The MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, is an amazing piece of technology. But MRIs continue to be overused even after guidelines in 2007 from the American College of Physicians and American Pain Society strongly discourage the use of MRIs for many patients with back pain. The rate of MRI has continued to grow since 2007, if at a slower rate. 

The problem with MRIs in many situations of back pain, shoulder pain, knee pain, etc is that the results of an MRI don't often show what is causing the pain the person is experiencing. And MRIs can show abnormalities that have nothing to do with the person's pain sometimes leading to unnecessary, costly and dangerous surgery. ​

Here are some of the main points these studies have shown:

1. MRI's of healthy people with no pain or symptoms often show abnormalities like disc herniations, meniscus tears, or rotator cuff tears. 
2. MRI's of people with pain and symptoms often show no abnormalities. 
3. A person's pain and the abnormalities shown on an MRI often don't correlate. For example, a larger herniation doesn't mean more pain than a small herniation. 

MRI's also never show the cause of them problem, only the symptom. A herniated disc, meniscus tear, or stenosis are all symptoms caused by posture and movement imbalances. Posture and movement imbalances are what also cause the pain and other symptoms you are experiencing. There is a postural explanation for why you herniated L4-5 on the right side. The MRI can't tell you that. There is a postural explanation for why you tore the medial meniscus on your left knee and not your right knee. The MRI can't tell you that. There is a postural explanation for why you have lumbar stenosis at L4-5 and L5-S1. The MRI can't tell you that. A free posture evaluation can tell you why and how to fix it. 

Pete Egoscue rewrote his best-selling book Pain Free and recently released it. Much of the book is rewritten and new and definitely worth checking out. 

"The ideas that Pete Egoscue brings to the world of nonoperative orthopedics are thoughtful, insightful, a bit controversial but undeniably USEFUL! In this book you will find very practical and quite often amazingly effective advice for dealing with joint pains and contractors. I have used many of Pete's thought-processes (and E-cises) in caring for my patients over the years; they work quite often, quite well. This is a short, easy-to-read, and actually pretty interesting book-buy it, read through-sooner or later you're going to need it!" 

- Scott V. Haig, M.D., assistant clinical professor of orthopedic surgery, Columbia University, author of Orthopedic Emergencies: A Radiographic Atlas 

"We have seen firsthand how Pete Egoscue's method has cured people who suffered with chronic pain for years. He helped transform Sonia from a young mother with debilitating back pain to a strong, confident, active woman. Our entire family and network of friends have relied on The Egoscue Method to help our bodies achieve their original design, thereby freeing us from pain and unleashing our full potential. The same can happen for you. No one knows the body like Pete Egoscue. He is a genius, a marvel, and a movement, and this book can literally and legitimately change our world, one body at a time." 

- Sonia and Paul Tudor Jones

Buy your copy of Pete Egoscue's new Pain Free book here. 

Since March 2020 the United States and the rest of the world have been dealing with the coronavirus and COVID-19. We have all been dealing with staying at home, working remotely, having our kids at home for virtual school, wearing masks, social distancing, avoiding social gatherings, missing seeing family and friends in person, and trying to deal with the same everyday stresses. Businesses have closed. Many people have lost their jobs. Some have lost loved ones to COVID-19. Others are dealing with long-term effects of having had COVID-19. 

The way most of our lives have changed in the last year has meant decreased physical activity. Many of us have been unable to go to gyms regularly, meet with running, hiking, or cycling groups, go to our yoga studios, and because we've been on lockdown or just staying at home we are walking and moving much less than ideal. This decreased movement can lead to lower back pain, knee pain, tension headaches, achy shoulders, and neck pain. Many people have been unable to get their regular massages or acupuncture, see their osteopath or chiropractor as usual, haven't been able to do Pilates, yoga, or see their personal trainer weekly, and this is exacerbating their pain symptoms. 

You can do online live Posture Alignment Therapy over Zoom from the comfort and safety of your home! I've been seeing clients 100% online since March 2019 and have helped hundreds of people improve their posture and eliminate their pain using Zoom video therapy. 

It's a one-on-one hour long appointment where we discuss your pain, evaluate your posture, perform functional tests and gait analysis, and walk you through personalized e-cises. I've been doing video therapy with clients for over 15 years so I'm very experienced in doing therapy this way, but clients who are brand new to this idea have been blown away with how effective and easy it is. I just email you a Zoom link which you click at your appointment time and that's it. After your appointment I email your ecise menu to you which includes pictures, descriptions, and videos of all your therapy exercises. 

Luckily vaccines are being distributed and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully soon we can start getting back to eating at restaurants and bars, reopening our businesses, traveling, and most importantly seeing friends and family again. In the mean time, get and stay pain free with Zoom video therapy. 

This is part 2 of Understanding Human Psychology and Chronic Pain. Part 1, talked about the 4 classes of experiences and how engaging in less class 3 and 4 experiences and more 1 and 2 experiences will have a very positive impact on our health. 

Part 2 is going to explain how everything we do in life is driven by the 6 Human Needs and how we can choose positive or negative ways to meet these needs which will determine whether they are an empowering or destructive force in our lives and on our physical health. After introducing the 6 human needs we will examine how these needs play into chronic pain and whether people are able to become pain free again. 

What are you imagining? If you are the typical person in pain, you are imagining the pain getting worse, limiting your ability to work, play (you might have already forgot what that is), and enjoy your life. You are imagining having to get that surgery you have been trying to avoid and imagining having the long hard recovery that you heard people have to go through to get better. You are imagining that your health will continue to get worse because of course you’re getting older and that’s what happens.
 
But what if you chose to imagine something different? What if you chose to imagine your pain decreasing and going away? What if you chose to imagine being able to get well without needing surgery? What if you chose to imagine being able to resume a pain free and active life full of joy? What if you chose to then help others imagine the same for them?
 
If Albert Einstein is right (and he usually is), then what you choose to imagine right now, and each moment from now on, is what you are going to experience. So the question is: What do you chose to imagine?

For help imagining a pain free and active life, contact me for a free posture evaluation and consultation and I'll help you understand what you need to do to achieve your goal of living pain free and enjoying peace of mind. 

Yes, you read the title of this blog article correctly. As miserable as chronic pain can be physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and in every other way, I believe there are some very important things you can be thankful for when you're in chronic pain. 

When you stop fighting chronic pain and make peace with it, listen to it, and use it for the reason it's there, everything gets better. If you are in chronic pain, as painful as it can be, stop for a minute and be thankful that your body is talking to you, your body has the ability to heal itself, and you are in charge of that process.

Listen to Pete Egoscue, founder of the Egoscue Method and Posture Alignment Therapy, and Paul Tudor Jones, billionaire investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist, discuss Egoscue's simple solution to chronic pain at the J.P. Morgan Robin Hood Investors Conference. 

If you suffer from chronic pain or injuries and would like to restore your posture as Pete Egoscue describes and live a pain free life contact me for a free posture evaluation. Your free posture evaluation can be done in my Portland, Oregon clinic or via Skype or FaceTime from anywhere in the world. 

Continuing my series of blog posts about how the body works as a unit and how posture deviations in one area cause reactions throughout the body, today I'm going to focus on the relationship between the upper back and shoulders. 
​
Here are the first three blog posts in this series:
Part 1: Introduction to how the body works as a unit
Part 2: Foot and leg posture
Part 3: Hip and spine posture

The upper back or thoracic spine is intimately related with the shoulder complex including the scapula, clavicle, and humerus and any injury or pain symptom in this area can only be effectively treated by looking at the entire upper body as a unit. 

Dem Bones is a well-known spiritual song in which the first verse says:

This wisdom that the human body is a unit where each piece is connected to the next is often lost in current treatments for musculoskeletal pain. Let's help restore that wisdom...

Osteoarthritis is commonly believed, by doctors and the general population, to be a disease of aging and  obesity. Knee osteoarthritis (OA) can be found in about 1/3 of all adults over 60 years old in the United States. The prevalence of osteoarthritis has doubled in just the last 50 years. 

This is how most doctors have thought about OA up until today:

• Osteoarthritis is caused by wear and tear.
• Activity causes wear and tear. The more you use your knees the faster they will wear down.
• Obesity increases wear and tear on the joints.
• The longer someone lives the more wear and tear their joints will endure.
• People are more obese today than 50 years ago which helps explain the increase in osteoarthritis. 
• Osteoarthritis is more common today than 50 years ago because people are living longer.

There have been studies however that are starting to disprove this theory. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences throws the theories of aging and obesity causing knee OA out the window.