Each month we’ll bring you a note from one of our therapists. It might be something they’re reading, learning or just something they want to share.
This month’s note is from Mike Burggraaf, PT, DPT, LAT:
I have long been convinced that medical professionals forget that they are treating whole human beings rather then individual broken systems. Think about it: if you are having heart burn from acid coming out of your stomach and up into your esophagus, you go to the doctor and they give you a medication that decreases the acid production in your stomach. Do they ask about the chronic stress or anxiety in your life that may cause increased acid production? Physical therapists are guilty of this as well.
When a patient comes in with shoulder pain, the therapist will often address weakness or lack of movement in the painful shoulder and ignore the underlying tightness in the upper back or rib cage that causes the shoulder to overwork and eventually hurt.
In the last 18 months or so it has become more and more apparent to me that not only do we need to look at the whole body to determine why a patient hurts, but we also have to look at the whole person. Think of each person as a three-legged stool where the three parts of our being are physical, emotional, and spiritual.
If any one of those three areas in our life are out of balance, the other two legs are affected and the whole stool wobbles. When our stool wobbles, we hurt. The emotional “leg” could be suffering from stress, anxiety, depression, fear, or anger, which may very well cause physical problems such as lack of movement that leads to pain.
If we only try to address the physical lack of movement, we are probably missing the underlying core problem that needs to be addressed. Does this mean that the problem or the pain are all in the patient’s head? NO! It just means that there could be an emotional or spiritual problem driving the physical limitation.
Appropriate tools and/or professionals are needed who are equipped to help the person better deal with the emotional or spiritual issues. Once those issues are resolved, treating the physical limitation becomes much easier and our stool once again becomes solid as a rock.