Patients' autonomy

On this website as well as on our Facebook page, I tend to post more scientific than opinion papers. However, an article named How the Back Pain Industry is Taking Patients for a Dangerous Ride has come to my attention this week, and it is worth sharing it. The authors Danielle Venton and Jon Brooks make there a few important points:

• surgery should not be treated lightly;
• all hands-on treatments (cracking joints, massaging, etc.) are symptomatic and not causal;
• relying on accessories for getting better is not the road down to patients' autonomy and empowerment.

We do share these views. This is the reason why most of our treatment is solely based on the use of gravity, as the only freely available resource everywhere on the planet. Sometimes (and only after the patient masters his/her own body perfectly well) technical solutions may come into play for coping with the last bits of unresolvable pain. In this case, we will make sure that their use does not require any third party, and that the patient develops the necessary expertise to use the solution without creating new damage. 
A strict adherence to our "hands off paradigm" is key to being able to provide distance treatment for postural disorders.