If treating the painful spot doesn't cure it

Your back hurt, so you treated your back. It got better for a moment, then hurt again. Your calf felt tight, so you released the calf. A few days later it's the same.

People who have gone through this several times come into my clinic. And most of them say the same thing: "Is there something wrong with my body?"

There's nothing wrong. If you treat the painful spot and it doesn't get better, there's a good chance the painful spot isn't the cause.

The body uses other places to endure a problem

When you sprain an ankle, you put less weight on that leg. Then the opposite knee and pelvis work harder. After a few days, the opposite pelvis hurts more than the ankle.

This is called compensation. It's a countermeasure the body devises on its own so it won't collapse. The problem is that when this countermeasure lasts a long time, the place that mounted it breaks down.

So the place where you feel pain is usually the end of the chain. Not where the problem first arose, but the place that endured that problem for a long time.

Something I actually experienced

Among the people I've seen, there was one whose front thigh hurt at the slightest brush. Even the touch of a collar was hard to bear, and she was wearing an opioid pain patch.

No matter how carefully I examined the thigh, no answer came out.

But when I felt her abdomen, the pressure in the lower belly was abnormally high. One side of the groin ligament was unusually taut. That tautness was pressing on the nerves and blood vessels running down into the thigh.

When I released the tension in that area, the pain in the thigh dropped by more than half. I never even touched the thigh.

This person also had a chain further upstream. Originally, the back of her calf had also hurt badly. In enduring the problem in the lower belly, her lower back had become excessively tense, and that tension had traveled down to the calf. Lower belly → lower back → calf. A chain that treating the calf alone would never have ended.

Why this happens

I see the body not as an assembly of parts, but as a single connected fluid.

If you press one side of a water-filled balloon, the other side bulges. The body is the same. When the pressure in one place rises, that pressure gets transmitted somewhere. And it erupts as a symptom at the weakest point.

• When the pressure in the lower belly rises → the lower back endures it
• When the lower back keeps enduring → the nerves running to the leg get pressed
• When the diaphragm stiffens → breathing becomes shallow → the neck and shoulders work in its place
• When one side of the pelvis twists → the opposite shoulder keeps the balance

So I feel the abdomen of someone who came in for neck pain, and I examine the lower back of someone who came in for knee pain. People who come for the first time are puzzled. That's a natural reaction.

How I find the front of the chain

Imaging shows structure. Where the bone is, how far the disc protrudes.

But the chain of compensation doesn't show up well in structure. Where the pressure is being pushed from and to doesn't get captured in a photo. So I read it with my hands.

• Where is stiff and where is soft
• When I press, which way does the pressure get pushed
• Which side defends first
• Where is the place that is tense on only one side

And I retrace the sequence. When it started hurting, what happened before that, which side it began on. The patient's memory often tells me more than the imaging.

So the order of treatment changes

If you release the end of the chain first, there's brief relief. But if the front of the chain remains, it soon comes back. This is why people say, "It only feels good while I'm being treated."

Conversely, if you release the front of the chain, the end often loosens on its own. That was the case for the patient I mentioned.

But keeping to the order takes time. It's because I start with a place that seems unrelated rather than the place that hurts right now. So I always explain why I start there. Treatment that doesn't make sense to you is hard to keep up.

Finally

Not all pain can be explained by a chain of compensation. There are obvious injuries, and there are signs that must absolutely be confirmed by testing. In those cases, I recommend testing first.

And finding the front of the chain does not always succeed. Several chains can be tangled together, and there are cases where so much time has passed that the original order has blurred. In those cases, I don't declare things with certainty based on guesswork.

But if you've treated the painful spot several times and it hasn't gotten better, that's not because something is wrong with your body. It's just that the front of the chain hasn't been found yet. Finding that front together is my job.