At Wellness WORx we try to teach clients to think in terms of function instead of symptoms. Thinking this way becomes empowering to clients because they take responsibility for correcting problems instead of covering them up.

Here's a great example of the point I'm making. Lets say you are on vacation in Mexico. You have a burrito at a roadside stand, and 4 hours later you are having some pretty severe SYMPTOMS....vomiting and diarrhea. Are you unhealthy or healthy at this point? When I ask this question most people would say they are very unhealthy. If you are focused on symptoms that is the logical conclusion. But if you are focused on function, you would conclude that you have recently ingested some foreign and poisonous bacteria and your healthy body is trying to expel that as quickly as possible. This is a reasonable HEALTHY response however miserable you may be while it is happening.

The problem is two fold. First, we weren't born with an owners manual. Meaning we aren't taught anywhere what NORMAL function is. So we can become dysfunctional and not know it. Second, time is evil. What I mean is these functional problems usually progress slowly and take years to become symptomatic so we don't realize that we are losing function until it is late in the game. And when we do realize that something is wrong we are taught only to focus on the symptoms and since we don't have an owners manual we don't know that the dysfunction is the cause of the problem. 

I contend that if you could take a perfectly functional individual and flip a switch to give him the dysfunction and symptoms of a chronic pain sufferer, essentially eliminating the TIME component, he/she would go to the emergency room because the change would be so drastic and disturbing.

To better explain, think about this. If the car you drive wore out the front right tire while all the other tires were still fine, what would you do? Would you recap the tire a few times? No! We do know a little about a car's normal function and most of us would conclude that the alignment was off and take the car to a shop to restore the cars normal functional alignment.

Here are two scenarios to explain what I'm saying. 

1.) A young man has slouched forward head and back posture due to sitting at a computer for work. As he ages he begins to notice neck tightness and upper back pain due to the extra stress necessary to overcome the pull of gravity. Because of this posture his shoulders round forward and lose their normal range of motion. Eventually his shoulders will start to become symptomatic especially with overhead work. As the pain begins to interfere with his activities of daily living the man will take over the counter meds to get through his activities. At some point the pain will be too much for him and he will have some cortisone injections in the sore shoulders and maybe his neck and back. He slips and falls on an outstretched arm and tears his rotator cuff. He needs surgery because he is so dysfunctional that there is no way for his body to absorb the impact stress. You see, because he didn't know what normal function was and only focused on the symptoms, the easily correctable problem (dysfunction from poor posture) got out of hand and led to surgery.

2.)A second young man has slouched forward head and back posture due to sitting at a computer for work. As he ages he begins to notice neck tightness and upper back pain due to the extra stress necessary to overcome the pull of gravity. Because of this posture his shoulders round forward and lose their normal range of motion. In this case though the young man comes across a great blog about symptoms vs. function. He decides to learn more so he goes and has a posture study and functional screening. He soon learns that he has lost normal function in his neck, back and shoulders. He then learns in a posture alignment class what normal function for neck, upper back and shoulders is and begins to correct the problem. Two months later after some hard work he has nearly normal posture and functional movement restored. Now that same fall on an outstretched arm is no big deal because his body works properly to absorb the impact stress without tearing muscles and ligaments.

I see the same story everyday at the office and want to give everyone an "owners manual" for a normally functioning body. I am working on a video series of functional tests that will demonstrate easily to the lay person what NORMAL function is so that they can detect dysfunction before it gets to the point of chronic pain or worse. Until then I offer FREE functional screening in my office including a computerized postural analysis. This is very comprehensive evaluation that will detect even minor functional deficiencies. 

I look forward to your comments and questions to this post.