Life’s Complicated…yes, and so are you

By Dr. Michael Cerami

After many years of trying to explain the complexity of symptoms to patients, I came across an idea that seems to be getting traction.

99% of people that come to see me are in pain of some sort. Their pain could be showing up in their back, their hips, knees, feet, neck, shoulder, butt, hamstrings, headaches, or whatever. I always struggled on how to explain to patients that their problem (in most cases) didn’t happen at the same time the pain appeared. To be more specific, the cause of the problem is one thing, the awareness of the problem or pain is another. It’s very normal to link both events together.

Remember way back when you were a little tike and you first smashed your 2 little fingers with a red brick you were playing with and it hurt like !*#$%? Well, that’s what I recall as my first lesson in pain and at that point my little brain started putting it together … brick…heavy…fingers…soft..brick on fingers = instant pain= “When I do this, this happens”.

As we get older we equate the initial awareness of pain with the start of the problem. “I woke up with the Flu”, “All I did was pick up the razor and now I can’t move my back”, “Everything was fine yesterday”, “I haven’t done anything different”, and even “I felt good last week and now they tell me I have cancer”.

Somewhere along our life’s journey we started thinking that we are more like our cars and computers than like the living environment that surrounds us. When you break something mechanical, the results are immediately obvious. Smash your car; you see it. Hot water heater fails; you feel it. Computer crashes; you yell at it. Just as importantly, these things seem pretty straightforward to repair.

In contrast, when a living thing or system starts to have problems, the symptoms may not be apparent for days, weeks or years because there’s a sub-threshold adaptation process occurring that we can’t see or feel. The cold you woke up with probably started 4 days ago (when you were exposed to a virus) and just reached threshold (awareness) today.

Think about it. The grass isn’t going to turn from lush green to brown overnight if your sprinkler system broke in the middle of a hot summer is it? And when you discovered it, the mechanical sprinklers should be pretty easy and quick to fix, but how many days or weeks will it take to get the lawn healthy again?

Complex systems are usually able to do and perform a lot more than simple systems. And since we ask our bodies to do just about everything imaginable and we’re about the most complex things on the planet, observing subtle changes can be difficult at best.

I propose that instead of thinking on/off, feeling good/feeling bad we consider the idea that we remember we are really Human Beings (living) not Humans doing (mechanical) and therefore will go through millions of changes and adaptations in a lifetime.

This will help us make better decisions on how to develop long term strategies to take care of our bodies and develop expectations that are more in line with the rhythms of nature. This seems much more sensible than the distortions of the quick fix mechanical approach we seem to default to.

Dr. Michael Cerami is an avid runner, cyclist and triathlete. He is available for a no change consultation one Saturday per month at The Salt Lake Running Company (700 E store) by appointment. He can be reached at 801-486-1818 or online atwww.utahsportsandwellness.com

Jeff Spencer Lecture Preview: You’ll say, “A well spent hour”

By Dr. Michael Cerami

I thought it would be a good idea to share my experience with Dr. Jeff Spencer as he has played a significant role in my personal and professional life.  I hope it gives you a good idea of why I thought it was important for him to do a presentation to our local community at the Salt Lake Running Company next week.

I first met Dr. Spencer years ago at a convention where he was presenting to over a thousand of my colleagues. I was immediately captivated by his ideas on energy medicine and how he explained the importance of removing “interferences” in the body to get athletes to

perform at higher levels.  He was taking parts of what I knew from 20 years of clinical experience and adding cutting edge information that I was reading about in my personal life to improve my fitness and performance. I distinctly remember that he had a system to identify and correct problems in the body that pulled all different pieces together, and he had the resume to back it up as he had worked with dozens of world champions.

As his lecture continued, a light bulb went off in my head, “I need to talk to this guy!” I was post 1 year ACL reconstructive surgery and not where I wanted to be with my recovery. Maybe he had an answer. I waited for my opportunity as the crowd slowly dissipated around him and asked him if I could talk about my “problem”.  Jeff was very accommodating and immediately asked a little more about the injury and my history;  he then had me perform a few tests  he’s developed to identify the possible cause of my problem and why I wasn’t able to engage the muscles effectively even after extensive rehab.

Without going in to all of the details, he checked a few more things and then did two cold laser treatments on me. That treatment, along with two additional sessions a couple of weeks later, literally changed my professional paradigm and my personal life. I just couldn’t believe something so simple and so quick could make such a dramatic improvement. When I got on the bike later that week, I could feel that my left quad was actually fully engaging the power stroke into my left pedal. That hadn’t happened since the injury as it was just going around for the ride previously. I finally had two legs to bike with again! I was totally jacked.

I attended a number of seminars Dr. Spencer presented and began to learn more completely how his vision of the body encompassed a larger picture that I had imagined. He talked about muscles, nerves, and connective tissue. He talked about the importance of symmetry and the concept of Tensegrity, focal loading and why many times the cause of the symptom, was NOT where the patient felt pain. In the midst of all this clinical information, he dropped in stories about the physical and mental demands of the athletes and riders he had worked with and what helped them. I came to realize that many of these professionals were struggling with many of the same things we do albeit on a different level. He provided ideas and answers on maximizing their potentials and solutions for physical and mental challenges.

As I got to know Jeff better over the years, I began to see more of his personal side when he talked about his experiences at the Tour de France and with his personal life journey. I got an immediate sense that this guy really cared about the people he was working with and the doctors he was teaching. He wasn’t removed and distant with an “I did this and that…” attitude. He had ability, heart and compassion that really comes across in his book “Turn It Up”.

I also got a sense that Jeff is on a mission to get as much done as possible in this life and therefore can come across as a pretty intense person. I’m sure that when dealing with professional athletes at the biggest races in the world you either “Step up and get the job done” or they find some else that can as their livelihood is on the line.

I encourage you to come out on February 11^th from 7-8pm to meet and listen to Dr. Spencer. I think you’ll get more than you bargained for in a lot of ways.

Dr. Michael Cerami is an avid runner, cyclist and triathlete. He is available for a consultation one Saturday per month at Salt Lake Running Company (Salt Lake store) by appointment. He can be reached at 801-486-1818 or online atwww.utahsportsandwellness.com