You hurt your back. You rest for a few days, maybe get a massage, stretch, take an anti-inflammatory, or see a therapist. The pain improves. Then a few weeks later, you bend over, play golf, work in the yard, go back to the gym and the pain comes right back. You think to yourself that something must still be “out of place,” damaged, or not fully healed.

The term ‘nerve damage’ gets thrown around a lot and can sound scary. However, there are different types of nerve damage which greatly influence the prognosis, as you’ll see. One of the most useful ways to understand nerve injuries comes from a classification developed by neurologist Herbert Seddon in the 1940s. He divided peripheral nerve injuries into three major categories: neurapraxia, axonotmesis, and neurotmesis.

Early in my career, I noticed a pattern. Everyone that ended up on my table was sleeping poorly. At first I thought it was strange; why is everyone in this town sleeping so bad? Then I realized it wasn’t everyone, it was those that were in therapy for pain. Was pain inhibiting their sleep, or was pain augmenting their sleep? It turns out, both. It’s a vicious cycle.

One of the most common things I hear from patients is, “I’m exhausted, but my doctor says all my labs are normal.” Maybe you wake up tired even after eight hours of sleep. You hit a wall in the afternoon. Your workouts feel harder than they used to. You rely on coffee just to get going. You might also notice brain fog, poor motivation, irritability, or that you simply don’t recover the way you used to.

The Resilient Blueprint is built around a different idea. Instead of simply trying to eliminate symptoms or optimize individual biomarkers, the goal is to improve the body's ability to adapt.

I wanted to write a blog about a few conditions that are cited as “rare” online, but patterns I see fairly often. Pain in the back of the shoulder is often blamed on the rotator cuff or labral tears. However, a few conditions can be missed with these assumptions, particularly with gym-goers and overhead athletes. Two of these syndromes are called triangular interval syndrome and quadrilateral space syndrome. When these areas are stiff, they can compress the nerves such as the radial nerve (triangular interval) or the axillary nerve (quadrilateral space).

There are certain muscles that just seem prone to cramping, particularly the hamstrings and calves. There are several reasons why they cramp (which we’ll cover), but one of them is positional. It’s called active insufficiency. 

Most disorders of the body are either a state of too much, or too little. While not enough copper in the body can cause problems, too much copper can create a lot of nasty issues. It can cause liver problems, mental health issues, and neurologic symptoms. The telltale sign is what is known as a Kayser-Fleischer ring, which is what you see in the main picture for this blog. 

I don’t know why this is a controversial topic, but I’ve literally had social media posts removed when I bring up this topic. Our current “wear and tear” paradigm has never sat well with me. It just doesn’t make physiological sense. It’s one thing if you just like a cushion shoe. And I’ll contend that everyone is different, and what works for one person may not work for another. However, the belief that more cushion automatically protects your knees, hips, and ankles isn't supported by current biomechanics research. In fact, highly cushioned shoes may increase impact loading, alter natural running mechanics, and reduce the body's ability to adapt to stress.

One of the most common questions people ask when they are struggling with pain, fatigue, dizziness, inflammation, or chronic symptoms is: “Where do I even start?” Should you see a physical therapist? A functional medicine practitioner? Or both?

When people think about gut problems they usually imagine symptoms like bloating, diarrhea, reflux, or stomach pain. While those can certainly occur, gut inflammation often shows up in ways that seem completely unrelated to digestion. In fact, many people with significant gut dysfunction have very few digestive complaints at all.

Most people come to physical therapy for one reason. Something hurts. A shoulder that won’t lift. A back that keeps locking up. A knee that never feels quite right. So we treat the pain, calm the tissue, and restore strength and range of motion. Although this often works, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re healthy. And it definitely doesn’t mean you’re resilient.

Why is that achy knee acting up again? Is it that last set of lunges you did? Or what caused your autoimmune disease to flare up? It’s easy to blame that one thing, but the truth is, it’s been a slow burn going on in the background and you reached a tipping point. When it comes to any maladies; pain, injury, or chronic disease, it’s the build up of imbalance that determines when things flare up. Your most vulnerable tissue or system, like a canary in a coalmine, determines where the malady sets in. 

Gut testing has become an important tool for understanding health beyond basic symptoms and routine lab work. Many people struggle with digestive issues, fatigue, skin problems, autoimmune conditions, or chronic inflammation for years without clear answers. Because the gut plays a central role in digestion, immune regulation, hormone balance, and nutrient absorption, testing the gastrointestinal system can reveal underlying patterns that are easy to miss with standard blood tests or imaging.

I frequently hear people say things like, “I have a fast metabolism”, or “I don’t know what’s going on with my weight gain, my metabolism is slow I guess”. Well you don’t have to guess. There are clues that can easily be obtained on a thyroid panel. The only problem is, typical bloodwork only tests for TSH. While that is an important marker, it doesn’t tell the whole picture.