The Experts Can Be Wrong. (Perhaps more often than not).

 

A lot has been said and written about how the “experts” got things wrong about Covid.  Experts being wrong is not all that unusual.  In recent history the “experts” have been wrong about quite a few things.  For over 100 years the experts have been saying the world would soon run out of oil.  Eventually, we will…but it’s yet to happen “soon”.  The experts gave us the “food pyramid” back in the 1950’s and now the new experts are saying the old experts were wrong.  In the early 20^th century the experts were confident that eugenics was the path to a better, healthier, more intelligent human race.  That path only ended up in global war and genocide.  For over 100 years the experts have come up with various ideas on how to “fix” the Middle East.  Thus far they’ve only made it worse.  And I can remember when the experts just knew it was bad for players to drink water during August two-a-day football practices.

 

As one grows older one is likely to deal with a more “medical experts”.  Fortunately, they tend to be right most of the time.  Unfortunately, when they are wrong it can really hurt.  A case in point, in the summer of 2022 I was having some pain in my right hip.  We were looking forward to a trip to Italy in September, so I decided to go to my orthopedic doctor and get it checked out.  Maybe he could give me a shot.  Or perhaps he would tell me the hip was arthritic and would most likely need to be replaced within a year or two.  I was prepared for the worst but then got good news. After he X-rayed my hip, he concluded that I just had tight hamstrings and glutes.  So, he sent me to another expert, a Physical Therapist, who gave me a stretching routine and some tips on improving my posture.  Go now and be well.

 

Dutifully I did the stretching and worked on posture.  My hip responded by getting worse.  So, I doubled down on the stretching and good posture discipline.  My hip got worse and soon my entire leg started to hurt.  A week before we were to leave for Italy I could no longer stand or walk for more than 5 minutes.  So that trip was cancelled, at no small expense.

 

I went back to my ortho doctor and he took X-rays of my back this time and said there was a problem.  So, I ended up with a back and spine specialist.  More X-rays and an MRI revealed a slipped disc in my lower back along with stenosis.  Serious but not necessarily serious enough to justify surgery just yet.  So back to the Physical Therapist and some new exercises.  With rest and some light exercises there was improvement.  We added more exercises and it immediately got worse.

 

My wife criticizes me for going to the internet for medical advice, but sometimes it pays off.  I discovered that one of the exercises the PT had me doing was exactly what I should not be doing with a slipped disc.  So, I stopped going to the PT.  I continued with some of the other exercises avoiding the bad one or anything that resembled the bad one and quickly got better.

 

For two years I’ve been ok and continued with the stretching that the “experts”, including those on the internet, recommended.  But recently after two weeks in Alaska, my hip and leg began hurting again.  So, I did even more stretching of the leg and hip muscles.  And it got worse. 

 

Then I stumbled across another internet “expert”.   Based on his information, it just confirmed that this was sciatica caused by the back problem, even though my back did not hurt.  NO surprise there.  But, to my surprise, this “expert” advised that stretching the hamstring and hip muscles was a bad idea.  The stretches might feel good in the moment, but only served to irritate the sciatic nerve.  He advised a different routine focused more on strengthening the glutes and lower abs.  Within a week, my pain eased up considerably and I am back on the road to recovery.

 

Bottom line, for over two years I have been doing what the experts advised.  And after some adjustments I was doing ok, until I wasn’t.  I’m pretty sure some of our Alaskan adventures fired up the sciatica and all my efforts to calm it down only made it worse.  At some point I may need surgery to fix the slipped disc.  But for the time being I have found a better way to deal with it.  The experts might know a lot about what has worked or could work, but remember they can just as easily be wrong.