“Just get on with it, deal with discomfort it’s part of ageing… “

This quote highlights something that is often considered a virtue in today’s world. Discomfort!

Everywhere we look we see messaging such as ‘no pain, no gain’, ‘pain is temporary’ or ‘without pain, there is no progress’….

It’s hard to escape this messaging, and if you are dealing with persisting pain there is a good chance this message has influenced your expectation and approach to day to day life and deciding how to manage your pain.

A story of arthritic knee pain …

The story starts with some periodic knee pain, some things hurt a bit. Most of the time it’s ok, so you tell yourself it’s not really all that bad; after all plenty of people have it much worse. So you think to yourself “just carry on it will probably go away on its own”.  After a little while, it’s starting to limit the enjoyment of things you normally love (playing tennis, soccer, running around with your kids/grandkids) so you decide to go and speak with your doctor and ask them what you could do about it. The doctor tells you it’s pretty normal for ‘your age’ you should cut back on your tennis/running or gym (especially squats they are really bad for you) and then prescribed you some painkillers, telling you to go and see the physio. Somewhat disheartened by the news from your doctor regarding your ‘age-related downward spiral’ you then go on to see the physio. The physio does some massage, some, needling or taping, tells you you have “weak glutes and VMO” and writes some exercises on a piece of paper for you with stick figures, telling you to come back next week. After each session with the physio, you feel a bit better for the rest of that day, yet tomorrow you’re back to the same pain as the day before. After 5 or 6 sessions of the same thing with your physio and a growing list of stick figure exercises sheets (that you haven’t been doing), you decide this isn’t working.

The doctor must have been right, its age-related degeneration and you might as well just get used to it and stop doing so much activity.

Fast-forward 1-2 years and you have cut back everything that used to cause you pain. No tennis, no running, no gym, you cant run around with the kids anymore. You have gained a little (or a lot) weight, your energy is lower than it used to be and your pain is worse than ever. Things that used to be perfectly fine are now a major problem. So you decide enough is enough and that you need to speak with a surgeon.

And what do they tell you?

“You’re not old enough yet”. “The degeneration really isn’t that bad”. “You really should lose some weight”. “Your pain isn’t bad enough yet to justify replacing your knee”. “So go and speak with our nurse about [injections, bracing, pain-killers, supplements] do some strengthing exercises with your physio, lose some weight and come back in about 3-5 years and if things have worsened we can reconsider surgical options!”

3-5 years! How depressing. Just suck it up and do the same thing you have been doing for another 3-5 years before you can do anything about it! You are not impressed.

And you know what, everyone is giving you what they think is good advice. Yet all you are left with the idea that your pain is “normal” and YOU must be the problem because it isn’t really that bad yet.

However, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Unfortunately, the current health care system hasn’t quite caught up to what the most recent evidence is suggesting. In today’s world, many clinicians know the benefits of structured exercise and education for treating chronic joint pain issues, such as knee pain (e.g. osteoarthritis). Yet sadly the practice is behind the research on this one. Most physio, chiro, osteo businesses aren’t equipped to take you through a proper guided strengthening process, gym trainers don’t have the knowledge to help you so you are left in limbo without any obvious good options to make the changes. You need to get back the life you loved.

[See why this is so complex here].

This story is one we have heard endless times at MTP Health and is the reason we have poured our heart, soul, and resources into building a service that provides a real solution.

We provide solutions. We don’t just tell people to stop doing things. We provide empowering knowledge of how adaptable and resilient the body is.

We offer hope and we deliver.

With our purposeful, personalized, guided and systematic approach to your recovery, we show you that managing your pain is something you need not do once you understand the process and how you can address the cause, not the symptom. We call this empowerment.

When you focus on empowerment you gain access to the real key that allows you to get rid of your knee pain. While the secret that causes your pain is that you have become too good at dealing with it, the key to fixing it is equipping you with the tools to take control and empower you to do more. That is what MTP Health is all about!