Victim vs. Culprit by Mike Klobucher, DPT

by Mike Klobucher, DPT

When something starts to hurt, we usually want to do something to it to make it go away, right?  That seems fairly logical and reasonable.  We might massage or “release” it.  Sometimes we compress it, ice it, or heat it.  We might rub some medicine or cream on it.  Sometimes we choose to have a surgery on it.  But what if it’s not that part’s fault?  Imagine you witness a child getting bullied at school and he/she ends up distraught and in tears.  I think or hope most of us would first come to that child’s aid and console them to help them stop hurting.  That seems like a pretty logical and reasonable thing to do.  However, imagine you see this same scenario played out between these two children day after day after day.  If all we did was continue to console that bullied child, would that ever truly solve the root cause of the problem?  Of course not.  Obviously, the bully needs to be dealt with appropriately.

We see this same scenario play out in the human body time and time again.  Often times a region of the body becomes sensitive, painful, and/or injured because it is unduly stressed in an effort to absorb loads and forces that an adjacent region is not capable of because it is stiff, weak, etc.  For example, it is not uncommon to find someone struggling with low back pain due to stiffness in their hips.  If you think about a golf swing for instance, that movement obviously requires a great deal of rotation throughout the body.  If the hips are not capable of rotating enough, much of that motion and force will be transferred through the next link in the chain…the low back.  The low back then becomes the region that hurts; it is in fact the victim.  However, the real culprit in this case is the stiff hip.  There is nothing wrong with carrying out strategies to help desensitize the painful low back, just like we try to help the bullied child feel better.  However, if we only fixate our eyes on the low back and don’t fish out and address the root cause or the “bully” (the hips), then the low back will continue to be victimized.

At i’move we are passionate about finding your root cause and dealing with the “bullies” in your body because we want you to be out of pain for good, not just in the short-term.  This usually requires some thinking outside the box, but this is what we do because treating everyone as an individual demands it, and this is of utmost priority to us.  See the testimonial below to get a little feel for what we mean….

“I started seeing results just 2 weeks in.  I haven’t had any knee pain since then.  After 5 years of having the injury and my knee giving out on long runs it has finally stopped.  I never would have thought just loosening my hip would have helped.  I was skeptical physical therapy would work for my injury.  I was wrong!  Mike did a great job and his first hypothesis was the right one.  I had a great experience at i’move.  Everyone that works here is a pleasure to interact with.  I hope I never need PT again, but if I do I’ll be back to i’move.”