In dealing with my own health issue, I have once again found superstition per se to be very much alive and influencing the behaviour of people across the planet. We may have the greatest communication since the dawn of time with television, the Internet, and God knows what else, but we continue to acquire knowledge in a haphasard and undisciplined way ofttimes with no measure of scientific rigour. Is it any wonder I have heard more than once that despite the technological advancements of the human race, we collectively have not progressed in the past two thousand years.

Glucosamine
I'm researching my health issue on the Net and I find an entry in a user group where a guy states he started taking glucosamine. What the heck is that? He goes on to say that he has no idea if this supplement contributed to his healing but he is better after a few months. Hey! Do I need a better testimony than that? I go out and buy myself a big bottle, enough for sixty days and start a regime of three times a day. It seems a bit foolish but like the guy, I was in pain and desperate.

I do however investigate further and find that while the substance doesn't appear to be harmful, it isn't clear if the stuff does any good. From my reading, people have been spending zillions on glucosamine and I'm thinking their investment in the product is no more solid than my capricious let's give it a shot purchase. I think back over the years of my scientifically unfounded attempts to prevent or cure colds by jumping on the bandwagon one year and taking extra vitamin C then some other year trying echinacea. How rich are the pharmaceutical companies getting from all of us self-diagnosing and self-medicating? (By the way, I am firmly convinced that the best defense against the common cold is the strong and healthy body you get from eating right and exercising regularly.)

Acupuncture
Somebody bugged me to go so I went. Results? Zip. Nothing. Nada. So what's all the hoop la? Some people swear by it. Heck, the person who bugged me!

Acupuncture is an "alternative medicine" or a practice which does not fall within the realm of conventional medicine. Arnold Relman, editor in chief emeritus of The New England Journal of Medicine, was quoted as saying, "There really is no such thing as alternative medicine--only medicine that has been proved to work and medicine that has not."

My subsequent research showed that controlled tests between traditional acupuncture points and randomly sticking needles into a person produced the same results. Using "fake needles" like toothpicks also produced similar results. But why would anybody claim that it worked? It was thought that there is a psychological effect of going through the procedure and of being touched by another human being. The patient felt he was better off not because of acupuncture but because of the power of human touch.

As an aside, I decided to discontinue these sessions. However, a month later I recognised that I had improved. My pain had diminished and I felt I had healed somewhat. If I had continued with the acupuncture sessions, would the acupuncturist have claimed to be healing me? Would I have been thinking acupuncture was somehow doing something beneficial?

Chiropractic
Like acupuncture, I didn't feel any results. Once again my research brought into question the validity of this practice but my reading and my own experiences lead me back to the power of human touch. There seems to be no scientific evidence which conclusively proves cracking or manipulating bones is effective for any medical condition but like acupuncture, what benefits are to be had from having another human being massage our muscles, move our body parts around, and just in general touch us?

As with acupuncture, I stopped the chiropractic sessions. If I continued, would I now be saying, since I now feel better, that this was due to getting my neck cracked?

Kinesiology
Out of the various people I consulted about my injury, there has only been one person who has demonstrated immediate and tangible proof that his methodology works. As a kinesiologist, this gentleman seems to focus not necessarily on the symptoms of the problem but on the cause and he has consistently shown startling results when working with me.

Just to recap (again!), on April 7, 2012, I managed to traumatise the upper left quadrant of my body. I stopped short of tearing my rotator cuff (That would have required surgery!) but have been given to understand I'm looking at 6 months to a year to recover. On top of that, the trauma extended into my neck and left me with a slightly herniated cervical disc causing a pinched C6 nerve resulting in referred pain in my left shoulder, arm, and hand. How long for that to heal? Will it heal? Another unknown in the mix.

As I explained in my posting Health: Life comes to a dead halt:

A colleague recommended a kinesiologist slash sports medicine specialist saying he was something of a miracle worker. I may have been sceptical but at this stage I was so desperate, I would have tried a shaman.

Within five minutes, this gentleman seemed to know exactly what my problem was. However and here is the part that stunned me, he didn't just tell me a theory, he actually demonstrated he was right.

He gave me some strength tests. This involved putting my arm in various positions and he would push against my arm asking me to resist. He tested my left and right arms and I could easily feel how my left was very weak in comparison with my right.

First off, he told me about the tendon in my shoulder that connects to the bicep in the arm and that it was out of place. Digging into my shoulder, he told me to hold my breath then he pulled. Oddly enough, I didn't feel any pain. He retested my strength by asking me to hold my arm straight out but behind me at a 45 degree angle then resist as he pushed down. My strength had shot up a thousand percent. Oh my God, reseating the tendon in the proper place in the shoulder had put the working of my arm almost back to normal.

He examined my forearm and explained the separation of the ulna and the radius and the impact of this injury on the elbow and the wrist. Borrowing a chiropractic technique, he used a spring-loaded device called an activator on my elbow and wrist. He held this little gadget against each of my joints and pulled the handle. This tensed a spring which then released suddenly and gave a small but noticeable jolt to my joints. Apparently this movement repeated six or seven times, can literally jiggle the bones to get them back into their proper position.

I have little or no experience or knowledge about sports injuries or medicine in general; I have "suffered" from outstanding good health all my life. My questioning of this kinesiologist told me that while the human body is capable of all sorts of healing, some traumas it can't correct and instead, begins to adjust to them. The body can't reseat a bone so it will adjust to the bone being out of place.

Once again, the kinesiologist tested my strength. He asked me to hold my thumb and my pinkie together and he tried to separate them. Once again, I could feel my strength had shot up a thousand percent. I was flabbergasted.

As he laid out my plan of recovery strapping up my elbow and my wrist and printing out instructions for some isometrics exercises, I was upset at having wasted 4 weeks doing nothing because of an incorrect diagnosis for which I was in part responsible. I wondered just what I would have done if I had not had the good fortune of a colleague at work recommending this gentleman. How long would I have been running around looking for the answer to my dilemma? Because I had wasted 4 weeks, because I had run around for four weeks with things out of place, I wanted to be double sure; no triple sure, I was properly managing my recovery and so immediately booked to come back to this physio clinic on an almost daily basis.

Final Word
Glucosamine? Acupuncture? Chiropractic? I'm sure there are people who will come forward and testify that glucosamine works. Or acupuncture. Or chiropractic. Do we say that each case is unique and requires a different program of recovery? I would ask the question: if I had done nothing would I be better today after four months of healing? If so and I had followed any one of the above three courses of action, would I be claiming that course of action was instrumental in my healing?

In my blog Health: Pascal's Wager and Desperation, I talk about our desperation to get better and how we may be willing to try anything then claim it helped. I stated that a year from now I am more than likely going to be better than I am right at the moment. If I start eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches everyday for lunch, could I claim at the end of a year that my improvement is connected to the peanut butter and jelly? Does the salubrious strawberry combined with the protein of peanuts contribute to me getting healthy again? Cause and effect. Of course I do point out that correlation does not imply causation and it would seem to me that my reading about glucosamine, acupuncture and chiropractic points to the likelihood this is true. And for acupuncture and chiropractic I would add that the power of the human touch alone has not been properly measured for its beneficial effects on both the body and the spirit.

Out of everything, the kinesiologist is the only one who seemed to grasp my problem and do something which showed immediate results. However, while I credit him with getting a handle on my traumatised upper left quadrant, I am not sure that he knows what to do about my herniated disc if there is anything to be done. All of my reading leads me to believe that if the body can heal a herniated disc, the body will do so. It isn't a question of dietary supplements or exercises, it is a question pure and simple of what the body can or cannot do.

For anybody reading these words in the hopes of finding the answer to their own particular problem, I would offer this lesson I have learned. It's my body. It's not my doctor's body; it's my body. It's my injury; it's my pain; it's my problem. If I thought I was going to walk into a clinic, get a diagnosis, a prescription, and a definite plan of recovery involving physio or something, I was sadly mistaken. I was in so much pain in the beginning, I was not thinking clearly and I did not do a good job of advocating for myself. I did not push hard enough for answers and I did not realise at the time that the doctor, while doing his job properly, did not investigate thoroughly enough to properly determine the extent of my injury. My problem wasn't a three out of ten; it turned out to be a seven out of ten. If I had known that from the get go, if my doctor had know that, I'm sure I would have tackled the problem differently.