Aug 20, 2019
You're in pain so you go to the doctor who sends you home, tells
you to rest, take these pills and come back in 4-6 weeks if the
pain hasn't gone away. You go back, still in pain once the pain
medication wears off, and they walk back in the office with a huge
ass needle and tell you that this will help.
You feel great!
The pain goes away in a few days and you're on your merry way.
Several more weeks pass, and the pain is back. So, you schedule
another appointment, they bring the big needle out again...
This happens again and again and again until your doctor tells you
that the cortisone shots will compromise the integrity of your
tissues, and- you should either consider a joint replacement and/or
just lose weight or start swimming.
There are so many issues within today's medical model, and what I
know now is that doctors are burnt out. By and large, people are
lazy. They want to be out of pain NOW without doing any of the work
required to get out of pain and stay out of pain.
If you've lived with aches and pains throughout your body (this
does not include things like autoimmune diseases, etc.) you're
comfortable with the narrative that you're just aging, that
deadlifts are bad for your back, that squatting is bad for your
knees, and that this is just the way it is. And what's worse is,
many people love the narrative (read: excuse) of essentially
feeling validated to sit on the couch all evening because they're
in pain any way.
What gets us out of this loop? Pursuing strength in functional,
real-world applications. I know, that's not what everyone wants to
hear. And while some general practitioners truly are out of their
scope of practice (like, they're actually not educated enough in
the field of movement), many are just tired of telling people what
to do because they know many are not going to do it. So "cortisone
shot, schedule a surgery, and let's get on with our lives" is the
route many doctors and patients take.
But what if you're like me and you don't want to keep treating
symptoms? What if you're like me and you don't want to take the
easy way out? This episode is for you.