Battling chronic neck pain was a journey that reshaped my life and brought me face-to-face with the complexities of pain management. That's why this episode of Health and Fitness Redefined is so personal to me, Anthony, your host, as we engage in a compelling discussion with Dr. Jason Wong, an orthopedic physical therapist with a profound understanding of pain that extends beyond the physical. Together, we unpack the mental, lifestyle, and educational strategies crucial for overcoming chronic pain, sharing stories of struggle, enlightenment, and triumph that promise to resonate with anyone seeking relief.
The path to recovery often leads through a maze of medical imaging, where MRIs and X-rays can cast daunting shadows over a patient's hope for healing. Dr. Wong and I challenge this narrative, exploring how such diagnostics can sometimes steer patients toward invasive treatments fueled by fear rather than factual understanding. Our chat takes a turn towards the liberating effects of strength training and mobility, dismantling common misconceptions and championing a patient-centric approach that champions education and self-empowerment.
Closing out, we navigate the often vexing intersection between healthcare bureaucracy and personal well-being. From the absurdity of insurance protocols to the underestimated value of environmental factors, such as the right mattress, we underscore the role of nurturing healthy habits and the transformative impact of stress management and exercise on overall health. This episode isn't just about mitigating pain—it's a manifesto for embracing a lifestyle that advocates for your most valuable asset: your health.
Battling chronic neck pain was a journey that reshaped my life and brought me face-to-face with the complexities of pain management. That's why this episode of Health and Fitness Redefined is so personal to me, Anthony, your host, as we engage in a compelling discussion with Dr. Jason Wong, an orthopedic physical therapist with a profound understanding of pain that extends beyond the physical. Together, we unpack the mental, lifestyle, and educational strategies crucial for overcoming chronic pain, sharing stories of struggle, enlightenment, and triumph that promise to resonate with anyone seeking relief.
The path to recovery often leads through a maze of medical imaging, where MRIs and X-rays can cast daunting shadows over a patient's hope for healing. Dr. Wong and I challenge this narrative, exploring how such diagnostics can sometimes steer patients toward invasive treatments fueled by fear rather than factual understanding. Our chat takes a turn towards the liberating effects of strength training and mobility, dismantling common misconceptions and championing a patient-centric approach that champions education and self-empowerment.
Closing out, we navigate the often vexing intersection between healthcare bureaucracy and personal well-being. From the absurdity of insurance protocols to the underestimated value of environmental factors, such as the right mattress, we underscore the role of nurturing healthy habits and the transformative impact of stress management and exercise on overall health. This episode isn't just about mitigating pain—it's a manifesto for embracing a lifestyle that advocates for your most valuable asset: your health.
Hello and welcome to Health and Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony. Amen and welcome to another great episode. I hope you guys are enjoying these episodes, especially last week what a kicker if you haven't listened to that show Kind of threw a wrench into a lot of things we talked about. So go back and listen to that episode on weight loss drugs, especially tied into the brand Ozempic. It's a little eye-opening. And then I was talking to somebody else a couple of days ago and he was telling me that, oh my God, did you see all the new studies on intermittent fasting? It's not good. I was like, wow, shocking. So really exciting stuff. Definitely go check that episode out. But for today, guys, we're going to talk about chronic pain. I think it's something really important. Obviously it's something I mentioned a lot on the show, as you all know my personal story and how I overcame chronic neck injury. So, and how I overcame chronic neck injury, so this is something I'm excited to talk about.
Speaker 2:So without further ado. Welcome to the show, dr Jason Wong. How's it?
Speaker 1:going, matt, I'm excited to be here. Yeah, it's exciting to have you. This is one of my favorite topics. Obviously, that's why I talk about it the most on the show, so I hope the audience enjoys it as much as I do. So, without further ado, just tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became a physical therapist.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Well, I'm Dr Jason Wan. So I'm a orthopedic doctor, physical therapy. I specifically specialize in orthopedics to help more people specifically with any muscle, ligament, nerve or joints kind of issues.
Speaker 2:And the place I kind of started and how I kind of started this off was, yeah, back in the day and it seems like we have some commonality. I actually got into a couple car accidents back in my late teens and so a lot of that kind of perspired where, like, my wheel actually flew off of my car, I spun 80 miles an hour into like a turn to debacle, and this was during Black Friday and so I really didn't enjoy the shopping that day. But all of a sudden I started to deal with a lot of neck and back issues. You know I went to Kairos, went to massage therapy. They kind of diagnosed me with early degeneration in my neck, but for the most part nothing really truly solved it. I feel like it was just a lot of kind of passive treatments over and over again and they weren't really teaching me anything to kind of take control of my own pain.
Speaker 2:So overall, as I kind of ventured into being a doctor of physical therapy, I started to realize how my habits, my lifestyle behaviors, the way how I carried on my stress, my lack of sleep, just a lot of these issues perpetuated increased intensity of neck pain. And so, as I started to change aspects of my health not just from a physical standpoint, from a mental standpoint, that's when you know I pretty much can say I'm completely pain free at this point, minus the fact that we're doing a podcast where you might get occasional like neck and back stiffness, but for the part, my habits are pretty sound. I'm able to reduce that pain immediately from the comfort of my home and uh, yeah, so overall, that's just that's kind of the topic that we're kind of going into and overall, uh, I do a lot of physical therapy worldwide, but I also see some people in person in san francisco, um, and I like to teach people kind of similar things that you've done on your previous podcast I just just go back just to the car accident you said.
Speaker 2:You wheel flew off at 80 miles an hour yeah, it was a I think it was a manufactured defect because I had the car for less than one to three months. It was a brand new car and for the most part driving 80 miles an hour to San Jose to do some Black Friday shopping. And then friends were also in the car. They actually didn't take the brunt of it for some reason. Maybe I was the one that kind of tensed up and yeah, my neck was pretty kinked up and for the most part I was kind of stuck in this chronic cycle for well over five years up until I started to educate myself.
Speaker 1:That's a crazy story I just couldn't even imagine. Just all of a sudden, oh what's that? Oh, that's the wheel.
Speaker 2:Literally saw it flying this direction on the right side of my car and it was pretty freaky.
Speaker 1:And then, like immediately after that did you go to the hospital, Was did you just kind of notice it over time that your neck was hurting from the stiffness of you tensing?
Speaker 2:it's? It's kind of like adrenaline, so it's kind of like yeah, it's like I play basketball, so sometimes the ankle sprain, but it's the playoff, so you just gotta like tape it up and just like roll with it. So the same thing goes like. A lot of my friends were decent, they were, they're kind of freaked out, but you know, being that early in age was just were just like no, we're still going to go shopping. For the most part I just kind of sucked it up. I was like, oh, my neck hurts a little bit.
Speaker 1:Next day though it was pretty gnarly and it was hard to get out of bed. Yeah, I totally empathize with you. Very similar story. I was like let me just get up and go back and play broomball more Probably the dumbest decision I've made in my life. But that's all right, we're live and we're here to tell the story. So after you started going down the rabbit hole of seeing massage therapists and getting the soft treatment, what was ultimately the thing that drove you to say, hey, I need to figure something out on my own and take the route of physical therapy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's two things that perspired into physical therapy. Um, I mean, just growing up I was, I guess I was like a big athlete, if you will. I was like a round round obese athlete, um, and so I actually was kind of criticized for liking sports, but like it, you know, it's just kids back in the day that you got insulted for your weight and all that. So that's actually what kind of pushed me into losing weight and getting stronger. Then, after that, then the car accident happened.
Speaker 2:And then another story on like why I do what I do is just because my, my dad, he passed in 2008 from colon cancer. It was pretty tough because, going to UC Davis, I think you're you're into sports psychology or health psychology I was kind of going down similar routes of exercise, bio, um, and then, you know, going back and forth to going back home, it was just really tough to have to help my dad get out of bed and, uh, to transfer him. I saw him lose his strength. So it's a pretty deep story that I'm pretty open about, but that's actually one of the main catalysts actually really pushed me to do what I do, which is I want to help people to live longer, obviously eliminate pain and overcome disability to the point where they can thrive. They're stronger, they're more resilient as they get older. So that's what kind of pushed me into physical.
Speaker 2:Therapy was a mixture of those stories and for the most part I fell in love with the. I just fell in love with the joy that people get when they get rid of their issues or they're getting back to the sports that they love. And that's what I. That's what I do.
Speaker 1:And then just now we're talking about somebody who's experienced something like this. What's a traditional route that would be given to someone if they went there? Let's say, primary care doctor was like hey, listen, I had an accident, I just fell, hurt my neck, hurt my back. What would be the traditional route that would send them there?
Speaker 2:I think, because if you're going to an orthopedic doctor they may have more justified kind of interventions, but if you're going to the general MD, it's really not their specialty. I commend what they do. They're the best jack of all trades. They understand everything about every system, but they don't really specifically specialize in the musculoskeletal system. They may not actually know the right exercises to do, like us, which is how to really empower them to fix their own issues via exercise, mobility, and those are some of the main things that I do to completely keep my neck pain at bay. So the traditional things that they may give are like yeah, they, they are allowed to give some sort of muscle relaxers or pain medication. So that's usually the generally the first route, unless, of course, you're saying like, hey, I don't want that, but most people they're in such pain that they are going to accept it. Once that kind of happens, then they're usually going for an x-ray or an MRI and then you know, just to see what's going wrong on the inside. But truth being is that a lot of neck and back issues are manifested from emotional factors, psychosocial factors, your current situation in life. So is it really you're looking at what's going on anatomically, but you're not really figuring out, like what's their lifestyle, what's their behaviors are actually causing it. So that actually perpetuates potentially more fear, right? So if you've ever gotten an MRI, I had early degeneration, I was 18, 19. What do you think that's going on in my head? Right, it's causing more fear mongering. It's perpetuating a lot of different issues.
Speaker 2:And I was fixated to going to Cairo. I was fixated to going to something because I wanted it quote unquote, fixed. But that's not simply the case. So I always think that I always hear the statistic in a journal that I read is is that if you get an MRI and you figure out what's going on the inside, you're four times likely to get an injection or surgery later on down the road. And it's just because you, you, you know what's going on the inside but you're not really figuring out the root cause. So that's just something I'm really passionate about. It's like giving people the opportunity to be like hey, you can go to Anthony instead, you can go to us potentially instead, as a means to not fix it but to actually resolve it permanently and to get you back to what you want to do.
Speaker 1:Very interesting. You said it's four times more likely, if you get an imaging done, to see overall like you're going to end up under a knife. Basically you're going to end up on some kind of medication.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's not like it's. It's correlative studies. But I do think that a lot of my clients, if they have a history of an MRI, a history of x-ray, they're coming in saying like hey, jay, I have a herniated disc. Hey Jay, I have early degeneration, you can't fix me Right. So they start to feel, they start to catastrophize, meaning that they feel more helpless. They start to ruminate, they start to feel fearful of like, oh, I shouldn't move my neck, I shouldn't do intense sports, I shouldn't weight train because of the fear that it may worsen. But I've gotten actually a lot of rid of a lot of my neck issues through strength training and through mobility. So they're kind of avoiding the thing that ultimately is going to be their long-term solution.
Speaker 1:Well, that kind of goes back to what was the same situation for me. Thinking back was I was told hey, don't put weight above your head. Like you, every disc is herniated, bulging, don't lift this, don't do that. And it just didn't make conventional sense to me. I'm like well, anatomically you need to balance your muscles out. So it's either, if I just work, push, pull and I'm not putting anything above my head, eventually I'm gonna have super tight traps from just being pulled in both of these directions. Everything's going to lock up like this. So I need to learn to do mobility and strength and build up the muscles to work above my head. And that's I mean I'm shoulder pressing. It's nothing like crazy, I'm not going to brag, but it's like 40 pound dumbbells, right, and that's coming from someone who took three years to put his arm above his head, like it makes it better. But then, on the flip side, I was told to cease all physical activity, which, when I initially listened to, made it worse. So very different types of ways.
Speaker 1:And then the MRI side. I don't know if it's just because I'm different, but personally I like getting MRIs. But it's not because of oh, the next step is surgery. Oh, the next step is this Because then I can look at and say, okay, if I, let's say, just tore my hip major, I can see what type of tear it is. So then I know what kind of rehab to put myself through in the gym and do my own physical therapy work, where I suppose, if I didn't get anything, then the fear of oh what if it's worse than it is, and all that kind of stuff. So I don't know if it's because I'm different or if that's generally how people feel I think it's overall behavioral.
Speaker 2:So I mean, I think that some people having the knowledge like I've heard a lot of people saying I'm going to get an MRI for peace of mind to see what's going on, and I totally agree with that. So for some people, maybe more educated, like in the fitness realm, you might've been like hey, I'm glad that I know what's kind of going on. You're looking at somebody like I. Always they say like hey, when you, when you have a client, speak to them in a more sixth grader, eighth grade language that they understand what you're saying, you can't just say, hey, it's a saphenous nerve that's going blah, blah, right.
Speaker 2:So what I, what I kind of mean is you know, you're looking at somebody that's 50, 60 years of age, that's in finance, that doesn't know crap about about anything in the body, and then hearing okay, you have multi-level degeneration, you have a disc protrusion, you have a disc sequestration at you know C5, c6, right, and you have like bone spurs. They don't know what's going on there, right? So the radiographic imaging and the reports are saying it's like listening to a horror story, right? So when they're doing that, a lot of them that aren't as educated potentially go down this rabbit hole of saying I should not shrug, I should not do this, when, like I said, you know you got rid of your own issues through progressively getting back to overhead press and overhead right, when in fact they're just like oh no, I need to like, keep my neck in a neck collar because of fear that they might hurt it, which only perpetuates more stiffness, weakness and imbalances yeah, and you're right.
Speaker 1:I mean bottom line, we're talking about the general population where they just I, I, I've had people I have a mild herniation in c3 let's just say like, give any pinched nerves any, no, no, no, so I can't do physical activity, I can't strength train, what, no, you're like super good, let's go, you're fine. So they're very interesting because, you're right, they don't have to understand it, and I always make the joke when I'm talking to clients. Medical language does sound like a horror story. They put these crazy names to things that are like so simple, right, I think I have my God I'm going, so I'm wrong, or something to kick myself later. But itis, itis means inflammation, right, so correct, yep, like it just sounds worse, like I, I, I, blah, blah, blah, itis. Uh, my god, I'm dying. No, no, it just means inflammation no for sure.
Speaker 2:You're looking at, like arthritis and certain other issues like, just you know, disc, disc bulges, and there's a lot of. There's countless studies on people that have disc arthritis or bulges in their 40s and 50s. And you're looking at studies that show that people can have bulges, arthritis, facet syndrome and have completely no pain. Right, they have completely no pain. They just did an MRI just to prove that people have these quote unquote these normal age-related changes when it's not read off to them in that way. Right, it's read off as dis-sequestration and these other more, I guess, fear-mongering things that they truly don't understand. So research is pretty inspiring in terms of, you know, a lot of people have, you know, at the age of 90, everybody has a rotator cuff tear. Not all of them have shoulder pain though, so it's pretty, it's pretty crazy stuff.
Speaker 1:That's true. I go back to MS. I mean, if you see, if you take 50 patients with MS, right, and you just tell one of them that theirs is worse, they're going to end up worse a year later. You tell one another they're getting better, they're not going to be as bad as the other person and I've seen this time and time again Zero lifestyle difference. If you just put them head to head and all you do is tell one oh, your MS is nothing, You're barely going to notice it. And then you tell the other one oh, your MS over the next year is going to start being debilitating and not going to be able to walk. Go back a year. You're going to see a profound difference between those two people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I agree with that. It's because it's the way that the healthcare practitioner portrays themselves, right? So I've followed. I've shadowed a number of different either surgeons or doctors in various areas in my career and there are definitely some that say that are empowering them to be like hey, I need you to get stronger, I need to get more resilient, and I've, I've, I've talked to a doctor recently on my own podcast about just the role in strength training and how he, how he portrays that to his clients.
Speaker 2:Then you're going to have these other doctors potentially. They're saying like you're bone on bone, you're man. I'm surprised you're still moving your shoulder because your neck is so bad, and you know it's the way that they speak to them. We are authority figures. All healthcare practitioners are authority figures, so they are going to listen to you like, essentially, almost like mom and dad. They'd be like hey, I don't know anything about this. So if you tell me don't move my hands over my shoulders, fine, I'm not gonna do that the rest of my life, right? I mean, I I've had so many people such tight lower backs because they said, because somebody said you have a disc that's ready to explode and that you need to keep your core tight all day, and so they kept their core tight for 25 plus years, only suffering for the last 25 years not having any sort of like long-term solutions of hey, it's okay to not feel threatened by your own body and to simply just move yeah, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1:So let's go into a little bit of some actionable things that people can do. Yeah, suffering, let's just stick with that. I think it's just the easiest. Then we can go into lower back. But someone comes in they're complaining about, uh, tightness, and I'm going to explain it like they would. General population would explain it my, my neck is getting tight over here in the side of it. If you're audio, just look at the right side coops up to my head and I get headaches. Help, I have X, y, z. What are some simple things you can do to help evaluate somebody and pretty much start getting them on the right track?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean from an evaluative standpoint. You're looking at everything. You're looking at areas above and below. You're looking at their jaw position. You're looking at their breathing patterns to see if they're compensating in any ways, like some people just breathe straight up with their scalenes and their pec minor, which tightens up their shoulder, tightens up their neck. You're also looking at rib cage mobility. You're looking at thoracic mobility, which is the area right below. So I do a pretty thorough evaluation and once I get a good baseline of that then you're telling them, yeah, specific things that they can do.
Speaker 2:So I guess some general things I can kind of share with your audience is neck isometrics and like just low load strengthening can be a great way to reduce pain. That's simply like if you have pain on the right side of your head, simply just put your hand on the right side of your temple, apply some load, see if you can generate at least 25% of your max contraction. You can ramp it up all the way to 7,500% contraction. But you just also got to understand just depends on how irritable you are. So the dosage makes the poison. So you do too much, you might flare up your neck, but if you do the right amount, your neck adapts to actually get stronger, it feels better. So, rotation, isometrics, pushing straight forward A lot of times if you have pain in the back of your neck, many people do a very tight neck that translates into potentially a headache.
Speaker 2:Put your hands behind your head, do some extension isometrics. Hold that contraction for anywhere between sometimes five to 10 seconds. Hold it 20 to 60 seconds and that can actually reduce pain because isometrics have been shown to have analgesic properties. And besides that, yes, like you kind of said, strengthening your shoulders, doing overhead press. You may not start there but, you know, getting progressively to a point where all motions in your shoulder don't affect your neck. That's a win-win. And the last part I would say is just thoracic mobility. It's something that I've habituated into my own life as in like after the Zoom call or after this recording, I'm just going to get to the floor and I foam roll my upper back, I start moving my upper back into rotation, side bend, extension, flexion, and those are some of the main things that I can generally say helps majority of people with neck pain.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned foam rolling. I love that because myofascial release is one of my favorite things. So can you explain what the general population of what that is and different ways of doing it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so foam rolling is. I don't know, actually, who popularized it, but foam rolls are essentially the six inch diameter piece of foam. It can be various in length, but essentially what you can do is you can put it perpendicular to your body, support your head, and you simply just roll out and essentially just steamroll your upper back. You may even notice some cavitations, which is like popping, cracking. That's just gases being released for the spine. Nothing's actually being broken, it's just a release and there's a serotonin release as a result of that. And, uh, you can actually do a number of exercises with the foam roll. You can. You can actually strengthen your neck with the foam roll.
Speaker 2:Uh, the main ways I use it is, yeah, just kind of steamroll your back, put it kind of vertical to your body. You can line it. You know, you can actually stretch out your pectorals or you can use your foam roll as a way to like assist with motion, like doing thoracic rotations. So yeah, foam rolls super cheap. Probably one of the most cost effective things that you can do for yourself is 15 to 20 bucks and you just have something that probably lasts for years. I have foam rolls planted all around this house in the bedroom, in my kid's room, in my bedroom, in the garage. Foam rolls. To me it's not the complete long-term solution. There's still strength training, obviously, but foam rolls can be an easy, very fast, cost-effective way to reduce pain immediately.
Speaker 1:I'm going to take it a step further because you said I'm actually not a fan of foam rollers. I like more targeted trigger myofascial release.
Speaker 1:So, like those little knobs and everything, lacrosse, balls, oh lacrosse balls Okay, yeah, are amazing tennis balls for those that are beginners and don't have a high pain tolerance. Just because they have a lot more, give to them. But lacrosse balls, if you want to take it a step further, for some reason it's the right amount of strength in them. You roll it into your muscle. You find that I would say not is what most people would associate it with. Hold that 15, 20 seconds. Roll it again until you find it. Hold that 15, 20 seconds and it just releases and they get the oddest looks, because I'm like always on my feet, always around, but I find corners of walls. I'm like always on my feet, always around, but I find corners of walls. So a little it just find a corner. I'll throw a scapular out of there and I'll just try to find a trigger point. Hold it.
Speaker 1:While having conversations with people, they're looking like what's this guy doing? Yeah, but life-changing, literally life-changing, just little things like that. Yep, definitely. And then the exercises. We're talking more about isometric. You just explain what isometric is for the yeah so isometrics are iso and metric.
Speaker 2:If you break that down, it's just constant length. So that means that you know, take your classic bicep curl. I think this easiest way, bicep curl, you're lifting it up and down. That's considered more of a concentric motion and the muscle is actually being lengthened and shortened. Uh, isometrics kind of takes advantage of the law of summation, so you're kind of just recruiting more motor units but the length of the tissue isn't actually changing. So that's actually a safer, more effective way for people coming out of post-op rehab, like if they have like a knee injury injury.
Speaker 2:You're just doing quad isometrics while not actually doing squats because it's less irritable to the body. It's. The same thing goes if you have very irritated or a very painful neck. Isometric can be a great way to reduce pain. When you hold that contraction, I guess you're providing more stability to that area. You're loading that more effectively. You're sending signals to the brain that it's okay to move your neck. So it's very surprising that you do like a right side and isometric. You hold that for 20 to 60 seconds just in a very light manner. You recheck that motion and all of a sudden it's like okay, the right side, right rotation, right side and it actually gets better. It's not placebo, it's actually you're providing a stimuli a positive stimuli to the brain and saying that it's okay to move again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally, totally agree with you. And then, how soon after an injury or diagnosis should somebody start moving?
Speaker 2:and implementing this stuff, sometimes immediately. Again, there's this principle of pain which is called sins. Right, severity is your classic kind of one to 10 scale that any doctor would kind of ask you 10 is excruciating, one is. So that's severity and irritability is okay. If I asked Anthony like, hey, like you know, after you do a certain movement, how long does your neck pain last? So, like, whatever trigger it is, how long it lasts, and if you tell me like, oh, it goes away immediately, Okay, he's pretty low irritability is how long it lasts, and if you tell me like, oh, it goes away immediately, okay, he's pretty low irritability.
Speaker 2:So you can probably get him to do more exercises and just supply him with the right exercises. If they're super irritable, maybe you are starting them off with just low level, kind of like breathing. Uh, doing some isometrics and, uh, maybe some light trigger point, you know whether it's like lacrosse ball or foam rolling, just to kind of get their body moving right. Um, so it really depends on not. That's why not everybody can be pigeonholed into one direct okay, everybody that has neck pain does this exact protocol. Um, while I do share that thoracic mobility isometric can be very effective, nonetheless you still have to curate and hand customize it to the person yeah, I totally agree.
Speaker 1:General, I would say, generally speaking, obviously not for every single individual. Moving immediately is, like, definitely the way you should be, but that's obviously there's extenuating circumstances of things. You should definitely not move, but just having the understanding, especially those that I feel like the people that are more tend to find an episode like this uh, the injury happened six plus months ago, yep. So those people that are like, oh my god, I've tried the traditional route, I've tried this, I've tried this end up finding episodes like this and finding this podcast and yours and saying, you know, okay, it's been so long, I'm done, like, what else can I do? I've tried the pain medicine. I've tried the cortisol steroids. Like that's a great example of just that. Those steroid shots last six months but they don't fix anything, just gets rid of the inflammation in it.
Speaker 1:And I'm going to take it a step further, just from personal experience was uh dealing with uh, really bad itbs, which is a little bit lateral band syndrome down my right side and I've had about four years and I've done all the traditional routes and all that stuff and tried everything. And the next step was to go do botox. Botox with the ideology where, if I could paralyze that muscle and then it can really work on the mobility of it because I have a better pain tolerance to that area. It really works stretch, mobility and rehab around it. So I applied to go do that and my insurance company denied. And this is that's a true story and if anyone wants the paperwork I saved it I'll show you. They sent me the denial paperwork stating why they denied it. Why did they deny? You want to take a guess?
Speaker 2:Not sure, because it wasn't severe enough.
Speaker 1:Patient hasn't taken narcotics such as Oxycontin, so therefore, please, we recommend they start that route for three months before we consider this as an option.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a pretty sad story man.
Speaker 1:Crazy. So the insurance company is telling hey, you need to go take drugs because it's a lot cheaper for us and it's easier to keep your patient for life going that route, which don't fix anything, it just gets rid of the pain, right? So how's that really helping? What rehab is involved in that? And you're either going to deny me this is good health insurance. So it's just pretty mind-blowing where you see where some doctors are, where some insurance companies are, and then where the truth is right and it's all kind of blended in between and I feel like insurance companies in the opposite extreme of where the truth is. The doctors are in the middle, depending on where they are. That's close for us too. For trainers and for physical therapists, generalizing is a horrible thing. There's people that are really good and there's people that are really bad. You don't want the really bad people to bring everyone else down. The trainers are case in point, which is why we're changing all the licensing for us. But kind of shows different extremes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have a small point about that and it comes down to, again, the insurance route. But also, yeah, I guess, where certain personal trainers, certain physical therapists, I think, are either more superior, more passionate than others. And I think it comes down to when somebody's in pain and they're reacting to their pain, we oftentimes will do something about it and get them just back to a state of normalcy, as in like, just calm the inflammation down, give them enough tools that they at least feel some sort of relief. But we're not really changing either who the person is. We're not changing, like the, the way that they carry themselves.
Speaker 2:So, insurance, right they're. They're just going to get you to a point where, hey, as long as the neck range of motion is sound and as long as you get their neck strength to like a three plus out of five, discharge them, you're good to go. But then they flare themselves back up. And why is that? Because we haven't progressed them to potentially weight training. We're not really changing their habits anyway. We're not really changing the way that they manage their stress. So if they have three kids and they're financially unstable, that pain is likely to come back because they're always under high stress. So that's why I went down my own route of just quitting kind of the insurance-based route, started to really treat the way I wanted to and kind of address the entire person rather than address just the pain itself.
Speaker 1:Can I just say something which is so relatable to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What you just said. If you just copy paste to that on to diet, it's the exact same thing.
Speaker 2:I agree with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just people. Why does that not work? Because they don't. People don't learn the habit changing. They need to implement it for life. Why doesn't this route work, which is some medicine getting over pain? Because people don't learn the habit changing. They need to fix the for the rest of their life and prevent it from being in the future. And then I'm going to add to my own personal story and give people the kicker of what pretty much cleared the pain up right away. I figured it out what was causing the pain and what was constantly causing the flare-ups. Crazy, it took me this long, but it was my mattress. Everything I was looking at doing, figuring out my bed, was a POS mattress and it was totally warped down like this and I didn't think anything of it. I was like, whatever it's bad, change my mattress and over the next, like three weeks to ping better and better and better and better and better and better kind of shows.
Speaker 2:Think outside the box yeah, outside the, the mattress and the box spring. Yes, absolutely yes that's great.
Speaker 1:I love that. We should put that, um, but anything else you just want to add into the point of getting over chronic pain. Really helping people who are suffering is anything you want to add before we wrap this up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean overall. We talked about the anatomical route, we talk about imbalances, we talk about fixing the uh, our environment. Like you fix your mattress and it fixed a lot of things for you. Um, you've you fix your, your desk setup and your ergonomics and all of a sudden, your neck pain starts to dissipate, which is great. Don't forget again that you, ultimately, you have to change your lifestyle. You have to change your mindset around how important exercise is. It's not something that you fit in, it's not something that when you want to do it. It's not like when you have a heart attack and all of a sudden, now you start to do exercise.
Speaker 2:I really stress the preventative side of things, that it doesn't even matter if you're in pain or out of pain. Is that, regardless strength in your body? You do that, I mean your body becomes more resilient to stress. You have much less chances of a headache or some sort of catastrophic injury or disease later on down the road. And I don't forget that. You know it's a. It's a manifestation of everything that we are, from our culture, our values, our beliefs. Right, if you're a person that you you saw your parents take pain medication all the time, well, you're likely to follow suit right. So we're a product of everything that has come into our life, so just remember that the psychosocial aspects are equally important as just the physical aspects. Going to Anthony to strength, train and mobilize your body, that's a great thing. Going to me same thing, but not addressing the entire person and how the person personifies themselves. You know you're kind of just playing with fire there is, you're only addressing maybe like half the battle when it comes to not addressing those things as well.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more. Don't pigeonhole yourself into something. Look at the overall picture and how you need to change your life for the better. And that goes everything in life. You can't just I'm going to address this current issue now and ignore everything else A lot of times. I mean, if you screw your neck up, maybe it's weak glutes that are making it worse. People don't think of that Like it's just. You don't know the overall picture of how your body's moving and working. So, and then don't just work that one area. It's your body's all interconnected muscles are all connected that your entire body. They overlay each other, they connect into similar joints. So one's pulling too hard one direction, it's going to over tighten another one another direction, it's going to loosen another muscle, another direction. So it's a battle to kind of find that balance between your muscle connective tissue.
Speaker 2:Couldn't agree more with that man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then Dr Jason, just a bunch of questions I ask everybody. The first one is if you were to summarize this episode in one or two sentences, what would be your take-home message?
Speaker 2:Take-home message is, if you want to get rid of your chronic neck and back issues one change your lifestyle. Two, manage your stress well. Three, start strength training and mobilizing your body and making that a part of your life.
Speaker 1:Couldn't agree more.
Speaker 2:And then the second question how can people, people find you get a hold of you? Yeah, so, uh, my username on instagram and pretty much any other major platform is flex with dr j, the full word doctor. Um, you can also go to flex dr jcom and just to kind of see what my philosophy entails. I'm a big family man, so you're gonna see my kid, you receive my daughter and my son, so you know, if you want somebody that's a physical therapist that strength trains pretty much six, seven days a week, that also really just loves your kids more than anything, that's. You know, I'm a pretty good person to kind of see what I do and how I kind of live my life. But, anthony, I appreciate your time as well and I feel like our philosophies are very interconnected.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I feel like our philosophies are very interconnected. Yeah, and I'm also going to just make a quick announcement, because I love that segue was not planned. By the way, my wife is pregnant and we're having our first kid.
Speaker 2:So congrats, man. I'm stoked. Yeah, man, get ready for fatherhood. It's wild and you have to change your habits and change your schedule up, but it's a blessing. It's one of the most rewarding. Change your habits and change your schedule up, but it's a blessing. It's one of the most rewarding things you can ever do in your life.
Speaker 1:I can't wait, man. I just can't wait. But thank you, dr Deason, for coming on. Thank you, guys for listening to this week's episode of Health and Fitness Redefined. Don't forget, hit that subscribe button. Enjoy us next week as we dive deeper into this ever-changing field and remember fitness is medicine. Until next time, outro Music.