Triggerband Web Journal

If all take, no one will have anything of value. If all give, everyone will have everything. Things of value are not primarily material. They are the kindness we show to one another; the services we offer, with or without recompense.

Some Americans on the conservative end of the political spectrum think that anyone who has food, a place to live, and modern appliances is in no position to complain about their lot in life. After all, many in this world go without those basic necessities. But the argument is flawed for assuming the only things people need are basic necessities, as if our purpose is merely to self-perpetuate. By this assumption, conservatives of this type reveal their gross misunderstanding of human nature.

When someone’s boss chews them out at work, how much solace will they find in their washer and dryer? When a person is struggling with weight issues, try telling them they have no cause to complain because they have enough food to eat. Do walls and a roof overhead shelter from an abusive spouse or parent within? Can a television set become someone’s friend?

An all-pervasive problem in America

Right-wing conservatives who have worked their way to success, as they define it, may be the most blatant promoters of this fallacy. But they are not the only ones. On the other political end are the liberal unions, who grasp as much pay and benefits as they can, even manipulating the hand of government to fill their pockets. All the while, they justify their own abuses with tales of corporate greed and management excesses.

Unions’ true motives are revealed when they compete with non-union workers for limited benefits. Pilot unions have shown they are willing to use aggressive negotiation tactics to get as much pay as possible, without remorse for other airline workers who have taken corresponding pay cuts.

Lawyers have pushed to make it illegal for anyone without a license to practice law. The goal is for the profession to maintain a monopoly on legal services, although most educated people could practice law competently with a bit of experience. For the same reason, doctors use Latin and Greek words to obscure the otherwise familiar. Musculus quadriceps femoris, for example, literally means “four-headed muscle of the thigh” in Latin. The idea is to place a gap in between “professionals” and “laypersons” that perpetuates a doctor’s role in society.

Bulwarks of the Ivory Tower

When it comes to self-perpetuity, America’s higher education community is our worst offender. At least doctors, lawyers, and workers unions provide valuable services. Academic researchers often concoct studies solely to receive government grants and recognition within their academic community. This life is great fun for the right person. They can engage with intelligent scholars who share similar interests. And they are immune from the economic pressures of the business world, or the workload of primary and secondary school teachers.

It is so much fun that students themselves endeavor to stay in school – lengthening programs, doubling majors, turning masters into doctorates.

But is this community good for society? It might be if the focus of academia were on real-world issues. It would help if doctors and other professionals could dictate what they study. We live in a relatively wealthy society, so we are able to set people aside to explore their interests without a need for immediate productivity. And there is nothing wrong with that concept per se.

Problems arise, however, when these people, whom society has blessed with perpetual capital and no immediate demands, forget their duty to society, however informally it was stated. Then academics become takers, not producers, who stretch the truth to keep funding. As often as we hear claims of potential cures for paralysis and degenerative diseases – and even aging – how many cures do we actually see?

As a society, we have been led on by academics. It is too risky to grant capital without effective oversight. Reputable as an individual or organization may be, they are still capable of betraying our trust when no one is watching.

Acute form of self-perpetuity

The above examples are the chronic form of self-perpetuity. They are systems people create or modify to preserve and perpetuate their own viability, livelihood, and reputation. However, there is also an acute form of self-perpetuity.

Bargain-basement shopping, one-sided contracts, medications that only treat symptoms – these are ways that supposedly enhance and perpetuate one’s existence incrementally. Far too many people willingly enter into deals they know are unfair to the other party, reasoning it is that other party’s responsibility to look out for himself. People who habitually use symptom-reducing meds and max out credit cards go so far as to cheat their future selves, as they would another person.

Basis of Many Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy theorists, bless their hearts, are oftentimes simply trying to make sense of systems that appear so diabolical that they must be the result of high-level conspiracies designed to kill, brainwash, and exploit the masses. In fact, theorists are attempting to project blame onto a few individuals for a problem closer to home.

Daily, Americans are faced with a choice: Am I going to do what helps me or what benefits the society I live in? When citizens of this individualistic nation, on all levels, systematically choose the former option, the results are indeed diabolical. But we cannot place all the blame on a few people in positions of great responsibility.

The prevalence of AIDS is largely the result of personal choices. Our economic crisis is not the fault of the Rothschilds any more than reckless investors, predatory lenders, and overreaching consumers. Conspiracy theorists will understand these references.

Checks and Balances

It might make for a touching conclusion to appeal to the good in people’s hearts. Unfortunately, that is just not practical. Instead, we need effective systems of checks and balances. Everyone must report to some authority, whether a parent, teacher, employer, law enforcement officer, or congressional committee. In our nation we have rejected the very concept of authority, probably because of rampant abuse of this power in past generations.

People should be viewed as self-interested and self-perpetuating individuals whose selfishness must be continually held in check.

In conjunction with these systems of checks and balances, we as individuals need to learn how to view our lives differently. We are interconnected with those in our society through frameworks of community. A framework can be regional, professional, religious, political. And within each of those frameworks we have a responsibility to use our influence in ways that benefit the group as a whole, not our own personal interest or our family’s alone.

Thus, effective systems punish takers and reward givers; oppose self-perpetuators and support community-minded individuals. The most effective force of all to influence behavior of citizens in a free society is the values that society holds. If wealth is valued over honesty and a good job is valued over politeness, people will lie to make a sale and shaft their way into a promotion. If war is unpopular in this country, America’s youth will shun military service.

Fascial Distortion Medicine’s American Dilemma

Self-perpetuating mindsets are the single greatest hindrance to the spread of FDM in the United States. It offers so much to patients yet so little to physicians. Here is what we tell doctors, MDs and DOs: “If you use FDM you can’t see as many patients or make as much money. You will tire yourself out doing the treatments. And you’ll look silly to your colleagues. But your patients, they will love you! You can be a miracle worker, a life saver in their eyes.”

Physicians respond, more by deed than by word: “What’s in it for me? If I can help patients by making little or no sacrifice, I’ll do it. But when it comes down to helping patients or taking care of me and my family, I’ll choose me. Every time.”

Well, patients are choosing “me” too, and a new healthcare system is coming. Indeed, America has systems of checks and balances. What we need now is the right values.

Alexander Typaldos

I am determined to objectively and realistically present the scope of benefits Typaldos Manual Therapy (TMT) offers patients. These are amazing treatments, but they obviously have limitations.

TMT will not repair cataracts, reduce anxiety, ease the pain of an ingrown toenail, or finish off a lingering infection. TMT will definitely fix sprained ankles, will probably resolve chronic loss of shoulder abduction, and might help recover from stroke-induced paralysis.

From what I have observed, about half of all musculoskeletal injuries can be healed solely by correcting fascial distortions. And most of the remaining half will heal significantly, though not completely, from the application of TMT. Common non-fascial causes of acute injury include fractures, neurological damage, and inflammation.

Furthermore, about one third of chronic pain and loss of motion can be resolved with TMT. And another third can be improved with TMT, in cases such as fibromyalgia and post stroke spastic paralysis. The last third, which TMT cannot help, could be from arthritis, osteoporosis, and numerous other chronic diseases affecting the joints, muscles, or nervous system.

Keep in mind that correcting fascial distortions is the only thing Typaldos Manual Therapy does. And not all fascial distortions can be corrected using TMT. Even so, it is very fortunate that most can be treated effectively using manual therapy. Otherwise, the fascial distortion model would point out the problem without offering any solutions. What difference does it make what is causing pain if nothing can be done about it?

Our tendency, when we study a certain disease process in depth, is to believe that particular disease is more prevalent than it actually is. Likewise, when we are familiar with a certain treatment method, we begin to think it can cure or at least help almost every condition. Especially when we have economic incentives to sell a product or therapy, our supporting claims can become unrealistically broad.

Thus, patients and doctors become desensitized to outrageous claims. So when something comes along that really is great, they prudently approach it with skepticism. Even worse, some patients and doctors are willing to accept any and all claims, no matter how ridiculous. They quickly become imbalanced in their thinking and extreme in their practices.

Evidence-based medicine, supported by a body of carefully-scrutinized research, was designed to avoid warrantless claims. However, research has largely become a racket because of undue business interests and inherent bias in the researchers. Drug companies are among the few private entities that have funds to conduct double-blinded placebo-controlled studies. And federal research funds seem to be offered primarily to advance the careers of research scientists.

Good Idea, Problematic in the Real World

Most states require regular car inspections to make sure vehicles are in safe operating condition. This is a good idea, right? Nevertheless, some states have done away with car inspections. The reason is that corruption defeated the original purpose. Auto repair shops were passing cars easily without actually looking at them; or they were coercing customers into contracting unnecessary repairs.

Medical research as it now exists may be heading toward a similar demise. Doctors, pharmaceuticals, and insurance can support anything they want with “valid” research, by picking and choosing the studies they wish to present. When no favorable studies exist, they simply conduct their own. Even when their claims have so little merit that their own researchers balk, they can report that results are inconclusive. This inserts enough ambiguity into an area of prior consensus to justify deviation.

A Functional Research System

There is no substitute for the ability to think logically, rationally, and reasonably. Healthcare professionals and administrators must learn to think this way, or even a good system like evidence-based medicine will fail in practice.

Typaldos Manual Therapy diagnoses fascial distortions, treats them specifically, and produces consistent and measurable results. If that is not enough to get TMT accepted, then the healthcare system needs to change. Some promoters of TMT want to conduct a study that will prove its efficacy. I have hesitated to support a study of this nature, because it will not add to the body of knowledge. It will waste resources proving something that should be readily apparent.

So I advocate a new research system; one that is functional rather than academic. The core difference is that this research system will be subject to the requests and demands of doctors in practice. At present, researchers are the ones telling physicians how to do their job. In the new system, physicians will report to research scientists the difficulties they have in practice, and ask them to find better explanations and more effective therapies. When researchers find theories and treatment modalities that prove effective, doctors will adopt them, and researchers will then move on to the next challenge doctors have presented them with.

For this functional system to work, physicians, researchers, and administrators must be able to recognize whether treatments are effective. Otherwise, researcher scientists will get bogged down doing long and unproductive data analysis, conducting studies designed to prove claims that advance agendas, rather than discovering new, better therapies that offer patients immediate results.

How can we know whether treatments and theories work? By asking ourselves, are they logical, rational, and reasonable? And, ultimately, do the results support the claims?

Alexander Typaldos, JD

Take a cross section of the upper arm, away from the joints, and what do you have? There is skin, fat, blood vessels, lymph vessels, nerves, muscle, bone, and fascia. If I missed anything, let me know. So an injury to the arm can cause damage to a limited number of structures.

We can see the skin, so we know when it is damaged. Treatment for physical trauma to the skin is also straightforward, involving sutures and grafting. Subcutaneous fat is a deep layer of skin, held in place by fascia. Fat acts as a cushion during injury, protecting nerves and blood vessels that run through it.

Blood vessel damage causes bruising, and typically does not require intervention unless major vessels are severed. This may come as a surprise, but muscles do not have a macro anatomical structure apart from fascia. Every skeletal muscle, bundle and individual fiber is surrounded by fascia. This is not my opinion. It is established – though frequently overlooked – anatomical science. Therefore, the only injury that can occur to muscle, independent of fascia, is at the cellular level.

This leaves bone fractures, nerve damage, and fascial distortions as the primary culprits in upper arm injuries. Fractures are easily diagnosed with x-rays, and more or less complicated to treat, depending on severity of the injury. Fractures do cause pain and loss of motion. However, pain and loss of motion frequently occur in injuries without fractures; and often persist after fractures heal. Logically, these symptoms must have other causes as well.

Nerve damage is a tricky condition to deal with. The nature of nerves, controlling sensory functions and movement, makes their destruction oftentimes difficult to detect and treat. Fortunately, nerves can repair and regrow without treatment. Signs of nerve damage include muscle weakness, pain or loss of sensation, tingling “down-stream” from the injury, and involuntary movements (twitching).

When an upper arm x-ray is negative, bruising and swelling are reduced, strength is present but motion is restricted, and the patient experiences pain when the arm is in certain positions, what do we have? I suggest, by default, that we have fascial distortions.

A Common Sense Approach

The fascial distortion model may seem radical when compared with current schools of thought, notably orthopedics, osteopathy, and chiropractic. However, its anatomical basis is not radical at all. Instead, it is logical common sense.

Lest you doubt the above analysis, the nail in the coffin is that the treatments designed to correct fascial distortions work. Dr. Typaldos demonstrated his confidence in the model and treatments when he gave seminars, by asking doctors to bring him their most difficult patients with musculoskeletal injuries and chronic pain. This risk was calculated, because he knew that the hardest patients would have already been treated for all other possible problems, leaving them with fascial distortions by default. Then he fixed patients on the spot in front of large audiences.

Some doctors who attended his lectures accused Dr. Typaldos of arrogance for these displays. But how else could he break through their faulty way of thinking about musculoskeletal injuries?

Orthopedic analysis illogically removes fascial distortions from the mix of potential contributors to pain and loss of motion, and expands the scope of the other possibilities to encompass 100 percent of all injuries. Orthopedists would be honest if they acknowledged they know the causes of about half of all injuries, while the other half leaves them stumped.

Alexander Typaldos, JD