Introduction to Surf’s rehab status
Quick quick story – I’m 59 yrs-old, been playing basketball once or twice per week for many years, came down with sports hernia in February 2009 (5 mos. ago).
Cycle of elation and despair
I took a few weeks off any activity, then made couple of rehab attempts based on rehab protocols of Meyers and other doctors published here in LetsRun thread, but crashed and burned after brief, hope-filled, wonderful improvements each time. Elation then despair. Elation then despair.
A stubborn paradox
I was able to exercise very little without inflaming my left groin, testicles, adductors, with fleeting pains in my lower abdomen. But the puzzling thing was that every single day, no matter how sore or inflamed I was, I would ALWAYS, without fail, feel much, much better after my evening shower, before dinner. What a few minutes before felt like torn tendons all of the sudden would feel like perfectly good tendons. How could this be? A torn muscle all of the sudden feels perfectly fine? It must be the signaling system. The signaling system must be involved here!
Florida rehab – a new approach
THEORY - CONJECTURE - OPINION - ZERO CREDENTIALS
After moving to Florida, I began a new approach to rehab on May 18 (approx. 10 weeks ago), with the goal of being able to get into and out of my car like a normal person by this coming Christmas, which would be 7 months from the beginning of this rehab project. I continue to have the ups and downs, but now I can finally discern that not only am I slowly getting better, but the rate of improvement seems to be accelerating a tiny bit. (Keeping my fingers crossed!)
#1 rule for Surf: Avoid anything that crunches the trunk.
#2 rule for Surf: Sports hernia is caused by a signaling problem.
Consider sports hernia to be caused by a malfunctioning nervous system - specifically, neurotransmitter impairment. This view considers the lower abdomen, the inguinal ligament and its attached adductors to be a single complex mechanism (the pubic joint) that in healthy movement continuously writes and stores a large amount of highly complex logic (like machine-control logic in an industrial plant) to both tissue structure and nervous system. This logic in my case had been corrupted by neurotransmitter malfunction/contamination. In this perspective, a person not only has a tear or tears in tissues in the pubic joint (lower abdomen, inquinal ligament, and adductors) resulting from dangerous movement, but also has a pubic joint mechanism whose logic of movement is still in a mis-programmed or de-programmed state from past periods of neurotransmitter malfunction (that caused his injury), and whose logic of movement will remain bogus and dangerous during future athletic movements as long as the neurotransmitter contamination, and the consequent writing of further bogus movement logic, continues.
I've constructed my personal rehab activity based on this theory. Therefore, rather than focus on repetitive movement, such as walking long distances, I’ve chosen activities that have the most varied movements as being the most crucial to my recovery. For my rehab, I’m choosing activities whose movements are highly varied, but also natural to the human animal in life or in battle. No yoga or odd movements. More like the millions of movements a body goes through in one football game or one basketball game. Millions of natural motions, yet unpredictable. Yes, I want to strengthen the muscles, but more importantly, I want to re-program all the tissues and their nerve cells, which takes millions and millions of movements, like a child learning how to stand up.
But all of this will do no good if I continue with my degraded neurotransmitters. I will simply be re-programming my pubic joint tissues with more bogus, corrupt logic. So first I have to answer the question, Why are my neurotransmitters (chemicals used by my nervous system) being impaired to begin with?
As discussed yesterday, it’s known that a few drops of alcohol (alcohol is NOT a neurotransmitter) swallowed by a 200 lb man will cause him to slur his speech (uncoordinated tongue) and stumble when he tries to run. Alcohol does this almost immediately by quickly disrupting the delicate balance between inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitters.
Tomorrow I hope to get time to post the results of my rehab, including what is working for me, and also what hasn’t worked.
For those who haven’t seen these two links, it's useful to pay attention to them.
Stretch Reflex
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfuhVWK8C0U
Golgi Tendon Organ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golgi_tendon_organ
But for now, a couple of questions for anybody:
Have you ever played competitive sports well after drinking a beer? ____________
Have you ever played competitive sports during the same week that you drank coffee? ___________