The Start

Hello,

This is the first actual post on the PNMT blog. You might notice that the skeleton on the page doesn't have any muscles..or nerves, so you may wonder what it has to do with Neuro-muscular therapy.

Actually, it is just one of my favorite drawings. It is by Vesalius, whose antomical drawings are wonderfully accurate, and much more interesting than most of the dry, academic modern anatomical drawings. It is also appropriate for the mood of starting a new blog.

where do you start with a new blog?

You feel a bit naked..there is no topic and precedent for the discussion.

I feel sorta like the skeleton in the drawing.

Well, let's get started.

The website for PNMT is neuro-muscular.com. Check it out.
Come by my office if you are in Pittsburgh. If you have pain, we can probably make you feel better.

no...seriously.

There are some phenomenal manual techniques out there for pain relief that are well documented scientifically, and are simple to demonstrate and learn, but for some reason, few people in the U.S. utilize them.

Perhaps it is a matter of economics, I mean, if I were a physician who was getting compensated the same for an office visit whether he spent an hour with the patient or 5 minutes, I could understand the temptation to simply write a prescription and move on to the next patient.
You can see an awful lot of patients in a day that way.

If you are performing manual, manipulative techniques, it takes a bit more time, it takes more refined palpation skills. You can't see as many people. It probably isn't as good a business model.

But I've come to the conclusion that the healthcare system in the US is broken. It's not working, we are one of, if not the, unhealthiest, most overweight of all the developed countries. (I guess the "overweight and "developed" part go hand in hand..but that's digressing)

The fact is that we are very unhealthy, poorly nourished, and over medicated. We have the most expensive healthcare in the world and the worst health.

What's the problem?

Life expectancies are going up, but how much "life" is being added to the span?

One thing I've noticed, from a bit of wandering around in "undeveloped and poor" areas of Central America, is that the elderly look different than they do in the US. There is certainly no shortage of them there. Maybe you see a larger percentage of the because they are outside and busy doing stuff. They are more alert, fitter, more active, more coordinated, and amazingly unmedicated compared to the US.

If you don't believe me, go take a look and compare. The elderly in the US look like zombies in comparison.

They are stiff, clumsy, have shuffling gaits, flat expressions, hard inflexible bodies, inflexible minds?

What's wrong?

We have a graying population in the US, and the population isn't aging gracefully.

Why is it that the areas without the "advanced" healthcare that we have in the US look so much better?

Comments?

Opinions?

Wiley