancers, tumours, and immune disorders are obviously chronic diseases whose resolution are largely subject to the laws of probability.
Still, the vast majority of problems (like those described above) have been documented quite thoroughly, and information about their resolution can be found.
Of course, this information isn’t easy to get to, and that’s why one has to be relentless in that search.
Tolerance isn’t about sucking up the pain and relenting to carry the burden of disease forever. Tolerance is about sucking up the pain so that you are not distracted from the goal of making life better again.
Final Words
I’ll repeat what I said in the introductory paragraph:
I’m not going to present a methodology grounded with science, but rather, an attitude grounded with philosophy.
Fundamentally, you only need to do two things to ensure good health:
1. Be willing to look 30 years into the future and take preventative action today
2. Take a “from first principles” approach to solving current ailments, testing and tweaking various solutions over a long period of time, never giving up and never settling for mere acceptance of degeneration
Your philosophy, just like your injuries, takes time to fix. But once they’re fixed, the returns you’ll get are immense. I expect to be fixing myself forever, and only ever reaching death in picture-perfect health =).
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