We had a BiM team meeting on Tuesday, as we do every Tuesday. We got talking about the BiM blog – revisiting our objectives and how best to meet them. A key objective is to facilitate dissemination AND conversation. Well we have been well and truly trumped on that front by Jason Silvertail and his post for somasimple.com. Jason has taken a ‘no holds barred’ approach to the vexed issue of chasing the pain in manual therapy. His anthropological narrative on Jointheads, Diskheads, Muscleheads and Fasciaheads is confronting I imagine to those currently identifying themselves as a member of one of those groups. Reading the post, one might presume that Jason is a SilverTail – a posh kid who has taken a holier than thou dig at those ‘beneath’ him. However, Jason is, in fact, an insider. This is a courageous and insightful conversation starter. You ought to read it. We don’t want to paste it all here because that would seem like stealing, but here is a teaser –
“First it was all about joint dysfunctions. Manual therapy was about finding and correcting misalignments and restoring normal position or movement to these dysfunctional segments. Then the research started to come in. Poor reliability between clinicians to find these misalignments. Plenty of “dysfunction” found in the asymptomatic. No valid way to demonstrate them or to connect them to any painful problem or show them changing as a result of treatment. But wait, the JointHeads say. We know that facet joints are innervated. We know they might play a role in proprioception. They are innervated for nociception, too. Its too early to not consider how important facet joints might be, they say…”
Go and read the rest. Join the conversation.