My Mom's Cancer Diagnosis Changed My Whole Approach to Sports Healthcare
In this episode, Anna answers a common question: how she started to learn visceral manipulation and assimilate it into her sports healthcare practice?
Follow along on the journey from learning about the technique from a colleague and then a few years later connecting the dots after her Mom was diagnosed with stage 4 3b lung cancer, realizing just how many healthcare practitioners missed the diagnosis, chalking up the symptoms she was having (shoulder pain, back pain, neck pain, and numbness and tingling to her fingers) to poor posture, decreased fitness, and lack of exercise.
Anna discusses how this realization led to the feeling that she was doing a massive disservice to her athletes and clients not having a better understanding of what was happening beneath the musculoskeletal system and just how important a clear and complete differential diagnosis is, not just in treating musculoskeletal pain and injury but potentially even helping to diagnose life-threatening diseases like lung cancer.
How there is a need to do a thorough assessment when evaluating our clients and to not settle for a slow, never-ending treatment plan of care, but to realize when musculoskeletal pain and injury do not improve as expected, it is time to re-evaluate and look at the bigger picture, not just follow the diagnosis from the doctor or MRI.
Learn more about visceral manipulation and the Barral Institute HERE. Remember to mention that Anna Hartman referred you if you decide to take any of their courses.
Considering the viscera as a source of musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction is a great way to ensure a more true whole-body approach to care, however, it can be a bit overwhelming on where to start, which is exactly why I created the Visceral Referral Cheat Sheet. This FREE download will help you to learn the most common visceral referral patterns affecting the musculoskeletal system. Download it at www.unrealresultspod.com
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Hey there, and welcome. I'm Anna Hartman, and this is Unreal Results, a podcast where I help you get better outcomes and gain the confidence that you can help anyone. Even the most complex cases. Join me as I teach about the influence of the visceral organs and the nervous system on movement, pain, and injuries, all while shifting the paradigm of what whole-body assessment and treatment really looks like.
I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in.
Welcome to another episode of Unreal Results. Today we're gonna talk about a common question that I get, which is, how did I get into learning osteopathic type manual therapy and that goes back a while. So I've actually been studying with the Barral Institute, visceral and neural manipulation, and in their curriculum since the end of 2013.
But that is not the first time I had heard about it. I had heard about it, man, probably like four years, maybe around four or five years before. One of our colleagues in Arizona, uh, Veronica Campbell, she's a physical therapist, when she had first started learning it, she, um, wanted to come share it with us at EXOS with the whole performance physical therapy staff, and she demonstrated it to us and sort of showed how when you can treat the viscera, you can take something, like someone with tight hip flexors, which was something that we dealt with our athletes quite a bit, and you could treat the viscera and have a better effect on the hip flexors. Now at this stage in my career, I was in my mid to late twenties.
I will admit, looking back, that I felt like we already get good results here at EXOS, Athletes' Performance at the time, and um, especially with the hip flexors, like we know how to release someone's hip flexors. We know how to improve hip mobility. If that's one thing I know how to do, I can do that. And I was still in this system where I was sort of rehab or performance utopia, where the athletes were training with us five days a week, and I could get my hands on them four to five times a week if I wanted to.
And so of course, I got great results. People changed, people felt better. People's mobility improved within a two, two to three weeks. Also, you're dealing with athletes, so their nervous systems are very sharp and they change quickly. So I was like, uh, interesting information. I filed it in my brain of like, oh, okay, good to know what's out there.
But I don't think it's something that is gonna really change the way we do things. So, um, continued on our path of wherever we were going as the department back then. So a few years after that, in 2011, my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer. Um, it was devastating. Um, I share about my mom's lung cancer quite a bit on social media.
Um, and it was a, that time in my life was like a, a huge pivotal point. It is probably for anyone who goes through it. Um, that, you know, everything kind of like fell apart in a sense in terms of like everything as I knew it was changing. And, um, as I learned more about lung cancer and her symptoms, the more I realized, holy shit, that,
By not understanding what's happening on the inside of someone's body. We're really doing them a disservice when it comes to evaluating and treating musculoskeletal pain disorders, dysfunction injuries, whatever you may call it. So let me tell you this story. So when my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer, um, In spec?
Well, when she was diagnosed, I do what I normally do when they're, when one of my family members has a problem, I start learning everything I can about it. That is, um, I like to, the way I work, the way I cope is I immediately take action and I like to be able to control things. And the one thing, the one way I know I can control things is by.
and using my brain that is like, I am intelligent and that is the, um, path I go into when I need to gain control is like, I need to outsmart this. I need to know everything there is to know so we can choose the best, best path forward. So I started learning about lung cancer. I started learning about the signs and symptoms.
I started learning about the prognosis and just everything about it. And despite lung cancer being the top cancer killer in men and women, it is one of the least funded cancers from a research standpoint. And the, the shocking thing, the saddest part about lung cancer is if you were to catch lung cancer in the early stages, stage one stage two, Lung cancer is actually very curable.
The problem is, is the symptoms of lung cancer are pretty vague and so most people don't get get it diagnosed until it's late stages. And just like any cancer, when it's late stage cancer, it's a lot harder battle to survive. Definitely need to be cured from it. So as I was learning about lung cancer, I learned that a lot of the complaints my mom had going back like 10 years, 10 years were more than likely visceral referrals from her lung disease.
What I also learned about lung cancer is the majority of lung cancer is a very slow growing lung cancer as well. So you can have it for years and years and years before it becomes late stage. It's not typically a fast growing cancer. So it, it was not unrealistic that complaints she had when I was in high school, which would've.
10 to 15 years before she was diagnosed were probably the beginnings of this disease in her lungs. Symptoms being shoulder pain, neck pain, numbness and tingling in her fingers. She would go to the doctor and the doctor. be like, Hmm, you're outta shape. You're, you have bad posture. You're in your fifties.
You, um, have rotator cuff tendonitis. He wouldn't do an x-ray, he wouldn't do an mri. He would just label her with musculoskeletal pain based on where her symptoms were and sent her to physical therapy. My mom would go to physical therapy and the physical therapist would evaluate her, but basically use the doctor's diagnosis to guide the treatment plan.
So should we be doing your standard shoulder pain, rotator cuff, old, older person rehab. She'd be doing rotator cuff strengthen you. She'd be doing scapular exercises. She'd be told how poor her posture is and on and on. , she would be given stretches and basic exercises to do at home, and she would do them, but the problem was she would never feel better.
She wouldn't really feel better unless maybe sometimes when she got a massage, she had some temporary relief, but then it'd come right back and then when she'd go back to PT and be like, I'm not feeling any better. instead of them reassessing and being like, what else could it be? They're just like, oh, well you're not doing your exercises enough.
Right? Or you need to do more exercises. You need to be in better shape physically. Um, which is a very common thing to tell, tell someone, especially when they look like my mom, which was overweight. She wasn't that active and she was a smoker, and so people just assume that all your problems are because you're not physically fit.
So she would feel defeated and she'd just stop going to pt. And then months would go. By. Year would go by and her shoulder pain and neck pain, upper back pain would come back and there would be times that it was more intense than others and it she'd find herself back at the doctor. And the it, this is a circle that we would go through, right?
right. Bef, you know, within six months of her diagnosis, she was getting, she was having a lot of pain. She was also really tired. And I had just learned, um, from one of our concierge medicine doctors at aos, we had just gone over like, uh, prodromal symptoms of heart disease in how women who have heart disease have much different visceral referral patterns than men do.
And then I recognized and my mom was like, man, you know, mom, like I, I, I don't want to like worry you, but maybe you have something going on, like with heart stuff. Maybe, maybe this isn't, you know, maybe there's more. Like maybe we should go back to the doctor. She found herself back to the doctor anyways, even though she wasn't specifically talking to them about the heart stuff.
But in addition to her, Neck and, um, back pain and shoulder pain. She, um, also was really tired. She had a cough that wouldn't go away. The doctor kept diagnosing as bronchitis and blaming on her, um, being a smoker. Um, and on and on. And finally, um, finally in the summer of 2011. The doctor finally was like, let's do chest x-ray.
I have no idea. I think just cuz the chronic bronchitis is why he finally decided to do chest x-ray. And when the chest x-ray was done, even the x-ray tech knew that there, that it was likely lung cancer, that she had a huge mass in her right lung and immediately the next day was,
Uh, performed a, um, they performed a biopsy on her. And the biopsy, interestingly enough, was in the exact spot that my mom would complain of pain, like ice pick sharp pain. The, this exact. . I remember her complaining of pain with like all the way since like the 10th grade. And that was, what are you in 10th grade?
You're like, 15. And at the time when she was diagnosed, I was 31, so 15 years prior. Continuing, like year after year, she would be complaining of really sharp pain in this one spot, and it happened to be the exact spot of the, uh, majority of the mass of her tumor, which is where they took the biopsy. That correlation, I was like, holy shit.
Every single healthcare provider that my mom saw from 1995 until 2000. missed the symptoms of lung cancer and all they needed to do was a CT scan, which takes 10 minutes. And, um, so in that moment, heading, heading already had this prior knowledge that there was something out there like visceral manipulation.
I was like, I need to. Learn more. I need to learn about the viscera. I need to learn more about how the viscera masks itself, or not even mask itself, how the viscera and the dysfunctions or disorders of the visceral organs can manifest in our muscular skeletal system, just like my mom did, because.
You know, she failed PT, not because, you know, she didn't actually have a shoulder problem. She had shoulder pain because of so many other reasons. Mostly the visceral referrals. And the thing that frustrates me about this the most, and, um, this is not actually to throw shade at her physical therapist or even her doctor to be 100% honest.
I know they cared about her and thought they were doing the best that they could, and they were doing the best that they could with the knowledge that they had, which is what we all do. Um, but in. The world of sports medicine, physical therapy, athletic training. We tend to be okay with mediocrity in terms of helping people.
We and we, and we cover that okayness with mediocrity by saying that healing takes time, that tissue. Tissues take time to change, which is true, but I am a big believer from my 20 years of experience now, and especially these last, almost 10 years now, of learning more of this visceral manipulation and neural manipulation approach that if you can't.
Help your patients in a few sessions. Like if you don't see some improvement in three to five sessions, and this is like, that's really given you a lot of sessions in my opinion. , I would, I, I'm a that I'm a person that I'm like, if I can't help you in one to three sessions, then I need to go back to the drawing board.
So if other people can't, like, so I'm giving you some sessions. So if you can't help someone in a three to five sessions, you're on the wrong path. Meaning you need to go back to the drawing board and reevaluate them, rule out some other things, right? Do a proper differential diagnosis, and that should include understanding what the visceral and neural referrals could be.
Realizing that, hmm, if I'm treating the shoulder like a rotator cuff tear or a rotator cuff, tendonitis, tendonopathy, whether or not. Whether or not it shows Tendonopathy on an mri, that's a whole nother conversation. It may very well also show a rotator cuff tendonopathy, but if you're treating them the way we know that is helpful for shoulder pain and they're not getting better after three to five sessions after two weeks, after four weeks, after two months of rehab, it's not the patient's fault.
it's probably not the proper diagnosis. It's probably not the proper plan of care for them. It may be part of the diagnosis, right? Someone might have rotator cuff tendinopathy, yes, but they're having shoulder pain because of a visceral referral from the lungs or from the liver, or from the esophagus, from the stomach, from the spleen.
It could be a lot of things.
So,This is why I got into it. This is why I started learning from the Barral Institute and my eyes were opened up to, I thought I was treating people. I always thought I was treating the whole body. I thought I was treating people holistically. I was excluding a very. Two very important parts of the body, which is the visceral organs and the nervous system.
And as I've learned and as I've taken into consideration that the visceral organs in the nervous system are by far the most important things to the body, that the musculoskeletal system is a means to m. Move and a means to keep those things safe. This changes your whole approach in evaluation and treatment.
Doesn't mean I'm not doing things that I learned along the years from a performance training standpoint or from a physical exam and manual therapy standpoint, but it means that the whole plan of care is. . It means that when I'm evaluating them, I'm checking in and being like, are you protecting a visceral organ?
Are you protecting the nerves? Are you protecting the entire nervous system? Are you in a fight or flight response or in your, in a rest digest and restoration response? So there is a way that we can objectively and subjectively. those things first and then assess the orthopedics, the musculoskeletal system, that stuff's still important.
And then do a movement assessment. Cuz again, we're movers if we're in this industry. Where I, I work with athletes, movement is really important. That's still the. This is why my company is still called Movement Rev. I'm not changing it because all of this, everything I do is still to improve people's movement because I also know movement is what keeps people healthy, both on a micro level and a macro level.
So, um, it's just that we need to start realizing that the organs, the visceral organs in the nervous system have an influence on things, and that we are one whole organism. not just body parts and, and so I can't wait to share more with you, but that's really the backstory on how I got into this is because my mom can't be the only one out there that had musculoskeletal pain that was from a visceral thing like cancer missed.
And so not only can we help people's musculoskeletal pain and function by treating with this whole lens of you, but we could also help people diagnose diseases. That could be life threatening. And so as a healthcare provider, whether you're a physical therapist or an athletic trainer, a chiropractor, a massage therapist, a strength coach, we are, are all part of someone's healthcare team.
And so we need to all be doing assessments and treatments and thinking critically about the person in front. And no one to refer someone back to the doctor. Even if we, they got, we got them from the doctor. Just because their doctor doesn't know, doesn't mean that they're perfect and doesn't mean that what their diagnosis and thought was is, is what's going on.
And so,
This is my whole purpose for teaching and teaching the MovementREV philosophies and methodologies, is because I have assimilated all this information together and it gets results. So anyways. I know it was probably a little bit of rambling today because when I talk about my story, my mom's story, it's emotional and there's like a lot of parts of it.
It was a, it even, it still is a long journey, right? Every, anytime you lose someone, you're, the grief is always there. It doesn't go away. And I'll be talking more about grief too on this podcast and how it relates to the viscera and all the things. But anyways. I hope that gives you a little bit of insight on how I found visceral manipulation, why I think it's important for everybody to know whether you want to go learn it from the Barral Institute or not, and, um, the need for us to start learning this new lens of view.
I'm really glad you're here and I can't wait till the next episode. Have a great day.