The Thousand Word Image

1895, Roentgen develops X-ray. X meaning “unknown”

There is no more credible a thing than an image. Seeing is believing. I’ll have to see it to believe it. A picture is worth a thousand words. Vision trumps other senses (McGurk Effect).

How are the words you choose to use, in the healing context of your presence, going to combat the fact that it has been visually shown that things are “messed up in there” ?

It is not our fault, us humans. Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen developed this lovely technology. About a month later, humans were using it clinically.  It is amazing. And I mean X-ray, CT-scans, MRI, fMRI, UltraSound… it’s all incredible. It was developed so we used it. We used it on people in pain, people with broken limbs, people with ailments of this nature or another, and that is the vantage point from which our opinions were based. We saw people with pain have strange looking images. We therefore conclude, that the changes we saw were the cause of the pain, and here we are today.

Post Hoc, Ergo Proctor Hoc. After this, therefore because of this. It is all in the development of the tool. We pointed our delicate and precise imaging tools at the sick, and we found sickness.

The Claims Equation

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I’ve finally figured it out, I’ve boiled it down to the simplest of terms: I dislike unsupported claims. From this simple seed, stems so many urges to engage in discussion, debate, conversation and reflection.

I could not figure out why listening to biomedical model explanations bothered me so much. I could not figure out why those using nocebic analogies drove me crazy. I did not know the reason that I loathed unsubstantiated predictions of the future (“You will need a knee replacement.” “You will have pain forever” etc). It comes down to the claim.

Maybe you could say I just enjoy truth, but truth is a complex part of this whole thing (personal truths, facts, outcomes, etc). To explain this best, allow me to use some math:

Does the weather make pain worse?

People say it all the time: “Oh, it’s gonna rain, I can tell in my knee” or “My knees really hurt over the weekend… they do that with bad weather.” What is it with these magical knees? From my personal vantage point, there is no logic to this… it’s simply psychological mis-attribution of causes… but it is heard so often, is there something to it?

Well, I asked on Twitter and fully enjoyed the convos that occurred…

So here is a summary of what was shared:

Commute = Classroom

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Commute time can either suck your life force, or it can become a valuable part of your development. So, yes, there are tons of great Podcasts on the subject of Physical Therapy / Physiotherapy from many angles, and I encourage you to listen and learn. But what I’m going to share today are 3 Non-PT Podcasts… for PTs.

1)     The You Are Not So Smart podcast, hosted by David McRaney.  There are tons of great episodes here, primarily on psychology, cognitive biases, social patterns, scientific thought and all things thinking. I cannot state enough how important these types of topics are for the practicing PT, primarily because, no matter what the injury or body part, we all treat people.  They’re all great, but… Some highlight episodes: