Why crowdsourcing treatment advice almost never works
It’s exhausting when you don’t have a system to work within. When every patient that comes in is like starting over and not knowing what to do. Every treatment is guesswork and not knowing if something will work, or why it did one time and not another. Or worse yet, why what you’ve used before flared up this new patient.
Too often practitioners work on assumptions or guessing. They base treatment on what worked for a past patient, or because a colleague said it worked on their patient.
And much of these recommendations come from Crowdsourcing for treatment advice on social media. I started a group that has over 7500 members. But I had to get away from it.
The issue is, absent using a working system, crowdsourcing is ineffectual at best, and reckless at worse. It was the same thing over and over. Tons of people hopping in offering random suggestions absent any real case history, and it was all piecemeal. It was unhelpful and only confused the practitioner who posted the original question even more. The practitioner wasn’t taught how to fish. They were just fed temporarily. But even worse, the fish wasn’t even edible. (Ok enough analogies)
Can you imagine if your patient knew you were trying some random technique because another practitioner offered advice on Facebook?! When you think about it that way it’s pretty crazy.
But asking for advice CAN be helpful when it’s done in a certain way. Asking questions on a forum is much more valuable when it’s within a system and we’re speaking the same language. You can build within a system. You can make sense of the patient when you have a base of knowledge to work from. When someone posts a history of the patient, better advice can be offered. This also helps practitioners grow and not just have a crutch. I want practitioners to ask questions and learn more than just “here try this”. It’s much better to know the why and empower them to be more self sufficient…to grow into getting the answers themselves and knowing how to find them. Offering treatment advice is much more profound in this way.
A forum works much better this way and it works extremely well on our Locals community, where EXSTORE is the system that everyone works under. Its just a more responsible - and very effective - way of running a forum.
Size doesn’t matter. Having a smaller more effective community is better. The community continues to grow, but not just for the sake of growth.
January’s webinar is here! This one is a favorite of mine because it includes the fascial lens when teaching the movement of the foot and ankle. It cover anatomy, fascia, and accessory motion of the foot and ankle. Definitely worth checking out.
Give this a read after you watch the video: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7689775/
@Exstoreman Thank you for the meralgia parasthetica webinar on locals.
M/65
Chronic Systemic
1) Diabetic
2) Arthritis
3) High blood pressure and cholesterol
4) Very high stress from becoming blind later in life
CC (1 year issue):
1) Pain at trigger point of TFL
2) L/ Hip Pain
3) Back Pain
So I have been treating him as meralgia parasthetica but I didnt originally due to avoidant answers of this patient and reports he kept bringing up.
Doctors originally wanted a fusion to lumbar area or a nerve ablation to the area. The doctors kept saying different things for this case whether it was hip, lower back, or front of the leg related.
After a few visits he mentioned a fuzzy feeling over the top of his leg which I feel guided me more to meralgia parasthetica.
Tx 1: Patient came in bent entirely over. His pain went from 10/10 to 3/10 1st visit treating the tight bands along TFL and doing Lower Perfusion since there was some bulging of the disc felt with doctors mentioning L2/L3/L4.
Manual Work: Slide Cupping from TFL down.
His pain ...
Click the kink to join: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82386638283
@Exstoreman .I have this patient with chronic neck pain. She is 51 years old. She said a flare up started around xmas 2025. She has stiff neck, sharp pain, and have headaches (all starts occipital RT side and go temporal). She also complained of pain around the masseter.
Hx: Sjogren's disease (diagnosed 2020)
Shingles December of 2023
Thyroid nodule + surgery 2009, treatment for hypothyroidism since
Well, i have seen her 8 times. She was coming 2x per week , for 3 weeks, now is coming weekly. She says her headaches are no longer present, and she said her facial pain is gone(I actually had to remind her that she was complaining of face pain and pressure). Well she seemed like she was getting better, and stating that her neck was feeling stiff and weird, but the sharp pain was better.
On feb 3nd she came in and said she had a really bad sharp , shooting pain, over the weekend. She said that the pain would come and go. I treated her and then she came back the same week on Friday, and said...
