The best person to treat your pain is you
If you were to ask people, “Would you rather have the ability to treat a health problem on your own or rely on someone else to treat it for you?” it’s safe to assume that nearly everyone would choose to treat it themselves. Whether it be the common cold, athlete’s foot, or another recurrent health issue, the capability to manage or prevent a problem yourself sounds much more appealing than continually having to put it in someone else’s hands.
As it pertains to musculoskeletal pain, most people don’t realize that treating pain on their own is even an option. Many of us have been conditioned to think that the presence of pain means we need an external intervention to alleviate it. There are dozens of such options, nearly all involving a healthcare provider doing something to the patient. And while these treatments are highly beneficial when used for the right purposes, they can lead to unintended consequences if misused. These consequences aren’t in the form of injuries but rather dependency on care.
Most conservative treatments for musculoskeletal conditions are fantastic at alleviating pain. If the pain reoccurs, however, and musculoskeletal pain often does, the likely conclusion is that you need further care. What this inadvertently creates is a scenario where patients feel they must return for routine treatments or risk their pain returning.
But what if there was a different way? What if you didn’t have to go back and get the same problem treated again and again, costing you valuable time and money?
Thankfully, in most instances, you don’t.
Unbeknownst to many, there exists a very effective assessment and treatment system for musculoskeletal pain called the McKenzie Method, which emphasizes self-management and prevention. The McKenzie Method uses a reliable assessment to accurately diagnose patients and then assigns a specific intervention based on that diagnosis. Research has indicated that treatment within the McKenzie Method can benefit roughly 75% of patients with back, neck, and extremity pain, including a sizable percentage of those deemed surgical candidates. Treatment is always in the form of a precise movement that the patient can do, determined through assessment to impact their pain source in a positive way.
An extremely beneficial aspect of the McKenzie Method is that patients are taught how to effectively manage their condition in the future. The McKenzie Method is rooted in self-assessment, equipping patients with the knowledge to become experts on their condition. They learn preventative strategies, warning signs of recurrence, and what to do if their pain comes back. Compared to other approaches, one of the significant advantages of the McKenzie Method is its ability to decrease healthcare-seeking episodes in the future. So even if the pain returns, and musculoskeletal pain often does, people can usually manage it on their own using the same strategy they were taught months, years, or even decades prior.
Patients can either use their beneficial exercise proactively to decrease the likelihood of future episodes or reac
tively to eliminate the pain if it returns. Regardless of which strategy they choose, a common phrase that many McKenzie Method patients tell their provider is, “That exercise you taught me last year to eliminate my pain continues to be very helpful.”
Two other common patient responses are “I can’t believe it’s this easy” and “Why didn’t someone show me this long ago?”
Robin McKenzie, who discovered and refined the principles that led to the McKenzie Method, addressed the latter response in his first textbook, The Lumbar Spine: Mechanical Diagnosis & Therapy. Speaking to healthcare providers of all disciplines, Robin stated, “I feel that it is negligent of medical professions to continue giving relief for episodic pain without familiarizing patients with the manner in which their pain arises and providing them with the means to prevent the onset of such pain.”
Robin is essentially echoing the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, who famously said, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” Using the wisdom of this ancient proverb, we should seek to investigate whether a patient has the potential to treat their own pain before we look to treat it for them
For many patients, the only obstacle to self-treatment is that they were never given the opportunity to be assessed using the McKenzie Method. Unfortunately, this obstacle is too common across all disciplines in musculoskeletal care.
One of the primary goals of healthcare should be promoting patient selfefficacy and independence. Self-treatment is preferable to dependence on therapy, and everyone should be equipped to treat pain on their own if they have that ability. Patients will recover more quickly, maintain their improvement longer, and manage future episodes if they occur. Many will not need to return for further care. We must provide patients with this opportunity, which is best accomplished through a McKenzie Method assessment.
Dr. Jordan Duncan was born and raised in Kitsap County and graduated from the University of Western States in 2011 with a Doctor of Chiropractic Degree. He practices at Silverdale Sport and Spine. He is one of a small handful of chiropractors in Washington state to be credentialed in the McKenzie Method.