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Many MRI “abnormalities” are, well… normal. “Age-appropriate” findings on MRI readings are vastly under-appreciated. If you are over 50, have no pain, and place you into an MRI, you have at least a …
A 20% chance of having a meniscus abnormality. An 80% chance of something being listed as an abnormality in your knee. A 10-15% or higher chance of having a rotator cuff tear. An 80% chance of having a disc bulge in your back or neck.
I'm fond of pointing out the stat (true as of a year ago) that Massachusetts (I think it's MA?) has more MRI machines than the entire country of Canada.
To me it's crazy that people are waiting an average of nearly 3 months to get imaging. This is probably after waiting a couple months for their doctor's appointment to get the MRI scheduled in the first place.
[1] [https://getmrifast.ca/mri-wait-times]
https://www.statista.com/statistics/282401/density-of-magnet...
Japan is a standout, and then you see most of the West just below them... Canada is way down the list.
It's sad that seemingly the top result for this search term is an AI slop lead-gen site, rather than the actual source:
>Disclaimer: Wait times shown are estimates based on publicly reported data from the Fraser Institute, CIHI, and provincial health authority reports.
Long wait times (6-12 months+) for MRIs (due to a lack of both machines and technicians) are a frequent complaint by Canadians.
I think private MRIs have been around, at least in my province anyways, for close to 30 years.
I'm also quite fond of pointing out that Canada and the state of California have roughly the same populations.
Canada's population is incredibly spread out, but also concentrated in about 5 major cities.
When I needed an MRI on my brain is was roughly a week, and that was in a smaller (under 100K people) city.
It's a triage system, although I wouldn't want to suffer through a "less important" issue.
Don't even get me started with mental health therapy...
It took about 12 hours, much of it waiting for his blood pressure to subside low enough to get admitted (a pre-requisite for the MRI).
This is in a city with of about 750k people and nowhere near Massachusetts.
I just thought it an amusing anecdote until COVID, and then realized it’s less that said virus would be developed here and more that we have the business idiots to let it loose.
I'll note that COVID-19 "broke out" in Wuhan a city which has a virology laboratory nearby - the Wuhan Institute of Virology, who perform research on viruses.
I'm sure that is completely incidental to the pandemic of 2020-21. Clearly, some rather nasty live food markets are to blame.
It wasn't your numpties wot did it then, it was another lot that time!
My impression is this is a modern civilization stupidity in general.
apropos Dead Kennedys track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVULKYbAeEo
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/price-we-pay-9781635574128/
I really need to figure out whether it's going to make things better or worse, but unfortunately, that feels like something a doctor can't guarantee one way or the other.
Any anecdotes or other experiences/thoughts are appreciated.
I used to suffer from chronic low back pain. It hurt to get out of bed every day for years. 1-2 years after getting into bodybuilding the pain disappeared and didn’t come back. Not only that, but I’m not physically limited by my back whatsoever.
I’m not suggesting you start bodybuilding. But the things I think that helped was 1) weight training, 2) mobility work / stretching, 3) physical therapy. That combo can be really powerful.
One side note: There are core strength/posture issues but also issues that need medical attention. The tricky part is figuring out which.
My mother-in-law has spinal surgery last christmas, the pain for her, prior to the surgery, was unbearable so it's hard to justify not running from that into the arms of a surgeon. The surgeon showed exactly what was to repair though so it was simple enough to understand and clear in the way it was going to help her.
About 9 months out from that surgery and she doesn't have anymore pain.
He was a regular golfer until last year when the pain got too bad to play through. He just started playing golf again at the beginning of September. He told me after three or so rounds he can’t even tell he had surgery or any previous pain in that shoulder.
He’s had one doctor do his knee surgery and the aforementioned shoulder surgery and he’s really happy with all of their work.
I hope you have as good of an experience as my dad has had.
At the least I would heavily consider exhausting conservative treatment first. All but the worst tears can heal on their own, it just takes time and steady effort.
No matter what you choose to do, the adherence to rehab will determine your ultimate outcome.
That doesn't mean that surgery is always the appropriate treatment (I'm living with a shoulder labral tear that's untreated). But it is not even remotely true that tears heal on their own. Example, I just had an MRI on my tear, and the ortho said it looked exactly the same as the last MRI I had 8 years ago- no better, no worse
As an anecdote: Family member has a partial lateral meniscus tear in the knee. Surgery was considered as if successful then returning to running might have been possible. Specialist opinions varied as did their reading of the MRI scans.
After a lot of research there was emerging evidence that long-term, surgery was more likely to result in osteoarthritis. So had to weight up long-term mobility over short-term pain relief and not having a major lifestyle change.
You see professional athlete undergoing surgery the next day, but their income relies on regaining usage as quickly as possible. The alternative is physio exercises to strengthen the supporting muscles and avoiding anything that might cause a re-injury.
However, if available I would try to find a good Pilates/dance/sports instructor that has a Gyrotonic machine, which is built for repairing and strengthening shoulder muscles. I had debilitating back issues from sitting in a chair all day and a good instructor fixed it over a year through low impact Pilates. YMMV and group classes tend to be ineffective because so much of it is doing the exercises precisely correct - they were built for injury recovery
100%. But I do like to hear anecdotes, since I know no one personally that's had shoulder surgery.
But agree that everyone's different, and everyone's experiences are different, so I take it with a grain of salt for sure.
But still appreciated!
I've been on and off with being consistent with that over the years and was dealing with lots of back pain. Having a desk job doesn't help.
But when COVID hit, I dedicated myself to Olympic weightlifting and pilates by paying (quite a lot) to have coaches and trainers. Since then I've had zero back pain. I recently quit both to get into long distance running because I was getting to be pre-diabetic, despite eating decently well and doing the aforementioned exercise. (Probably genetic - my dad's mom and my mom's dad were both diabetic.)
After all that - my one anecdata point is that pilates is the absolute best and most sustainable for life. My increased flexibility and core strength have totally changed my life. I couldn't even tie my shoelaces before but now I can squat almost to the ground to pick up my son. I'd put running second because I genuinely think the human body is designed to run and your body will figure itself out once you get into running shape. I love Olympic but you'd really need a good coach and be committed to do it well and not injure yourself.
All the above took me years of consistency and commitment, but now I'm on pace for a 3:10-3:15 marathon next month and I'm in the best shape of my life with zero back pain. I think losing a ton of weight from running has also lifted the stress from my back.
That's my experience, fwiw. Good luck man, hope whatever you end up doing will improve yourself.
Previously if I coughed my arm would fall entirely out of socket and I would need a propfol shot to allow the doc to relax it to get it back in.
In my case I was basically immobilized and in excruciating pain and fear 100% of my day.
Now thats only like 50% of the day
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/09/23/...
Gift link: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/09/23/...
Sadly I wasn’t in the first five! Thanks anyway.
and the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care - https://www.dartmouthatlas.org/
I can't wave a magic wand and just put more space between my discs... that's the only thing that's going to ease off my pain as far as I'm aware.
If surgery doesn't help, and/or like the other commenter mentioned, people with similar physical characteristics don't have pain, then it's time to explore the other two.
Sitting and laying is fine, but walking I can manage maybe 10 minutes max before it starts to hurt, and only gets worse quickly from there. Then I must rest for at least as long as I was walking to get another 10 or so minutes.
Sometimes manually stretching my spine out can help reset that time limit (like lay down with knees up and push down on my thighs to stretch it, it usually pops), but it's only temporary.
If I'm walking on uneven terrain then my muscles go into wild inflammation mode and are hard as rocks... on top of the spinal/nerve pain.
The thing is, this seems to be rather common.
https://moonshotmp.com/learn/wolverine-blend/ "Educational information only. The peptides discussed here are not approved by the FDA for the uses described, and nothing on this page is a recommendation to obtain, self-administer, or dose them. Any peptide therapy at Moonshot Medical is individualized and provided only under medical supervision after an in-person evaluation. This is not medical advice — consult a qualified healthcare provider." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TB-500 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BPC-157
If there are any scientific studies or governments that have approved the use of Wolverine blend, I could not find them. I'd be interested if anyone else has better information.
We have a statistics problem. Thing is, the way successful surgeries vs botched procedures are measured isn't transparent; as an example, my mother died 2 years ago victim to a routine procedure; It was a combination of both "bad luck" (something went wrong with the procedure) with laxity (prolonged weekend, nobody cared about complaints). Because she didn't died on the table, instead from "complications in recovery" (fyi they accidentally perfurated the intestine during the procedure), its "natural causes".
Many years ago, my dad died from meningitis, 8-10 months after a surgery and a very long recovery. I'd bet a couple of fingers it was a hospital-contracted infection during either the surgery or the recovery. Again, a routine surgery took 8h instead of the expected 2.5-3h. Shit happens, we know - surgery is extremely dangerous, and there is a shit ton of stuff that can go wrong.
Thing is, none of this get into the statistics; There are no reliable survival metrics; The papers you sign are riddled with medical terms to isolate you from the consequences (would you do a non-critical surgery if you could end up shitting on a stomach bag for the rest of your life?), and many many doctors are quite happy into "selling you" their trade option. To be clear, the number any doctor presents you is *wrong*; it has no connection with reality; failure rates measure deaths on the table (the best kind of death, btw), and studies extrapolate from badly measured (per-hospital metrics) or non-existing data.
Tl,DR: avoid surgery if you can; If you really need it (after asking for at least 2 more opinions), your health (and often life choices) matter - bad kidneys, weak liver, etc may be the difference between someone rushing it up or giving an extra 20 min to ensure everything is kosher.
Eventually found a doctor at Mayo who looked at the x-rays differently. He replaced my hips and life is 100x better.
Most surgeries are followed by more surgeries.
And the hard truth is that most surgeries happen because most people do not have the discipline to do what's needed over many months to solve the problems they are having with the chronic pain they are in. They want a faster solution and are never really told by anyone that the only real permanent solution is one that will be difficult and take months.
Rather than change their habits and their environments and their bodies, people opt to do things that have surprisingly low rates of success and more often than not result in a state than can never be fixed.
Some people get past the point of no return. For those people, surgery may be the only option. But for most people the only real option is a change in lifestyle that is more or less like deciding you are going to get very fit. It takes months and in the mean time, theres a lot of effort and discomfort.
In addition, most people don't really get how much of their back pain and ailment is due to ergonomics. That their bed is wrong. That they are sitting in a bad office chair or couch.
But more than that, most people don't get how central exercise and core strength are for maintaining the health of your back.
So before you get back surgery, consider getting a new office chair, exercising more, and facing that pain for a few more months. Work toward a real solution.
Example: My town installed an outdoor "grown-up playground" in the nearby park. Probably cost a little over two complicated surgeries. Already saved 10 people from neglecting upper body workout. Just 10 people having a really low-barrier-of-entry gym available to them whenever walking their dog. I suspect its already been cost-effective. Plus, it is reusable and low-maintenance. Try to beat that in the operating room!
Working out is good, yes, but you need to actually work the body and make it suffer so that it may actually be damaged enough for high rates of muscle growth. So many people do not do enough because they don't like to push themselves, they take it easy and they end up wasting their time in the gym. Even more true as you get older and natural testosterone levels start declining and limiting your muscle growth.
This is why people end up taking spin classes when they can just do it at home on their own stationary bike. For some people, they need a jockey who will kick their ass along with the peer pressure of a room full of people dumping out sweat.
While I’m fortunate now to be able to dedicate time to the gym and other physical fitness, this was not always the case.
We lack the societal incentive structure to allow someone working 60-80 hours a week to reduce their workload to physically recover. We do allow that same person to spend 5-10 years income on surgeries which have 4-6 week recovery times.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/emp-by-ftpt-job...
Note how two job holder average is barely above single job holder average. These are probably people working two part time jobs with a 4-5 hour shift each.
How about activities? BLS has some data there.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-age...
Note the leisure column.
Screen time average is about 7 hours a day (not the best source I guess compared to say if apple published their data): https://www.demandsage.com/screen-time-statistics/
You could do a lot of good with a 3 day a week 30 min compound lift strength training workout. Deadlifts, squat, bench press, overhead press, pull ups.
However, given that people "graduate" their 20s without having done this, then everything you say becomes true, people end up so weak that they have to rebuild even basic core strength and posture. So practically what I suggested is useless except for maybe the next generation.