Introduction

Have you ever been told at the chiropractor that “your L5 is subluxed” and been terrified? Or been sent for some sort of treatment that had you scared witless? You leave the office of your professional “caregiver” feeling fearful and worried? Often, we discover that the whole thing was very minor and nothing to be concerned about. Do you then feel relieved? Or do you feel angry that no one bothered to take the five minutes to explain what was happening to YOUR body? On occasion the worry is legitimate, something significant has gone awry in our bodies and we need to worry about what might be coming. Even when this is the case though wouldn’t it be nice to receive an explanation you understand?

We walk around in our bodies all day and sleep in them all night and yet most of us have little or no idea how hard our bodies are working for us or what all the little messages they send to our conscious mind mean. I am constantly amazed by this, and even more startled that so many people are so happy with not knowing. If you are one of those people, you should probably stop reading now as my purpose here is to educate and inform. I am a firm believer that if we know more about our own bodies we will take better care of them and be able to make better decisions about what we need to worry about.

I am not going to advocate running marathons or mega-dosing on vitamins for everyone. For some that may be the right course at some point or always, but I do not do either of those things so why would I tell someone else to? I believe in making educated decisions to balance improved function with enjoyment. My goal is to create a life that meets my body’s needs and maintains its well being without needing to sacrifice all the pleasures of that life. A practice that I find as dysfunctional and endless indulgence without thought to the consequences, even in the face of bodily rebellion.

Too often the lack of information people receive from medical professionals and the lack of general education about human function leave patients frustrated and confused. Too often they quest around among their friends and acquaintances for someone who has been where they are in hopes of learning about what is happening to them. I am the first to say that the support of friends is a wonderful thing, but rarely do two people have identical experiences of any event, let alone one involving their unique body. The result is the passing on of information that may not be correct, especially with the rapidly evolving state of our medical science. It also means information that has been heavily filtered by the lenses of memory and misapprehension gets passed onward. After all, there may not have been give any real explanations given to the first person and be interpreting their experience based on incomplete or erroneous assumptions.

That leads us neatly into what I intend to make this series about. I want to provide some illumination of the shadowy world of our bodies and the medical professions that are designed to care for them. I want to do this in a way that eases anxiety and allows individuals to go, or not go, to their medical professionals with intelligent questions and enough knowledge to understand the answers those questions bring. I will al so try to provide some resources for people to learn more on their own and to find answers to questions they may not want to ask out loud.

Let me introduce myself so you can decide whether you think it is worthwhile to keep reading. I am a Registered Massage Therapist in the province of British Columbia. I have had training that is similar in duration and scope to the training for a physiotherapist, a chiropractor or a nurse - or a third year medical student. British Columbia has one of the highest standards of training for massage therapist in the world. My massage training created in me an acute appreciation and curiosity about the human body. My practice as a RMT has led to the revelation that though science is constantly revising and expanding their knowledge of the human body and its capabilities, the general public knows very little about the bodies that support and propel them through the universe. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Not so long ago, I was one of those people who didn’t know my patella from my kneecap (by the way…they are the same thing!!).


I hope that I have engaged your interest and you will be looking for the next installment of the series. I will be looking at the issue of patellas vs. kneecaps – or medical language and the layperson.