Dr. JJ Thomas: Pain Is an Alarm. Why Your Injury Keeps Coming Back and How To Fix It

Dr. JJ Thomas (0:00)

Is no longer integral in surviving our environment. We've created conveniences in our society so that we don't need the movement necessarily, but biology didn't get the memo. Really, the pain is the alarm. And so what we have to figure out is what is the signal? Like what is causing that alarm to go off? Often in medicine, we keep just taking the batteries out of the alarm.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (0:24)

Posture is a real thing, and I've seen posture get worse over the last 10 years. If you can train good patterns, you probably can train bad patterns.

Dr. JJ Thomas (0:32)

That's exactly right. If you have poor posture, deciding to sit up taller is never going to really move the needle for you.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (0:39)

It's not that one muscle group or that one body part.

Dr. JJ Thomas (0:44)

We can help that tissue heal through multiple mechanisms. Really, patients got better faster when I started treating this way.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (0:58)

So for those of you who don't know, JJ is my physical therapist and my friend. And actually, funny story, you were my patient first and then we both became each other's patients.

Dr. JJ Thomas (1:08)

That's right.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (1:08)

When I met you, I was training biceps alone, maybe some leg extensions, probably doing some shoulder raises. And you're like, gee, it is no surprise how many injuries you have because you are not thinking about the body in terms of systems.

Dr. JJ Thomas (1:25)

Is that true? That's true.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (1:27)

What are we doing wrong?

Dr. JJ Thomas (1:28)

I think part of the problem comes from as a medical society, as a medical world, we dive in deep to try to get answers. And so we hone in and we get very specific and we analyze data in a way that helps us be very specific with an answer. But when we do that, a lot of times we lose the forest through the trees.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (1:45)

And so up until I sat with you, it had always been my hamstring really hurts. Can you fix my hamstring? And you were like, gee, it's actually your shoulder and your neck. And I thought to myself, wait.

Dr. JJ Thomas (1:58)

She's either crazy or really smart.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (2:00)

Totally. It's exactly what I thought. And I was like, wow, she's also jacked, so she must know something. It is an example of what I think many of the listeners or viewers are going through is that they might have neck pain. And then they think it's their neck or they have shoulder pain. They hit 40 and all of a sudden they have frozen shoulder, which must be their shoulder. But what really struck me about your philosophy is that it's not that one muscle group or that one body part.

Dr. JJ Thomas (2:24)

That's right. And that really the pain is the alarm. And so what we have to figure out is what is the signal? Like what is causing that alarm to go off? Often in medicine, we keep just taking the batteries out of the alarm, rather than actually looking into the rest of the house and saying, okay, is there smoke here? Is there smoke here? Are there multiple fires? And so that's where we use movement to analyze where the fires are.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (2:47)

And in traditional physical therapy, because you trained as a traditional physical therapist, is it typically taught as in isolated systems? So for example, in medicine, we might learn about the whole body, but once you become a specialist or you then go through medical training, you decide for my husband, he might look at the genitals. Yes, that's a dig to Shane. But for physical therapists, is it trained in systems-based approaches?

Dr. JJ Thomas (3:12)

I will say, when I, so I graduated PC school 25 years ago.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (3:17)

Just last year.

Dr. JJ Thomas (3:18)

Just last year. When we were taught, it was look above and below a joint. So definitely not a systems-based approach. I think we're starting, there are starting to be continuing education courses that focus on this more and more. And some have gotten some publicity, which is great. I can't speak to what the current programs are teaching in terms of systems in terms of treating the body as a system from the movement standpoint.

I couldn't speak for all of them, so I'm not sure on that one.

Dr. Gabrielle Lyon (3:46)

The reason I ask you that particular thing is because it seems as if it's not a standard approach. And that is what you were saying in the beginning, is that when something hurts, a person doubles down on getting out of pain, which is exactly true.