miriam_e | "doctor" means teacher

You may find this interesting: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jamie_heywood_the_big_idea_my_brother_inspired.html
http://www.ted.com/speakers/jamie_heywood.html
http://www.patientslikeme.com/

I agree information sharing would be incredibly beneficial. This information hoarding, I just think comes from a strange old fear based world view. I do feel it's going out of style.
This guy seems to think it needs to change: http://www.ted.com/speakers/hans_rosling.html
There must be others too.

I've a friend who's a medical student (here in the US) and quite frankly what he goes through in trying to learn his chosen profession I can only characterize as abuse. School can be challenging for anyone but it seems like medical school is made to be intensely grueling involving near constant sleep deprivation and overwork.
If a person survives it and becomes a doctor I'm gonna guess the first thing on their mind won't be reforming the way information is shared. It's gonna take some time to reform that as it takes time for new doctors to be made and then time before they can have influence over such things. Of course if established physicians took the lead on that, it could happen a lot sooner.

Yes. The conditioning of doctors like that seems to me pointless and medieval. It hadn't occurred to me that it might be part of the problem, obstructing information flow. It is undoubtedly one of the reasons for the shortage of doctors.

I'd felt that their concern about hypochondria was one of the reasons (or excuses) for not sharing knowledge. I'm very lucky in that I see a doctor who is not only very smart, but also enthusiastically talks through information, theories and doubts, forsaking the standard image of the ultra-reliable, all-knowing doctor. Unfortunately I have seen very few other GPs and even fewer specialists who have this open and sharing attitude.

Thnks for the TED talk pointers. I haven't seen the Jamie Heywood one. I've seen a few by Hans Rosling. Riveting graphical display of statistics. (Wow. How many times do you hear someone describe statistics as riveting. heheh )

I've seen very few doctors in my life so I can't say what they're generally like but the structure has been very top down for a long while, and yes medieval in it's treatment of students.
I've heard it said that doctors once they get out of school know less about actual health than most people given that they haven't been practicing healthy habits due to the overwork and lack of sleep, ect.
Of course I doubt that's what doctors are wanting. I'm sure for the most part they want to help. Their training will make a difference in how they can offer that help unless they're either able to question that kind of training or have been lucky enough to get humane treatment.

This med student friend of mine tends to be very quiet online, tends to bring med books out with him if he's going out to eat. He's busy. But a while ago he did post this little video link, I thought it was telling.
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6130193

I love that Hans Rosling guy. :)

you think chiropractors and homeopathic doctors are nutty? i mean, sure, some are... but, i mean, in general? i couldn't tell if you meant that MDs feel this way or that you do as well.

i've just recently developed a pretty bad strain on the flexor muscle/tendon of my middle finger. it was pretty swollen in my hand and i couldn't bend it back. no problem with flexion, just extension. i thought the portion of the tendon in my hand was the problem until my massage therapist started massaging my forearm. i almost punched him in the face it hurt so bad, surprising both me and him haha. since then i have been icing/heating/getting massages daily and i have increased my range of motion by about 7% (in maybe, 3 days?). before, the swelling in my hand was visible even without palpation, that is mostly gone though. so anyway, what's my point? that everyone at work keeps telling me i should go to the doctor and get cortisone injections/pain killers, lmao.

i'm pretty confident that this problem is a RSI (repetitive strain injury) caused by my job. this was further confirmed when a woman i work with said she had the same symptoms a few years back. she said she did end up getting the cortisone treatments but that the last step was surgery if that didn't help. i know that i'm referring to massage therapy here, but i find it frequently parallels a lot of chiropractic work (if you find a good one). i don't want harmful cortisone injections and i don't want surgery that doesn't address the real problem anyways (as in, the flexor muscle in my forearm). i've also been adjusting the way i do my job (mainly, slowing it down. i was just doing too much) and wrapped my hand for support. i don't blame people for seeking out alternative means when the medical industry just pushes drugs at you. when it comes to muscle/tendon/ligament related issues, i feel like they are just incredibly stupid.

Homeopathy and chiropracty are superstition. This isn't opinion. It has been proven many times that they simply don't work. Massage and physiotherapy, on the other hand have tons of evidence proving their effectiveness. I read a very interesting study not long ago where people who had "tennis elbow" a kind of repetitive strain injury, that as far as I know has nothing to do with tennis other than that tennis players get it too. They were divided into three random groups. One group did nothing special about their injury, relying only on the pain to restrict them from over-use (which is what pain is for of course). Another group had physiotherapy (gentle flexing, and presumably some massage). Another group had cortisone injections.

The results were a big surprise to the researchers.

The group with cortisone improved quickly, regaining use of their arm in, if I remember rightly, just a few days. This was expected.

The group who did physiotherapy improved rather more gradually, taking a couple of weeks, I think.

The group who did nothing improved a little more slowly, but not a lot slower than those with physiotherapy.

The big surprise came (6?) months later when they re-tested the three groups. The cortisone group had mostly relapsed and were having problems again. The other two groups were fine, with their improvements being permanent.

The pharmaceutical industry pushes drugs. A lot of doctors (though not all) are brainwashed into becoming their salesmen, also a lot of their patients are brainwashed by the media into demanding drugs. But medicine itself has, to a large extent, pulled back from drugs, preferring prevention over cure, and low-impact therapy over drugs and surgery. Drugs are still there, of course, but their importance is diminishing. It is about time. :)

It sounds like you are adopting a sensible attitude to your work. It is a pity most people don't use common sense the way you are.

I don't blame people for seeking alternatives to drugs. I also don't blame them for going to quacks. The information is not out there for people to choose properly. I get infuriated at the popular media and the utter crap they dish out to people. It is having the effect of uneducating people and messing with their minds.

Newspapers had such potential, and in their early days they largely rose to it, but nowadays they have turned to something not even worth wrapping the garbage in.

Radio was filled with promise of great things in the early days too. Some of that carries over to the present day, but the proliferation of "shock-jocks" and harebrained commentary and fear-filled news has largely killed the medium.

TV had the greatest potential of the three big mass media and crashed and burned worst. It seems to be mostly anti-knowledge, fear-inspiring drivel today. Very sad. I remember when TV first came in, it was thought this would usher in a new age of enlightenment and culture. When I see the so many lying advertisements on the net and the gradual centralisation of servers and content I worry that the same might happen to the internet. I hope not. The fact that anybody (well, anybody with access to the net) can make content is a great safety valve.

Hmm, you can't see any benefit in it?
The honest truth is aside from adjusting people's spines and joints I'm not sure what else they do.
Seems to me though that they're one of the few types of health practitioners that know how to do that.
I do think massage probably has more long term benefit if done with some regularity but it seems to me it's kinda handy to have someone be able to readjust one if it's not fixing itself.
Some people's backs never goes out, so maybe they'll never know what that's like.
I know that mine goes out all the time and having it stuck out sucks. I end up fixing it myself or having my partner help me (which is of limited benefit cause there's only so much he can do).
I have to help him fix his back sometimes too.
So I see a benefit in that.
I don't get how that's quackery.

The homeopathy I get although I don't think there are actually "homeopathic doctors". Are there?

Of course I know I may seem especially superstitious given my interest in things like astrology.
It's not *belief* though, it's interest. I wont try to justify it.

Hmm, you can't see any benefit in it?

Not in chiropracty... after all the research on the topic I've read, and also from my personal experience. I used to do a lot of gymnastics when I was younger (somersaults, working out on bars, and so on) and I had the falls that you'd expect anybody to have while doing that. Unfortunately one or more of my falls injured my back and caused me a lot of pain for many years afterward. I went to a lot of doctors, chiropractors, and osteopaths. Eventually, after years of this I realised that the net result was a big zero. The chiropractors and osteopaths would always say they could fix it, but never did. Later I found out why. The manipulations do sound and feel dramatic, but other than risking doing terrible secondary damage, they have no actual effect.

In the end, the gentle exercise of walking long distances fixed my back.

Decades later I was in my car at an intersection, waiting for the lights to change, and another car smashed into the rear of my car, giving me whiplash. Over the following days my right arm began to ache more and more and then I began to lose use of it. I'm right-handed and my right arm was weakening and becoming paralysed. All my friends told me I should see a chiropractor, but having had some experience of what a waste of money they are I went to a doctor. He immediately sent me to a neurosurgeon who through a few very simple, logical tests was able to show me exactly where the damage was, and what had happened. When I told him my friends had wanted me to go to a chiropractor he was horrified. He showed me how twisting the vertebrae at that point would have very likely severed the nerve to my arm and the paralysis would have been permanent and irrepairable. His solution was to widen the hole the nerve came out, giving it more room. The injury had caused the nerve to swell, and that swelling was strangling the nerve. In time it would have died if nothing was done. Interesting side note here. If I had taken aspirin in the early stages the injury would have healed without danger. Aspirin takes swellings down. Swellings are normally a good thing that aids healing, but in this case my body was hurting itself.

Anyway I now have my arm back, with only a tiny numb part on the edge of one of my fingers to remind me.

On the point of one's back "going out", I've asked numerous chiropractors what they mean by that, and they generally give vague references to a disc or bone moving out of alignment. However, if you look at how the backbone is constructed, what they speak of is physically impossible. Buy a spine from a butcher one day, or if someone is going to cook a chicken, have a look at its uncooked spine. The way the connective tissue holds it together, misalignment would seem to be impossible.

[oops... have to break the post... I'm blabbering too much.]

When we hurt our backs, one of two things seems to be happening. Either a muscle or ligament has been torn, or a disc has been torn. If it is a muscle or ligament then massage will help a little bit in relaxing the area, and gentle exercise will gradually build strength again, but not much else can be done. You just have to be patient and let the body repair itself. Ligaments take quite a bit longer than muscle, but time will heal it eventually. If it is a torn disc then it could take years or even decades to repair, and might never be full strength again. Cartilage doesn't have blood vessels so nutrients must slowly diffuse to the damaged area.

I know what you mean about the feeling of the back being wrong somehow. I've had it myself. I think the "fixing" (especially by a family member or someone else you trust) is generally a matter of relaxation. We relax at touch. Like chimpanzees and any other social animal, we need touch and it gives us great pleasure. I've noticed a bad back can be significantly improved by simply dozing in a nice warm bathtub. If a bone was "out" that would have no effect. I don't know for sure, but I suspect it is most likely a muscle that is hurt, involuntarily tightening. And that might be why relaxing has such benefit. This seems much more feasible than the idea that the amazing structure of the spine could ever become "misaligned".

In Australia homeopaths are prevented by law from calling themselves doctors. Probably the same in USA. However I have met some doctors who give their patients homeopathic "medicines". The best thing I can say about that is that at least they are using placebo instead of drugs. I won't mention the worst that I could say. :)

Hmmm. Well those are some dramatic stories.
Truth is I've never used a chiropractor myself. And yes I think for any long term healing relaxation and strengthening seems to be what's needed.
Thing is I get that the spine isn't "out" however something is happening, I've seen it, felt it, fixed it in others and myself and no, I'm sorry that can't all be attributed to the benefit of touch, which I agree is significant.
Recently one of my partners' ribs has been slipping out of proper alignment. This makes it hard for him to breath. It's very hard for him to fix on his own if not impossible. However I've been able to help. I little bit of pressure in the right place and it slips back with a sort of click, the vibration of which I can feel and he can breathe without pain again. Just touching him doesn't fix it.
Having the neck vertebrae in my head feeling out of line (for example) can make the difference tween a headache or not. Most often I fix this myself.

See, the thing is my joints are hypermobile. I know more than most people how mobile they can be. And yes, my joints don't actually dislocate, if they were going that far I wouldn't be able to walk or use my limbs properly. But that doesn't mean they aren't slipping into better or worse alignment some here and there. A slight misalignment can cause significant pain.
Given that I'm made this way I've got more stories than can be told that have illustrated this to me.

I am aware that there is a lot argument about what actually is happening even among the chiropractors. What I've read here doesn't actually make things much clearer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertebral_subluxation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subluxation

I really do agree that long term healing requires something other than chiropractic treatment.
That being said I'm just not gonna say that something isn't happening with these perceived misalignments.

You know a while back I read that the placebo affect is becoming stronger, that it's been harder and harder for drug companies to get drugs approved because it's got to be proven better than the placebo affect and that's gotten harder to do. Which honestly I think is really cool. :)

Maybe I'll ask my dad what he thinks about the subluxation. He has done bodywork (massage) professionally for a significant portion of his life. Really he's a master masseur.
He's capable of doing that realignment thing chiropractors do. He knows a lot about the body, I wonder what it is he thinks is happening.

Yes. I know what you mean. Because of my gymnastic past I sometimes have a problem where my head won't turn fully, and if I try to force it past the point where it becomes stuck I experience incredibly strong shooting pains. I don't know what exactly is happening, but I do know that if the neck joint was out of alignment I would be paralysed. I think is likely to be tightened muscles, though there is another possibility... that perhaps the joint has some detached fragments in it and they get caught between the moving cartilage end-coatings on the bones. I'm not sure that latter problem could cause pain though, as I'm pretty certain there are no nerve sensors in cartilage... unsure of that though. I think the muscle explanation is more likely. Don't really know. I can say pretty definitively that the chiropractic explanation is just completely wrong though. We don't have to know exactly what is happening in order to be able to exclude things that are impossible.

I've had nasty pains that appeared to be in my ribs, but I've come to feel that the pain actually originates further inside, behind the ribs, perhaps in the pleural membrane. I do recall hearing something once about a bubble popping out sometimes under the pleura which can cause extreme pain until it's re-absorbed by the body again, however I don't know how true that is or how likely it is to be true.

Working out what pains are that are under the surface is very difficult because we have no real yardstick for judging them. Surface pains are easy because we can quickly associate them with touch and sight. Interior pains have nothing to anchor them to. This is why a heart attack can seem to be a sore left arm. The brain doesn't have experience of what pain from a heart means so bundles it with the nearest thing we do know about. Another example is the way eyestrain can seem to be a headache.

Yes. I think it is great that the placebo effect is thankfully becoming better recognised, and that many drugs undoubtedly rely partly or even wholly on placebo effect. For example the big scandal recently when researchers dug into pharmaceutical companies' data on antidepressants and found that their effect was only marginally more than chance, and that it could be accounted for by the placebo effect. In other words addictive substances with harmful side-effects are being pushed that have no more efficacy than sugar pills.

The article I read about the placebo effect said it was getting *stronger*. I don't know if you caught that, it wasn't just that it was better recognized.
There's loads of articles on it. If you google "placebo effect stronger" they show up.
In the US though drug makers have to prove that their drugs are more effective than placebo otherwise they won't be approved.
Which honestly anything that slows down the flow of drugs I think is good. They advertise them directly to us. That's legal. Now if they just had some kinda higher standard for the does harm versus does good ratio. Lots of drugs are affective for one limited thing but the side effects are really really not worth it.

I do really want to know what exactly is "popping" when joints pop. If you do find any info on that let me know. If MRIs could be done with moving bodies or xrays with moving bodies producing a sort of video then that would help. Strange that we don't have something that can do that.

Thank you for pressing me on this point. It was one I hadn't been aware of. I just now read an amazing article in Wired magazine at

By far the most interesting response was this:

As a psychiatrist involved in Phase 2 & Phase 3 clinical trials, I have a very simple explanation for the increased placebo response: inclusion & exclusion criteria in clinical trials are becoming so strict that the patients screened and randomized are less and less sick (i.e. suffer from less severe conditions than 10 or 20 years ago). In turn, the placebo response can only be higher as it is a well-know fact that, in the field of depression for instance, the most severe forms of depression (i.e. melancholy) will have a higher response rate to effective treatment than placebo (and thus patients suffering from milder conditions will have an increased response rate to Placebo)

For instance, in 99% of the recent antidepressant clinical trials I've been involved with, patients with suicidal thoughts (one major sign of depression) can't be enrolled (for fear of legal problems in the event that a patient involved in the trial would commit suicide). Similarly, concomitant medications (such as anxiolytics or sleeping pills) are usually disallowed so many patients with severe anxiety/insomnia (other major signs of depression) won't agree to participate in a placebo-controlled trial.

I understand that it makes more statistical sense in order to prove the efficacy of a new treatment to avoid concomitant medications and of course that it is ethically hard to justify to randomize patients with suicidal thoughts in a placebo-controlled trial. But the inevitable consequence is that the Placebo response is bound to keep increasing as legal issues and obsession with "clean" statistical data keep increasing.

Added to what he mentions, I'd expect that modern infatuation with drugs would make placebos more potent. It brings me back to something I used to wonder about much more in the past... can we learn to control these things instead of having to be tricked into them? When I was at the height of my pain problems when I was a teenager my parents got me an amazing book Relief Without Drugs by an Australian doctor, Dr Ainslie Meares who learned how to control pain without anaesthetics. He proved his theories by having a dentist friend pull one of his teeth out without anaesthetic. I never became that good at it, but became able to remove most discomfort and non-acute pain simply by getting my mind into a space that is difficult to describe.

I have heard, and read, that the popping sound made by joints (for example when knuckles are cracked) is because gas comes suddenly out of solution as bubbles in the synovial fluid of the joints. I don't know how true this is, though it sounds likely to me. One of the problems boat propeller manufacturers have is cavitation. That is the name given to the little bubbles that pop out of the water as a propeller turns, and it is incredibly destructive -- the bubbles gradually destroy the steel of the propeller, each like a little hammer. Now, if bubbles in water can do that to steel, I wonder if bubbles in joints damage them? I don't know, but I worry about it.

You're welcome. :)

Relief Without Drugs, that sounds interesting.
I'm not really surprised it could work. I've got friends who hang from hooks for the fun of it and I would have done the same by now except I could never come up with a good enough reason to bother. I do have some other experience with transmuting pain.
Every new pain is a new instance though and it's kinda like starting again from scratch remembering how not to mind. I taught myself how not to mind though, might be good to read someone else's thoughts on it.

The gas in the joints, where does it come from, where does it go?
Even if it is like little hammers we're not banging up against the bubbles with the frequency that steel propellers do, so I figure we can worry about it less. Also, steel is harder than anything in our bodies, and in cold water it has even less give. Our bodies are a bit more giving, which is probably good.

Oops. I didn't give the address of the Wired article:
http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all

;) Thanks.

Damn. I just realised I blathered away simply telling anecdotes, but anecdotes are not evidence and should convince nobody. Unfortunately we are storytellers and we naturally give and receive stories more easily than proper evidence.

So here is why I'm sure that chiropracty is superstition and not something real. I've read and heard the results of more than one study, but here is the one I read that impressed me the most. I think they began with a few hundred people who were randomly divided into 3 groups. The people in first group were given manipulation by a normal chiropractor. Those in the second group were seen by somebody who was not a chiropractor, but still touched them and talked to them. The third group came to the waiting room, but never got any "therapy". It was a long time ago that I read this study, so I can't remember the details anymore, but the upshot was that spinal manipulation had no effect at all.

Hmmm... I should try and find some of the research on the net so that I can be more precise.

Okay, here is a distillation of hundreds of studies on the effectiveness of chiropracty:
http://www.rsm.ac.uk/media/downloads/j06-04spinalmanip.pdf
The overview is at:
http://www.rsm.ac.uk/media/pr189.php

Of more concern though, is the fact that spinal manipulation can cause real problems -- even death through stroke, in the case of neck manipulation.
http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/cgi/content/full/100/7/330

The conclusion is stated in the title: "Spinal manipulation doesn’t work for any condition"

You know I don't disagree with you about about chiropracty.

I'm less certain about what we call spinal manipulation. Spinal manipulation might be what we can call it now but I agree we don't have specific information about what exactly is happening when we do that. So that's an unknown.
Personally I think it works to relieve discomfort and sometimes pain temporarily. This is my personal experience and the experience of many people I've known. That isn't what one would call a "condition" exactly. It's a temporary change though it really may be beneficial for the moment.
I agree that there really can be dangers to doing it (whatever "it" is). Which is why I won't let just anyone mess with my spine.

I don't know about the "bubble popping" thing you mention but it does remind me of something.
I once was at work and my back felt misaligned. Given how stretchy I am it takes a deep stretch to fix something like that. I went into the office that had this little bit of wall I could grab onto and did a couple of twists and a sorta deep backbend walking myself down the wall. That seemed to relieve it.
Now the nurse, a man I worked with, was there and I had mentioned that my back was out and I had just fixed it. He tells me "you know your back is not "out", it's just gas being released". Personally I took offense as his tone sucked. He might as well have said "you know, you're an idiot and you're hallucinating, I'm so much smarter than you Ha Ha Ha".
Of course that could be my perception. :)
Anyhoo, I wondered about the gas theory. I've never heard it before. In any case whatever it is, in my case it can help. I don't really need a chiropractor for that anyway. Given the way I am I could jump off the chiropractors table and have anything he or she had fixed go right back out minutes later. Which is part of why massage, relaxation, exercise, stretching has more use in my life.

You know though, I'd take hanging upside down by my feet any day over someone popping my back. I really should get some gravity boots, or whatever they're called.

If a friend asks me to pop their back I'm still gonna do it, but I will check up on that research.
And I'd love to know more about the bubble theory.

Oh also that reminds me, a friend who's a masseur told me that the muscles will form adhesions tween the fibers if they're kept in the same position for a while, and not stretched out or rubbed through. Which thing kinda freaked me out. I've seen elders who were literally stuck in a sitting position. Now I knew how that happened and I don't *ever* want that to happen to me.
I wonder if some sort of adhesions might be happening internally near the spine or what feels like near the spine too.

I like your stories. :)
Do feel free to blather on.

And thank you for the links, I'll check em out.

Eek! Don't encourage me. heheheh :)

:)

From http://www.rsm.ac.uk/media/pr189.php
"Sixteen papers were included in the research relating to the following condition: back pain, neck pain, primary and secondary dysmenorrhoea, infantile colic, asthma, allergy and cervicogenic dizziness.
“Collectively these data did not demonstrate that spinal manipulation is an effective intervention for any of these conditions, *except for back pain* where it is superior to sham manipulation but not better than conventional treatments,”

Back pain is the only condition of those mentioned that I'd consider using spinal manipulation for. And apparently it's the only one it's effective for. Did they explain what are "conventional treatments"? It says it's not better than but it doesn't say it's less effective.

From http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/cgi/content/full/100/7/330
"For conditions other than back pain, there is no good evidence for the effectiveness of spinal manipulation."

Well yah, I can't imagine why it would be effective for anything else.

Now the last article is rather concerning. Makes me glad that I've handled my stuff on my own.
I have let my dad pop my neck but he's very careful not to force it. It's been years since he's done that though, years and years.
It kinda reminds me of one yoga class I went to and the teacher got us into this position then said "turn your neck and look up" and I thought "really? that doesn't seem like a good idea" but I did it anyway and I couldn't turn my neck fully to the side and had big pain there for 3 days. That's what comes of trusting "authority" over one's own knowing. I made note of that. It's good to remember.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Doing what feels right for our bodies so often turns out to actually be right. Of course we have to counterbalance that with what we've learned in recent decades about how often intuition can be completely wrong. But I don't really need to remind you of that. :) You strike me as having a very sensible outlook on taking care of your body.

:) Thank you.
I figure intuition can only be improved by good information.

Well put.

Thankee. :)

lmao. i've worked for some chiropractors and i don't really get what they do either.

one of the first things we learned in massage school was to do an assessment of the body. you basically have certain bony landmarks that you look for and compare them on each side of the body (and to your memory/knowledge, of course).

for a quick example, if you look at someone's scapulae on their back, one of them is almost always higher than the other. on the higher side, it is most likely that the upper trap/levator scapula are to blame for the discrepancy. it could be that the lower side is elongated/overly stretched or it could be that the higher side has been shortened due to injury/overuse. these things are easier to tell once you start working on the person...but the point i am making here goes back to something one of my teachers said while i was in school,

"chiropractors treat bones, massage therapists treat muscles"

as a chiropractor, you could re-position the bone to restore equilibrium...but what holds it in place? the muscles (which they don't touch at all), obviously. it is said that once you visit a chiropractor, you will probably be visiting them with some sort of regularity for the rest of your life. when you visit a massage therapist, you should eventually get to a point where you no longer need them. massage therapists simply help the body heal, nothing more than that.

oh, and fyi, if you're having trouble with your back... i'm not going to give you any sort of diagnosis over the internet because that would be totally stupid, haha... but i will say, one way to keep it from "going out" is to help strengthen the muscles of your back. yes, i mean working out lol. also work on the opposing muscles such as the abs. whenever lifting heavy objects, always bend at the knees (NOT the back) and tighten your abs at the same time. :)

Yah, I'm aware its the muscle ligaments, etc. that keep them in place.
I've never seen a chiropractor but I have "adjusted" my back and other joints more times than I can count. I've done it for other people and I've had trusted others do it for me too.

Personally if I could get a massage a week for the rest of my life I feel that would be about perfect. I consider it maintenance.

I don't need a diagnosis thanks, it wouldn't help. My body is hypermobile. I am physically strong and getting stronger, my relative physical strength has little affect on the hypermobility of my joints. Moderate exercise does make me feel better as does stretching and massage. I also know how to lift things safely as I've been extensively trained in this.
If you don't know much about hypermobility and want to there is a decent wikipedia entry you can check out.

I think massages do an enormous amount of good, both physical and psychological. My feeling is that the psychological help is greater than the physical, but as they are so intertwined it is hard to draw a strict line between them.

Massage relaxes in a way that almost nothing else is capable of doing. That alone must do an immense amount of good, not only for the muscles if they've been damaged (bruised, torn, whatever), but also for blood pressure, brain chemistry, the immune system, digestion, and more. Even just a caring touch, without massage, has the ability to make us feel good. Being social creatures we have been programmed to need contact with others. And when we get it, the de-stressing effect is powerful. Touching a person has almost become taboo in our society, however massage lifts that taboo and grants a person the right to relax at another's touch. Even better if it helping the repair of damaged muscle at the same time.

What you say about supporting your body properly with correct leverage, and tensing the right muscles to help with that, is great advice. I often see people bend over to pick up something heavy without thinking of the strain they're putting on vulnerable parts. I have to admit I'm guilty of letting muscles weaken through lack of use (sitting at the computer writing or programming), then causing myself pain when I do something my poor muscles are not prepared for. I used to be more regular with my calisthenic exercises. I should become more conscientious again.

oh don't feel bad, lol. even i'm guilty of these things, and i know better!

i agree with all of the things you said about massage, fyi. i don't think massage is the end-all be-all, but i do know there is a lot of things it is IMMENSELY helpful for. i was actually able to save my mother from carpel tunnel surgery through massage and this made me very grateful to have this training.

honestly, i think the biggest reason i'm not seeing a doctor RE:my hand is because it's sort of an interesting experiment to me. i've never been in serious pain like this and it's kind of neat to get the view of a potential patient/client in pain. i'm also curious to see how much massage helps. i'm not a liar and i never will be a liar, so it's important to me that i believe in myself and my abilities as a massage therapist in order for me to help others. i simply will not tell someone i can help them if i don't think i can. this sounds like it should be obvious, but for a lot of crooked people, it's not.

if you look at someone's scapulae on their back, one of them is almost always higher than the other

Don't forget that our basic body plan is actually lopsided. The symmetry we are so attracted to is actually pretty unusual, and has been selected for by our feelings that it is beautiful. To see what I mean, take a photograph of any person's face and cut it down the middle. Now separate the two halves, and for each, duplicate and reverse the duplicate, then use it to construct a full face with its unreversed version. You will end up with two faces, one constructed from the right side and a copy of the right side reversed. And another constructed from the left side and the left side reversed. These faces will look quite different for most people. Only in a very few exceptionally attractive people will they look very similar.

The same is true of the body. In most people one arm will be longer than another, one leg will be longer or more muscled, one foot will be bigger. Only in a few people will the two match, and those people will tend to excel at physical activities.

This seems odd until you peek inside the body. Under the skin much of the body is asymmetrical -- the liver is on one side, the stomach is on the other, the heart is lopsided, the intestines loop around in a quite odd way, one side of the brain governs speech, another enjoys music, and we are all either left- or right-handed, -footed, and -eyed.

hah, i never heard of that photo trick, although we did learn this same thing in school. now i'm kinda curious to see my face lol

yeah, i know that people have differences but not everything is caused by genetics. i broke my ankle at one point and now one leg is shorter than the other. it could be genetics, it could be from the break during my teens...who knows. the point is that i do experience a certain amount of pain due to the asymmetry. the body will always compensate in one way or another, but that doesn't mean it won't cause problems. having one arm longer than the other is not likely to cause any problems, but on weight bearing appendages like the legs, it does cause a shift in the hips which then causes a shift for the spine. well, this is my guess anyways. massage is kind of cool because i sometimes feel like a detective, lmao. in my form of massage, you take the patient's complaints and combine them with what you see in their bone structure, their lifestyle and a few other factors... and then you form a map of what may be happening. and regardless of whether or not you're right the first time, they're going to get a certain amount of relief and benefit. it's often a "let's try and see" type deal.

when i was working on my mother for her carpel tunnel, i was still in school. my first inclination was to work on her wrist/hand, of course. she didn't really receive much benefit from that, however. it wasn't until we studied the neck and i began working that on her that she received results. it became my opinion that the impingement on her median nerve was not caused by true carpel tunnel, but was actually related to the scalenes in her neck. could i be wrong? sure! did she stop getting horrible pain/tingling sensations and avoid surgery? yep! so who cares, haha.

do you have any references for the ineffectiveness of chiropractors? i know some people feel the way you do, but i don't think the majority does in america. actually, chiropractors seem to be a pretty rapidly expanding business these days.

i didn't know if you knew this or not, but i am actually a massage therapist. this is mainly the reason i know as much as i do about my problem. i didn't tell you this in case it altered your response to me (although you don't seem much to be the type to alter anything, heh).

but anyways, i found your response humorous because while i don't get chiropractic treatments (although i have in the past) i have worked for a few chiropractic offices as the on staff massage therapist. my experience is that they're mostly crooked douche-bags aside from the few good ones who incorporate other things such as nutritional counseling and exercises into their work. the last chiropractor i worked for ended up firing me because too many of my clients wanted to see just me and not him. i know this sounds like an obvious ego-preserving lie when you get fired, but if you had tons of patients who kept telling you that they thought you were helping them more than the doctor and wondering if they could only get massage treatments w/o chiropractic... and the next thing you know, you're scheduled less and less... and eventually not at all... what would you think? *shrugs*

heheheh :) that had me chuckling aloud.

Actually, yes, I knew you did massage. One of my most favorite things in the world is massage -- receiving it, that is. :) Bliss bombs go off in my head.

Unfortunately I seem to sometimes be a little brash in my comments and have offended people a lot of times by speaking without thinking of the toes I'd be treading on. So I'm embarrassed to admit that even if I knew a chiropractor was reading this I'd probably still shoot my mouth off, then later kick myself and try to soften it.

It is weird, but USA seems to stand alone in the developed world as having extraordinarily high third-world-level rates of religion and other kinds of nutty faith-based systems like chiropracty. I have no idea why this is, but it seems to cause you guys over there all kinds of problems.

The articles I mentioned above give some idea of the ineffectiveness of chiropractors (you probably haven't seen it because I've been so blabbery in this topic). :)
http://miriam-e.livejournal.com/257793.html?thread=1072641#t1072641

oh! i'm sorry! yeah, i totally missed that... and yeah, i'm going to blame it on your blabberness haha.

i wouldn't have been upset, per se, if you talked crap about massage. i would firstly, assume you never had a good one and secondly, probably argue with you for a while... but honestly, yes, they are amazing. my massage therapist is also my best friend and we trade frequently. i secretly think he's working on me so much because he wants me to get better so i can treat him again, lol. but he has really bad scoliosis so he is in pain most of the time/always has trouble sleeping. he swears that, to him, massages are better than sex because they relieve so much pain.

mmm yes... the USA is pretty backwards, no? i have no explanation either. especially since the entire reason we were founded was to escape religious persecution, hahaha. wth.
you know, just a passing thought, but it might have something to do with the fact that we are made up of so many different kinds of cultures/religions/people. to get along in america, you frequently have to be super open to everything...no matter how weird it sounds to you. you can be a conservative and hate/disbelieve everything or you can be super open and liberal. these tend to be the two options frequently offered.
but regarding christianity, ehhh, they're pretty nutty all over the world. they usually ask you to believe in things that are just... crazy.

i got in trouble not too long ago when i wrote an entry about how i thought christianity was just a happy pipe dream, lol. but i write my lj for ME... so i frequently forget that i can offend people as well.

Doctors make up one of the most powerful sections of society. They're not going to give away any of that power (knowledge) without making you jump through hoops of fire first.

Certainly true of the profession as a whole, but I've known a number of doctors who are very invested in passing on as much knowledge to their patient as possible. Of course they might not be quite as open to discussion with other patients as they have been with me; I quickly establish that I know a fair bit about the subject beforehand (general science reading and focussed research in my books and thru the net on the particular topic) and ask them as many questions as I can.

My current doctor is superb. He seems to consider each ailment as an intriguing puzzle. He is concerned not only with relief, but prevention and lifestyle. When I had a small fungal infection he initially suggested a range of pharmaceutical treatments. I didn't like the idea of using any of them and wanted something cheaper and less intrusive. He then came up with teatree oil. Brilliant idea. No script necessary and I can use it as often or as little as need be, and while still not cheap, I think I get more bang for my buck. Also I think the teatree oil is less likely to backfire.

That's great. Wish I could find a doctor like that.

Hello again! :)
I found info that supports that gas in the joint theory.
Here it is: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-causes-the-noise-we
Also this one is kinda funny.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=crack-research

I got a massage today and asked my masseuse what happens to cause the popping sound and she said that it was gas and that it was a chemical reaction, she said a chiropractor had told her that. We wondered if the gas was just burning up. We like the idea of little flashes in the joints, but I don't know that we really know that could be happening. Still a cool thought.

Those are great links. Thanks. They sound very sensible to me.

If you lower the pressure on a fluid, dissolved gas will pop out of solution spontaneously. Take the lid off a carbonated drink ("soda pop" in USA) and you'll see what I mean. Champagne is a rather extreme example.

If you pull or lever a joint so that the synovial fluid is suddenly under extremely low pressure then dissolved gas could pop out of solution violently enough to give a click sound. Joints are lubricated by quite small amounts of fluid, so pulling on that little volume could produce extremely low pressures quite suddenly.

The extra volume created by the bubble might give a feeling of relief to confined nerves or muscles, but would be purely temporary as the gas gets reabsorbed into the fluid again. A better solution would be doing things that require maximum mobility in the morning, when your joints are more expanded after a night's sleep. Your joints become more compressed during the day and you become shorter as a result. Perhaps your idea of hanging upside down by your feet for a little while might work (not sure, but it sounds like it might, at least for load-bearing joints anyway). Another thought would be swimming, because it is exercise, yet takes the weight off joints... might have no effect on non-load-bearing joints though. Laying in bed is notoriously bad in the long-term for joints as they need exercise to strengthen the supporting muscles and ligaments around them.

I love how you take things apart and analyze them. :)

Hanging upside down, well it just makes me feel euphoric so I love it. Haven't done it in years though apart from hanging part of my body off the furniture.

You know, knowing all this about the popping helps my mind some. I've gotten more poppy over the years and I thought something was wrong. I think what's happened is I've just gotten more flexible so many stretches will produce a pop. So long as my joints are together enough to be functional this isn't a problem. :)

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