Essential Sports and Spine Solutions

08/28/2026

A patient asked me last week, "Doc, when you get hurt, what do you do?"

Fair question. And the timing was on par, because I'm dealing with it right now. Patellar tendonitis, probably some meniscal degeneration. I ignored it for months. Just like everyone else does. 🙃

What I'm NOT doing:
❌ Icing it
❌ NSAIDs
❌ Steroid injection
❌ Resting it into deconditioning

What I AM doing:
✅ Rehabbing the whole chain, foot to core
✅ Strengthening my arch, because my foot collapses and my knee has been paying for it
✅ Training stability, not strength. Different things, different loading.
✅ Laser therapy 2 to 3x a week
✅ Full range of motion daily
✅ Sleep, water, fish oil, vitamin D, real food

And I try not to limp. That one needs more than a bullet point. 👇

When a joint hurts or swells, your nervous system reflexively turns the quad down. It's called arthrogenic muscle inhibition. It's not a theory, it's been reproduced in the lab.

Here's the part people get backwards, including me when I say it too fast. Limping doesn't cause that. The joint problem does. But the altered pattern can outlast the injury, sometimes long after the knee is structurally fine. That's what I'm trying not to train into myself.

So when my pain allows it, I walk normally on purpose.

⚠️ This is a judgment call about my knee, not a rule for yours. Severe pain, fractures, acute injuries, or post-op weight-bearing restrictions are a completely different situation. If you've been told to stay off it, stay off it.

The injection is never the whole answer. The protocol is the point.

Full breakdown on YouTube. 🔗 in bio, and that's where you can request an appointment if your knee has been telling you something for months.

This is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. I may be a doctor, but I am not your doctor.

08/27/2026

I was 15 when a surgeon told me the plan. 🏈

A football injury took me out of sports for most of a year. The options on the table were steroid injections, medications, or surgery.

The surgery conversation is the one that stuck with me. Come back in 10 years and we'll do the next level. Then 10 years after that, the next one.

That's not a treatment plan. That's a subscription.

I'd already read what repeated steroid exposure does. I knew what chronic NSAID use does to the gut, the kidneys, and cardiovascular risk. None of it looked like healing to me. It looked like management.

That's the reason this practice exists, and the reason it's built outside the insurance system. Real answers instead of pre-approved protocols.

If you've been handed that same script, let's actually look at your imaging together.

Link in bio to request an appointment. 🔗

This is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. I may be a doctor, but I am not your doctor.

08/26/2026

"So you think I'm making this up."

That's the reaction when therapy comes up for chronic pain, and I understand it completely.

Here's what I actually believe.

Your pain is real. And your brain has enormous influence over how loud, how constant, and how overwhelming it feels.

Those two things do not compete. They're both true.

The way I explain it to patients: physical treatments address the signal. Therapy addresses the amplifier.

You can turn the signal down a lot. I do that for a living. But if the amplifier is maxed out, the room is still loud.

Part 9 of my series on alternatives to chronic NSAID use is live. CBT, ACT, and MBSR, what each one actually does, who each one fits, and honest numbers on how much they help.

Including the part nobody says out loud: finding a therapist who really specializes in chronic pain is hard, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

Link in bio 🔗

This is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice.

08/25/2026

Tomorrow night. 🗓️

Free webinar, 7:00 PM ET, online, open to anyone.
If you have had the epidurals, the ablation, the injections, and the pain keeps coming back, this hour is for you. I am covering why that happens, what your actual non-surgical options are, and what orthobiologics can and cannot realistically do.

Then I stay on live for Q&A. Bring the question you did not get to ask in your last eight minute appointment.
It is free. It is online. Registration link is in my bio and it takes about thirty seconds.

See you tomorrow.

This is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice.

NonSurgical SpineHealth InterventionalSpine PainRelief FreeWebinar

08/24/2026

You did the epidurals. Maybe the medial branch blocks, the ablation, the trigger point injections. Some of it helped for a while. None of it held.

A patient asked me last week why nobody had ever laid out all of his options in one conversation. He was right that nobody had. And the reason has almost nothing to do with the physicians who treated him.

Here is the short version: back pain usually returns not because the procedure failed, but because it was aimed at the wrong pain generator, or aimed correctly at a structure whose underlying problem was never addressed. The procedure is rarely the weak link. The selection is.

I am doing a free webinar on August 26 at 7:00 PM ET covering the whole landscape. Why pain persists after technically successful treatment. How I find the actual pain generator instead of treating the loudest thing on the MRI. What orthobiologics realistically can and cannot do. And what to ask before you consent to anything, surgical or not.
One hour, then I stay on live for Q&A. Bring the question you did not have time to ask in an eight minute appointment.
Free and online, open to anyone, not just Central Ohio.
Register at the link in bio.

This is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice.

08/20/2026

The least invasive procedure I offer is also the one almost no patient has heard of.

It's a class 4 laser. Non-thermal light, meaning no heat and no burning. You need a medical license to run one and you need training to use it correctly, which is why you'll only find these in physician or chiropractic offices. For something like back pain I can set it to run and let it go. The patient just lies there.

The light is stimulating cells that are injured. Reduce the inflammation, reduce the pain. That's the goal.

Now, here's the question I get asked constantly, and it's fair. If this works, why isn't every practice doing it?

The honest answer is not that the science is bad. It's that the system is built around cortisone and surgery, and things that don't fit neatly into that pathway tend not to get adopted. That's just how the system is.

I'm doing a live webinar on 8/26 where I go deeper into this and take questions. Link in bio to register.

This is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice.

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08/19/2026

When back pain keeps coming back after injections and physical therapy, what non-surgical options actually exist in 2026, and a free webinar on August 26 where I walk through all of it.

What the standard sequence misses, what non-surgical options actually exist in 2026, and a free webinar on August 26 where I walk through all of it. By Nikhil Verma, MD. Board-certified in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and in interventional spine. Fellowship-trained in interventional spine an...

08/19/2026

Early in my practice, I brought up mindfulness with a patient.

I spent the next thirty minutes listening to him and his wife go after me. Things were said to me and about me that I did not enjoy hearing.

Here's the thing. I could see it happening. The fear. The uncertainty. The pain he was actually in. What was coming out of his mouth was not really about me.

That reaction is exactly why this topic is so hard to bring up, and exactly why it matters.

Because pain has two parts. The sensation, which you often cannot control. And the reaction to it, which is trainable.

Part 8 of my series on alternatives to chronic NSAID use is live. Five practical techniques patients actually use, when each one fits, and the safety notes nobody includes.

To be clear: this is not "your pain is in your head." Your pain is real. This is about a nervous system that has been running an alarm for a long time, and what it takes to turn the volume down.

Link in bio 🔗

This is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice.

08/18/2026

A patient told me last month that in four years of back pain, nobody had ever laid out all of his options in one sitting. He'd been given injections, then physical therapy, then a surgical consult. Nobody had ever zoomed out.
So I'm doing that, for free, on August 26th. 🗓️

One hour. Live. I'm covering:

🔹 Why back pain often persists after injections and PT
🔹 What non-surgical options actually exist in 2026, and who they're realistically for
🔹 How I decide whether someone is a candidate, and when I tell people they're not
🔹 The honest version of what regenerative treatments can and can't do

I'll stay on live afterward for Q&A. Bring your real questions. The ones you didn't have time to ask in an eight minute visit.

If you've been told surgery is your only path, or you've just stopped believing anything will help, come listen. No pitch. Just a real conversation about what's out there.

Wednesday, August 26th at 7:00 PM ET 📍 Online, free
Registration link in bio. Spots are limited by the platform, so grab one now.

This is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice.

08/17/2026

"Next to no wait time."

Of everything in this review, that's the line I keep coming back to.

Not the training. Not the ultrasound guidance. The fact that someone got seen at their appointment time and got a real conversation instead of eight minutes and a printout.

That part isn't luck. It's the reason I built an independent practice in the first place. Smaller panel, longer visits, I look at your imaging myself, and you walk out understanding what's actually going on with your knee or your shoulder or your back.

Bedside manner isn't a personality trait. It's what happens when the schedule lets you sit down.

Thank you for taking the time to write this. It means a lot. 🙏

If you're in Columbus, Dublin, Westerville, Upper Arlington, or Gahanna and you've been bounced between specialists, link in bio to request a visit.

This is for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice.

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