Seventy-five million Americans suffer from chronic pain. The reason for this absurdly large number is the fact that the cause of initial pain is not being diagnosed properly. If the initial diagnosis for the cause of pain is incorrect, then every aspect of treatment that follows will do nothing to resolve the pain.

A complete evaluation is necessary to correlate a cause to each specific symptom. X-rays and MRIs do not achieve this goal. Don't become another statistic. Find medical practitioners who are willing to look farther than a diagnostic test to establish what is causing your pain.

The majority of my patients I treat are people who have sought treatment in the medical establishment for years trying to find a cause for their pain. They have been seen by varying medical practitioners with varying specialties. They have tried chiropractic care, physical therapy and other "alternative" forms of care. They have tried pain medications, epidural nerve blocks, cortisone shots and even surgeries because "nothing else worked". Years have passed with these individuals suffering from pain. By the time they reach my office, I am told I am their last resort. The question is simple, does this have to be the way the medical system treats pain? The unequivocal answer is NO.

A new approach needs to be undertaken by the medical establishment; one that tries to correlate a cause to a specific symptom. The acceptance that the governing mechanism for determining cause of pain should be a diagnostic test must end. Studies continue to prove that the findings achieved by these diagnostic tests have very little correlation to pain. As many people with absolutely no pain can be found to have herniated discs, arthritis, stenosis, spondylosthesis, menical tears and rotator cuff tears as those with pain. These tests have been proven to be inconclusive in identifying the cause of pain. The fact that people have been given so many different forms of treatment, which in most cases could do nothing but mask pain, is an indication that the system is flawed.

The hard reality is that if you go to a neurologist, in most cases, they will tell you your problem is a disc or a nerve. If you go to an orthopedist, in most cases, you are told that very same pain is from your joint or a joint structure. In most cases, a chiropractor will tell you that very same pain requires an adjustment and a podiatrist will give you an orthotic and a cortisone shot to resolve the very same pain.

A new system must be created where an individual sees someone like me first. A medical practitioner with the ability to identify which tissue is inflamed creating the pain signal. This will lead the individual to the right practitioner to address the cause of the pain and quickly and effectively resolve the pain. I have proven that in 90 to 95 percent of the cases I have treated that the cause of pain was muscle weakness or imbalance. Until this understanding is accepted by both the public and the medical establishment, the numbers of people suffering from chronic pain will increase and the period of time they suffer will continue to lengthen.