33 Pain, Your Brain, and Holistic Healing with Dr. Dan Maggio

Dr. Dan Maggio performs kettle bell farmer carries at the crossfit gym in this artwork for Alone with Peter Season 2, Episode 16
Alone With Peter
33 Pain, Your Brain, and Holistic Healing with Dr. Dan Maggio
Loading
/

In Season 2, Episode 16 of Alone with Peter, Dr. Dan Maggio we’re talking about pain, your brain, and holistic health. We chat about Dan’s entrepreneurial journey as well as his holistic view of physical therapy. We talk about stress and trauma; and how they can physically manifest in the body causing chronic pain. Plus so much more!

Enjoying the show? Follow us on Instagram!

Be sure to follow Alone with Peter on Instagram for highlight clips of the latest episodes, previews of upcoming guests, and more. Follow along, and send me a DM to let me know what you think of the show!

Dr. Dan Maggio – Board-certified Physical Therapist & Strength and Conditioning Specialist

Instagram: @DrDanMaggio

Email: [email protected]

Please enjoy part 2 of our interview with board-certified physical therapist Dr. Dan Maggio

*Transcripts may contain a few typos. With interviews ranging from 1-2 hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors.

Peter Kersting: Welcome to Alone with Peter. I’m your host and on this podcast, you’re going to hear interviews with entrepreneurs, artists, digital nomads, and people seeking personal growth. We’ll dive deep into what set them on their journey, where they are now and how their story can impact you, including any helpful insights. If you feel inspired to take a similar leap of faith, no matter where you are on the journey. Thank you for spending some quality time alone with Peter.

Peter Kersting: We are back for part two of our interview with Dr. Dan Maggio. If you missed the last episode, we talked about Dan, the physical therapist, and Dan the entrepreneur just a little bit. We explored his philosophy with regards to treatment and perhaps most importantly, how to manage pain so that you can improve your life. And on today’s episode, we’re going to dig deeper into Dan’s upbringing, find out how he was drawn to the field of physical therapy. We’re also going to examine his entrepreneurial goals and how that ties into what he’s doing currently. Dan, again, thanks for being on the show. We ended up last episode talking about a holistic approach to health, and you mentioned a desire to give people tools, to take ownership of their physical and psychological health. Now you shared that weight lifting really helped boost your confidence growing up. Tell us how did weightlifting gain such a strong emphasis for you with regards to physical therapy?

Dr. Dan Maggio: Yeah, man, that is, that’s a great question. And I think it’s a, a tenant or it’s kind of a founding principle for my treatments from a philosophical standpoint, right? As a society, we’re not doing a whole lot of movement anymore. And if we do, it’s a lot of body weight based things, nothing wrong with that, but our physiology truly is meant to, to push and resist objects. And as a result of the forces that we experience, our body gets stronger. Um, we talk about our bones. There’s a lot of research on if I put different pressures into different angles of bones, Wolf’s law says your bone’s gonna remodel or get more calcium and more minerals built up. If I experience that force, same thing with our muscles, there’s different rules that dictate that. So from a physiology standpoint, uh, struggle and resistance and pushing in or pulling on something.

Dr. Dan Maggio: And that’s gonna, that tension builds resilience in the tissues of our body using that principle. I guess we can take that and move it into the, the therapy world and say, Hey, if, if you’re feeling some shoulder tension or neck tension, maybe I can give you, uh, some kind of force or some kind of implement for you to produce tension against. And for some of that tension that your body is holding, let’s try to get rid of that dissipate, that tension by moving through it and by pushing on something or pulling on something or have you hold and carry something. Right? So using external weights and external loads is a really great way to look at training someone out of pain and training them to be strong, resilient in their bodies.

Peter Kersting: That’s awesome. Has there been a moment in your life where you experienced that pretty strongly?

Dr. Dan Maggio: Yeah, definitely. I would say high school was when I think the weight room saved my life. It was that place that I could escape to. And I think when you’re going through different stages of life and especially your teenage years, that kind of puts you in different, you might be going through a lot at home or with what you’re struggling with emotionally inside. Right. If you have all of that kind of bottled up and you don’t know how to deal with it and handle it, some people, you know, they turn to different things. Like for me, it happened to be the weight room. I wasn’t a gifted genetic athlete. I had to work for everything, but I think that working for it came from struggling against the metal weights that I was moving. Right. And so just feeling my body have to struggle against something. I was able to take that kind of emotion that I was going through and channel that into something physical. And that’s when I realized like, Hey man, if I, I don’t know confidence came from that. I don’t know how it does. I haven’t researched that a whole lot, but yeah, I would say end of middle school, early on in high school, man, like the weight room was by drug and it kind of has been from, from there on out. So

Peter Kersting: That’s awesome, man. Thank you for sharing that. It was it wolfs law, you mentioned earlier, but the resistance it’s almost like that physical manifestation of resisting or, or moving against resistance is a healthy outlet for you to deal with whatever it is that you’re dealing with in your life. I find that to be so much true for me and that, you know, whenever I tell people that I like to run, they’re like why , and to be honest with you, I can, I can understand that viewpoint. Cuz when I was in high school, I played three sports, but I hated conditioning. Like conditioning was just to get in shape. Like I knew I needed to do it, but I didn’t enjoy conditioning. And I’ve thought about this in the past and what, what it was that actually got me to start to enjoy running was that I was dealing with a tremendous amount of stress while living, uh, I was living in tri-state New York out in the woods.

Peter Kersting: I was doing a summer camp in 2016 and I was under a lot of stress because the job itself was pred demanding. Uh, it was a lot of fun in a lot of ways I was doing outdoor adventures. So I was like ropes course stuff with kids, uh, that they’re in this three-month-long stay in camp. But I was waking up with these kids and acting as their counselor during the beginning parts of the day. And I was working for 10 hours and I was coming back and spending the evenings with them for a couple of months and all while trying to financially prepare for, I was going abroad at the time to spend a semester in the Netherlands. I was under this tremendous amount of stress and the way that I escaped that was I would get up six o’clock in the morning before the kids got up and I would go run five kilometers every single morning.

Peter Kersting: And I started to number one, get good at running. But number two, recognize like what runners talk about. I cannot tell you how many people I know if they run, it is not because they they’re trying to get in shape it’s because they’re trying to handle their mental health. And I don’t know. I mean, I understand a little bit about it, the dopa Andic effect of running. Um, I, but I, I, I literally cannot tell you how strong of an effect it has for me personally, like to the point that when I don’t run, I, I can tell the difference and how I handle my day. I guess I tell that story because it’s kind of fasting to me how much your physical health is interconnected with your mental health. And then obviously as we were mentioning in the previous episode, you got your biological, psychological and social effect of an injury. Could you speak a little bit to that? How using physical exercise or therapy or, or strength training can help you improve all aspects of your life and, and maybe that’s not the total expertise of your position, so speak to what you’re comfortable with. But yeah,

Dr. Dan Maggio: I think, uh, I mean, Hey first acknowledged you for like recognizing Hey, running was something that helped you out while you were going through a pretty stressful time. And that’s, that’s an interesting perspective too, for me to realize like, Hey, you know, my wife runs and I know she started running when she was going through a lot of stuff early in her life. And it’s like, man, I, I, I’m not a runner at all. Um, I do a little bit of it for cardio, but

Peter Kersting: It’s not weight lifting. Doesn’t do that for me. Does, does weight lifting, does weight living have that effect for you?

Dr. Dan Maggio: Yeah. Oh man. I am. I am a different person if I don’t go to the gym and I’m a different person. If I go to the gym, right. Like my wife will complete. She’ll, she’ll be like if I come home from work and I’m just a crab, she’s like, you know, I don’t even wanna deal with you, go out, go get a lift in and then I’ll deal with you later. You know, so I, uh,

Peter Kersting: I love that,

Dr. Dan Maggio: Man. Yeah.

Peter Kersting: It sounds like it’s the same thing then because, uh, you know, you and my brother, Andrew actually have some interesting parallels from what you’re telling me about your high school story, cuz he, you know him pretty well, power lift or guy he’s never not in the gym. I think you both can really attest to that confidence boost from that. I don’t, I go enjoy going into the gym and lifting weights to some degree, but I’ve never gotten the dope manic effect of dealing with stress from the gym. Like I, if I’m stressed out and I go to the gym, it’s just not the same as if I go for a five kilometer run.

Dr. Dan Maggio: Yeah. I mean, I, you know, everyone has their own way, I guess, of dealing with it. It may just be whatever your body feels comfortable with doing or what’s easy for your body to get that effect. Right. For me, I would get more stressed. I guess if I go for a run, I would feel like I’m not doing anything it’s waste of my time. Yeah. Um, but that’s just how I’m sure my physiology would like eventually be like, oh yeah, this is kind of fun. I like it.

Peter Kersting: Well, it certainly takes you getting good at something. I think there, there is an aspect of that was like, you have to recognize that you’re improving at something and then make the connection that, Hey, I’m actually pretty good at this to wanna continue doing it to the point that you get, that kind of benefit from it.

Dr. Dan Maggio: Totally, totally. And I’m sure there’s a lot, a lot of that. I didn’t even didn’t even think about that part, but I’m sure that’s, it’s kind of the self-fulfilling bias, right? Like, oh, I’m if I identify as being good at this, or this is where I drive my benefits from,

Peter Kersting: Uh, you mentioned that you gained a lot of confidence from lifting and that kind of inspired you to start thinking about, um, personal training and then ultimately getting into physical therapy. I guess I just wanna kind of dig into a little bit more about what that was like for you, that transition you don’t have to get into necessarily what it was you were struggling with, but what are some of the key moments in your life that have led you to where you are right now

Peter Kersting: Before we get to the answer to Dan’s question, I have a favor to ask of you. If you’ve been enjoying Alone with Peter in this interview with Dr. Dan Maggio, follow us on Instagram. @alonewithpeter. It’s a great place to get highlight clips of the latest episodes, see who the upcoming guests are and interact with myself and the guests of the show. Follow along on Instagram. Atoma Peter and send me a message. Let me know what you think of this episode. All right. Let’s get back to it with Dr. Dan Maggio on Alone with Peter.

Dr. Dan Maggio: Yeah. Wow. That’s that’s uh, that’s a deep one. I really haven’t been asked that before and thought about it. Um, I would say be, I think because of the effects of what training physically has done for me finding a way to stay around that environment has been probably my goal. And then realizing like I could be a, just a personal trainer, just a strength coach working on a team. But if I could intervene in another way, that’s a little bit more, a little deeper, right? Like training is deep as itself. Right. But there’s, there’s more that happens when you’re doing physical therapy on somebody. You get to realize some of the other aspects of pain. And that’s when I realized, oh, I should probably go to school for this and figure out some of those other things that I don’t know. Right. Just continuing on the educational path all the while, knowing that like, if I want to go back to just straight up training with somebody, I can do that. But now I have a different perspective on how that person got to the pain level that they’re at or why they’re having pain, which is what strength conditioning is not there for. It’s there to, to help create good physiology, strength, you know, conditioning make you better. But it doesn’t look at the pain parts. And so that’s, I think that’s why I went to therapy school.

Peter Kersting: What is it about pain? What makes you say I wanna help people deal with pain?

Dr. Dan Maggio: It’s a great question. And it may sound a little bit arrogant and it may sound a little bit, uh, like, wow, this guy’s really selfish. But honestly I went to PT school because the titles that like your, the board licensings that you get after it allow you to do certain things like put your hands on someone’s body. And at that time being able to put your hands in someone’s body, you could dry, you could get acupuncture, right? It’s not acupuncture. It’s dry needling. Right? I’ll get in trouble for saying that. But I went to PT school so I could learn how to dry needle. Right. So I could go to the courses after PT school put a needle in someone’s body, make a fast change. Awesome. There was a lot of stuff that PT school also taught me. But I would say that the people that I was following at that time, the therapists who were putting out information, I was practicing all those things already, the way that they were treating, the way that they were looking at movement, the way that they were giving people, corrective exercises, that stuff was out there, right.

Dr. Dan Maggio: Information is not hard to find it’s the wisdom part of applying it. Right? So the information was abundant. I was like, man, I need to go to school so I could get this extra certification so I could continue helping people in a movement sense. And it just so happened that as a physical therapist, we spend most of our careers looking at people who are in pain because that’s, who comes to us in the medical profession. So I don’t know. That’s a kind of roundabout way.

Peter Kersting: No, I, I really appreciate that. That distinction you made there. And I think it’s interesting cuz it brought something up that I I’d neglected to even think about, which is cuz first of all, you said you were already practicing these things on your own. So you were clearly collecting information for your own strength training. Is that, what is that fair assessment? Yeah, definitely. And then you were getting needling from other people or

Dr. Dan Maggio: I guess in my mind I could see that people like things that have really fast effects. Right. And if I can make, if I can make a change quicker and a needle is a way to do that. Awesome, great. Like I can needle someone and then I can do the exercises with them. It can change the experience of helplessness faster and make them more confident.

Peter Kersting: So, so you’re seeing the value in the research and you’re saying, Hey, I really need to, to learn how to do this legitimately so that I can help other people with this. Yeah,

Dr. Dan Maggio: For sure.

Peter Kersting: The other part about that, that statement that’s interesting is you talk a lot about motion. You wanna help people with motion and then the therapy is about helping people with pain, but in a weird way, that’s still about motion, right? Yeah. Cause it’s about helping people recover their natural motion. Yeah. Is that kind of the way that you look at is that what’s drawn you to it more totally,

Dr. Dan Maggio: Totally. I think, uh, goes for any, I guess, any kind of pain experience, right? If, if you’re going through pain and it get, will keep it more physical, right? Like it’s part of what I see is people who are, are not willing to deal with some kind of trauma that they’re either going through currently or that they’ve gone through in the past. Right. Cause I’ve had people who are, they have had a knee replacement. Right. And they’ve been seeing me for 8, 10, 12 weeks and physiologically, we should have changes in that tissue. Right. It should be able to bend, Hey it does when you’re unconscious, right? Like you’re on the, you’re on the operating table. That knee goes through its full range of motion. There’s nothing wrong with the inside of the joint now, but whatever kind of trauma that you’re holding in the rest of your, like the psychological part or the emotional part of the rest of that trauma is keeping you tight and keeping you tense. And that’s why let’s say your knee is now experiencing more stiffness and more pain because maybe there’s something else that you haven’t worked through and you’re not willing to move through. That’s that’s why you’re having say more of a,

Peter Kersting: Okay. So this is really interesting, are you basically saying that if I have, like, if I think that I have a problem physiologically that it’s gonna maintain that problem

Dr. Dan Maggio: Maintain. Yeah. For sure.

Peter Kersting: Like even if my body is physically recovered, it should have physically recovered me thinking that it’s still a problem causes this still occur.

Dr. Dan Maggio: Yeah. It can. Yeah. Or even create that insult to injury. Right. Like I’ve had people who are so committed in this thing, in their brain. Right. That they, that they have pain and that there’s something wrong with their body that they man, they manifest it. Right. Like, uh, I, you know, there’s nothing wrong with my knee joint based on MRIs x-rays whatever, but I’m gonna continue to walk, like there’s something wrong with me until there is something wrong with me or we all have

Peter Kersting: Like they’re limping.

Dr. Dan Maggio: Yeah. limping or, I mean, yeah, this might be a little bit off topic, but I think this point illustrates it really well. We, we all have cancer cells that are dormant in our bodies. Right. Because cancer is just, it’s just a cell that is dividing irregularly and it doesn’t know how to shut itself off. And it just, it’s not doing the job of what it once should do. So we all, we all are living and we have a building up of these cancer cells because these cells only have a limited, right. So, um, had this lady who was experiencing shoulder pain and she herself could only get her shoulder to a certain level. Me working on her shoulder, I could get it all. Like it could move it around. It would no problem whatsoever. Sure. She would have some pharmacist here and there, but physically she couldn’t do it.

Dr. Dan Maggio: You know, I would see her off and on for a couple months to a point where her hyper awareness or hypersensitivity to movement of that joint stiffened up to a point where she, um, her muscle started to osify right. And osification is just where the tissue starts to turn into bony tissue. Right. It just starts to lay down more calcium and her muscle started turn into physical bone tissue. And now she’s got a bony tumor around the area of her shoulder. Now, granted it’s, it’s one of those things where you start to get a little bit deeper in medicine of like, did, did her physiology change and that’s why her arm is moving or did the movement response change the tissue of the shoulder. Right. And it’s, it’s kind of one of those chicken or the ache things. I don’t think we’ll ever know the answer. But what I do know is that if you treat your body as if it’s damaged, your body is then gonna respond and give you damage, right. It’s gonna persist with swelling. It’s gonna make you think the fingers are broken that great. It’s not gonna like break bones because you think you have broken bones.

Peter Kersting: But, but, but, okay. So I really wanna touch on this just from practical level. Okay. So if I’m experiencing pain and especially recurring pain, this sounds like the more of the issue, right. It’s debilitating is what it is when you have pain that just won’t go away. So if I am somebody who’s talking to you and I say, Dan, I’ve got this pain, whether it’s shoulder or something like that, or it’s my wrist or whatever. And it’s, and it’s, it’s something that I’m constantly aware of. What are some of the things that you would say to me as far without having to go into, like, I’ve heard you talk about basically saying like, just don’t think about it. Like, and I, and my reaction to that and in the past, cuz I’ve talked, we’ve talked about my, I, I have tightness in my shoulders and my neck quite often and I was pretty sure it’s been related to some other things that have happened to me in the past, but it’s stuff that it goes and it comes and it goes and there’s days when I feel really good and there’s days when it hurts and it is when you’re in pain, you’re constantly aware of the pain.

Peter Kersting: So when you tell me, just don’t think about it. Yeah. My natural reaction is like screw too. This guy it’s always there. That’s why I’m thinking about it. It’s pain. So when we’re talking about a chicken or the egg situation like this, maybe this girl was, was so hyper aware of her shoulder that it was causing the problem. Okay. How do I, if I’m buying that mm-hmm what do I do? How do I, how can I, I can’t just stop thinking about the pain’s there

Dr. Dan Maggio: There’s different ways to create mindfulness with movement. And I think that’s key, right? Our bodies are not meant to be static. We’re not, we’re not a house that has walls that are just gonna remain standing where they are. And that’s, that’s really why we’ve got cracks in the, in the concrete, right? Like even the ground underneath where we pour concrete, it continues to move. And that’s why we have shifting surfaces in the ground. Right. So our body is not meant to stay static. And I think what happens when we think about the pain that we experience is we keep it immobilized and we don’t move. And we con we continue to think about that area that is giving us discomfort instead of moving through in this sense, like very physical moving through it. So yeah. While, while I don’t want you constantly thinking about your pain, I want you to find different ways, uh, to create a new movement experience that your nerves are gonna find just, just something different, right?

Dr. Dan Maggio: Like, Hey, if my head is being held in a different posture for eight to 10 hours a day, because I have to lean forward to see my screen and see what I’m reading, that’s gonna put a little bit of pressure on those, on those muscles and give me some tightness, right? Maybe it’s the stress of the job. Maybe it’s all those things that can create muscle tightness. But what I think what I’m saying is, even though you’re experiencing that discomfort, I want you to, to find different ways to, uh, move your shoulder and neck, uh, to alleviate that pressure. Right. And maybe alleviate that pressure is in fact, create more pressure to overwhelm it.

Peter Kersting: So I would love to talk about in part three, some actionable steps people can take, but I wanna touch a little bit more on this topic of how your awareness of pain and the way that you draw attention to it or take power over it. It, it almost seems like it’s an issue of empowering your recovery versus becoming a victim to the pain itself. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I don’t know if that’s a fair way to say it or not.

Dr. Dan Maggio: That’s a, that’s a powerful way. Yeah.

Peter Kersting: It’d be really interesting to talk about you, you and I, you reposted something that, that literally blew my mind at one point, and this individual was talking about how, when you get injured, the pain receptors remain in that area of your body and that when you cause stress in your nervous system and stuff, your nervous system actually remembers those pain receptors. Can you talk a little bit about, I feel like I butchered the yeah. Biological thing that’s happening here, Uhhuh, and maybe you could talk a little bit about what is that and what does that mean? That blew my mind to think that, okay, so wait a second. If I have an injury and I, I move past it, I heal whatever, and I get stressed out and then the injury comes back simply because of my nervous system.

Dr. Dan Maggio: Yeah. Okay. So side sad example, but it’ll help illustrate the point. Right. Um, when you were a kid, did you ever, you know, go to your grandparents’ house and your grandma was making cookies, right. And you smell those cookies when you walk in the door or she’s making whatever your favorite birthday cake. And you’re like, oh my God, this food is amazing. And you just get that the sense of smell. Right. And it just, and sometimes now you walk into a cookie shop and you’re like, man kind of smells like grandma’s cookies. But I remember that smell from back then. It’s definitely not the same smell. Like grandma’s cookies were always the best. So that’s just a, that’s just a real brief example of saying how our sense of smell is actually related to our nerves and our nervous system and our, our brain memory banks, all these things, right.

Dr. Dan Maggio: That’s what our, our cortex of our brain is all the, um, all the curve surfaces on the outside of our brain. Um, it stores memory, it stores in motion and it has, and it, uh, well different areas of our brain lock in or connect the dots when we have that certain experience. Right? So maybe the way that I was walking in grandma’s house, when I smelled those cookies, and I could just remember sitting on the couch and feeling really good and having that really awesome experience, different parts of the brain are gonna light up with the nerves that respond to that, that part of the memory. Right? So the same thing happens with, with an injury response, right? Cause an injury is just, it’s a trauma that your body experiences, whether it’s an emotional, physical or psychological trauma, right. And your body has to find ways of banking that trauma.

Dr. Dan Maggio: So it either doesn’t experience it again or when it does experience it, it knows how to deal with it in the future. So our body remembering pain is a really good thing because it can help protect us for when we go into, uh, a future event that might cause us mid let’s say, if I I’m going hiking, simple hike, I rolled my ankle in the past. My brain’s gonna remember, Hey, don’t step on that rock. That looks like it’s pretty loose. Cuz remember the last time you did it, you did it in your, you rolled your ankle and now your ankle kind of hurts. So I would say, yeah, your body has that built in mechanism of trying to protect you. And oftentimes when your body tries to protect you too much, that’s when people experience an over, you know, a pain response that might be over what it should.

Peter Kersting: I’m sure there have been some kind of studies done. How much your psychological state affects your physical pain, because that is the part of it that, I mean, we know that our nervous systems are very connected to rather like our mental state, how stressed out we are, whatever affects how well our immune system works. And I know that the immune system just in general has a pretty powerful effect over this things we’re talking about here. So it’d be interesting to hear how much yeah. That actually changes the physical nature of the injury.

Dr. Dan Maggio: Like from an immune system standpoint, I was thinking of, there’s a video that I’ll have to send you and, or two of ’em and they’re, they’re talking about how our, like what is pain and how our body experiences it. And I think, um, another one it’s a Ted talk and I think those would be really good just to, just to hear how this pain researcher and he’s a physio down in Australia, how he talks to pain to people, but on, on the standpoint of immunity and nerves that or body, I think what we have to recognize and appreciate is that all of whatever this body vehicle is, right, whatever this, um, this bag of meat and bones and nerves were really a, a, we’re really a, a simple nervous system inside of a bunch of muscles and nerves, right? And the nerves are gonna be, what’s taking information from the outside environment and bringing it in and it’s bringing it into our spinal cord and then into our brain.

Dr. Dan Maggio: And then our, and in different areas of our brain is spinal cord have to take this information and decide whether or not it’s important to keep or give away or do something about. Right. So I think great example that I heard and I’ll repeat, it was our eyes. Don’t see, they just take in light. Right. You know, our hands don’t feel, they just take in pressure in different sharpness. They don’t feel anything our nerves do. Our brain does. Right. That’s when you can have like a, maybe a really bad experience with a PT or someone who says, oh, all of the pain that you have is in your brain. What they’re trying to say is the pain response that you’re having is being interpreted by your brain. But it’s all of the nerves that are taking in information and deciding what to do with it.

Dr. Dan Maggio: All of that is happening at the level of the brain in the spinal cord, right? Like putting your hand on a hot stove, that signal has to be really fast to go to your spinal cord and back out to your hand. So you quickly move your hand away if something’s off with that circuitry, or if your nerves have decided, Hey, I really like pain or I really like this heat for whatever reason, I’m gonna keep my hand there a little bit longer that can have a, uh, a negative reaction to the tissues. But just because we have a pain response doesn’t mean something is damaged. It can mean that there’s something off with how our nerves are interpreting it.

Peter Kersting: That is so interesting. How does that impact the way that you do your therapy with people? That’s what I really want to know.

Dr. Dan Maggio: Man, that’s, that’s a deep question. So

Peter Kersting: Because I, I can tell from our conversation, the reason why we talked so much about the neurobiology and I, that I think that would be the term, right? Yeah. Um, is because I can tell it in your philosophy, it there’s, there’s a piece of it where you’re almost like, is it really an injury or is it all in your brain, man? Totally. it’s not like you’re like got that, but,

Dr. Dan Maggio: It’s twofold, right? Like it’s, it’s hard to separate one from the other. But I think when we talk about pain, it’s where we put the emphasis, Hey, if you tore your ACL yesterday, the ligament in your knee, right. If you tore your knee up yesterday, I’m gonna treat your knee. Like you’ve got some stuff that’s going on with your physical body in that area later on when your knee is super strong and you’re still having trouble with running and you’re like, man, my knee, you just doesn’t feel the same. That’s when they start to have to talk about like, Hey, what do you feel in your brain about your knee? Do you think that you can do this race? Do you feel confident in your body? Um, and that might be a second conversation, right? But I think to separate out the two is impossible because those tissues and everything is so interconnected.

Dr. Dan Maggio: I think your, your question of how I, myself deal with the nerves and the nervous system is I, I recognize that your brain and your nerves are paramount, right? Like nerves are king. Your brain is king. Anything that I do to your body, with my hands or with a needle or with, with whatever, a cup, like any treatment that anyone’s gonna have, it’s gonna affect the nervous system first and foremost. And then it affects the tissues, right? Because your nerves have to take in this information and decide whether or not this is good or bad for me. And what the outcome is there. Like that’s a, that’s a second PT conversation, right? Or from a general public standpoint, like anything that’s being done to you affects your nerves first and your tissue second. There’s some give and take with that. Right? Like I think that being said, some of the treatments that we do nowadays don’t have to be as aggressive to, to patients and to people because sometimes our, the pain is not always in a muscle tissue, right? Like I don’t always have to go to a massage and experience a really painful massage in order to have a good outcome in me being able to move tomorrow. Right? Like rubbing on a muscle knot, doesn’t have to hurt. It just has to provide relief to the nervous system and then be able to relax.

Peter Kersting: The more people can understand how it’s all interconnected the better. So yes, you need to physically treat the problem, but you also need to have a very deep understanding of how your psychological and social state affect that recovery as well. So that right there is huge. This is also the perfect place for us to segue into a tease of next week’s episode next week. Onlo Peter, Dr. Dan joins us for his third and final interview. We discuss some of the mental hurdles that come with starting a business and how to push past those, to set yourself up for success. But Dr. Dean is also going to be sharing actionable practical tips for us. If we wanna pursue a healthier lifestyle, how to avoid common mistakes and misunderstandings that come with therapy and recovery tips for managing pain, neck pain, back pain, shoulder pain, whatever it is.

Peter Kersting: And when you should seek out a physical therapist, for those of us who are constantly on the go, there are things you can do, even if you don’t currently have access to a gym or healthcare. And some of the ways proper therapy and training can improve your quality of life. Overall, if you’ve been enjoying this interview and wanna stay up to date with the latest on alum, Peter, be sure to mash that subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform and leave review on apple podcast or Stitcher, letting me know what you think of the show, no matter where you are on the journey. Thanks for spending some quality time alone with Peter. I’ll see you next week.

«
»

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *