08/09/2021
Ever heard that you can't judge a book by its cover? Yeah, of course you have.
So, why do we regard our bodies so differently? If you have pain the first thing we are driven to want to do is "see what's going on". You go to the doctor and they do some sort of imaging.
Next, you're hearing all these scary terms like "tear", "degeneration", "arthritis", "bone-on-bone", "degenerative disc disease", etc. etc. etc.
The problem is... Many of these are NORMAL changes and the pain you're experiencing may or may not be BECAUSE of the structural change you're seeing.
A recent 2020 study identified through MRI that 97% of ASYMPTOMATIC (no pain, no limitation) knees had at least one structural change present on MRI.
Why does that matter? Because imagine that one of these 97% of people develop pain in their knee because they changed their activity level and their muscles weren't prepared for the change in demand.
They go get imaging, see a *gassspppp* meniscus tear, now they're having surgery. All the while, this tear has been there who knows how long, causing no problem at all and with an appropriate exercise and mobility plan - the pain most likely would have gone away without ever undergoing invasive, mixed-results surgery that has now created a major inflammatory process and scar tissue. This happens ALL THE TIME.
We see the same phenomenon in shoulders with rotator cuff tears. In another study, 65% of identified rotator cuff tears were asymptomatic. Example 2: say the pain is truly caused by poor mobility, poor mechanics or poor strength but we see a tear - freak out and get unnecessary surgery.
Yes, there is a time and a place for imaging and for surgery. However conservative management is almost ALWAYS the best, first option
