What if you don’t see the expected results?
Predictable and consistent results with ABC™
What’s going on if you don’t get them as we would expect?
The Number One aspect that makes Advanced Biostructural Correction™ stand out in contrast to all other bodywork methods is the predictable and consistent results it provides on patients. The reason for this is that ABC™ has figured out the main reason for why bodies go funky in the first place: in almost every case, the underlying reason is simple body mechanics gone wrong. Medical research is increasingly confirming the role of biomechanics and bad posture in a host of pain conditions and other ailments. “Bad posture” is simply biomechanics gone wrong, and this can find its expressions in a variety of symptoms and syndromes. Once you know what the problem is, you can work on fixing it. Fix the mechanics, the body starts working again as it should, and aches/pains and syndromes/symptoms disappear.
ABC™ can address body problems as long as they are caused by a biomechanical fault. If the root cause is cancer, infection, or fracture, then ABC™ reaches its limits.
Most patients and practitioners have typical experiences with other methods: they work fantastically well on some people, averagely well on others, and not at all or with adverse effects on yet others. ABC™ works on everybody, as long as the underlying root cause of the patient’s complaint is not related to cancer, fracture, or infection.
The Number One condition for making these claims a reality is that your practitioner is actually doing ABC™. Many claim to perform it but don’t actually follow the method. If they are not getting the results on a consistent, predictable basis, they are simply not doing ABC™ but are doing something else. Check that your practitioner is certified in ABC™.
Every ABC™ practitioner knows that ABC™ is one of the easiest methods to learn – and one of the hardest to master. This is because there is no room for error. Every single manoeuvre has to be carried out with the precision required to fix and fine-tune the high-precision machine that is the human body. Our practitioners are all trained to this high standard. All of us have learned from Dr. Jesse Jutkowitz, who developed ABC™ in the first place. Richard is one of currently only three people in Europe who are licenced to teach ABC™, and he has the highest certification level for technical skill (Level IV), putting him among the top people worldwide. Our other practitioners are at or working towards Level III certification at this point in time. At PPWC, we are here to serve you with a world-class service, providing world-class results.
Yet sometimes even our stellar practitioners find that the results they would expect don’t match what they’re seeing in their patients. Why is that?
What we are looking for at a given visit
When we treat you, we are assessing your body holistically. We are interested in your current symptoms, possible underlying reasons, what makes it better/worse, what has changed, and what hasn’t changed yet. There are several possibilities for why you might not be seeing the best possible results in the predicted timeline. Let’s walk through them together. Most of them are super easy to explain and remedy. Some of them are on us, some of them are on you – getting your body fixed is teamwork between your practitioner and yourself. To understand better what we mean by this, let’s first look at what we are looking for in any given visit with any given patient. These are the promised results:
At each visit, we are looking for a predictable stopping point. When are we “done” for the day? What are “good” changes?
Your body should be more upright than when you walked in, breathing should be deep/even, you should be bright (not fuzzy-headed), facial colour and eye clarity should be good (i.e. pink and awake/alert, as opposed to pale and sleepy/glazed-over). And there should have been a change in symptoms during treatment. “Change in symptoms” might mean a change in intensity, exact location, size of the affected area, or quality of the sensation. For example, the pain area might be more localised rather than spread out, the intensity might be different, or the sensation might have gone from burning to tingling. All of these are good changes. All of them indicate that your mechanical and neurological function has improved. If you are fuzzy-headed or paler/whiter than when you walked in, we’re not done for the day. Those are the main indicators we look for on a given day. There’s a fair chance your pain won’t get fixed completely in a single visit, but there should at least be some change/relief by the end of it.
Why we may not be getting these results
Now that you know what we’re looking for, let’s explore possible scenarios where it seems like you’re not getting the results we would expect. Then, let’s explain the possible reasons behind them.
- Your body seems to be plateauing, progress seems to have stalled
- We keep seeing the same things showing up again and again and again that need to get fixed
- Your body looks like it is getting less stable, rather than more stable
Here’s one key thing we keep saying in our office: we are responsible for how you leave (and now you know what we’re looking for in terms of indicators). You are responsible for how you come back for your next visit. What do we mean by that? Some of it depends on what phase of the healing journey your body is in at a given moment.
Forward/Backward Unwinds
We have explained the Unwinding process before – the main mechanism by which your body improves mechanically throughout the course of your treatment. You are aware of the two phases: the “backward Unwind” (= relatively symptom-free phase) and the “forward Unwind” (= the more symptomatic phase during which old injuries get revisited in order to get unlocked and healed).
If you are in a “forward Unwind”, we will warn you that the way you feel upon leaving may last “hours to a day” before old symptoms may show up again. It is likely that there is some discomfort – it’s expected and it’s a normal part of the process. This is a normal part of the healing journey and no reason for concern. Get in for an additional treatment to get you through this phase a little more comfortably.
If you are in a “backward Unwind”, we would expect you to come back feeling the same or better at your next visit. If that’s not the case, there’s 100% chance that something in your lifestyle is messing up your body.
Lifestyle-related issues: Sitting, Standing, Sleeping
These are by far the biggest culprits for causing set-backs and for throwing off our expectations in terms of improvement and timeline / care plan. It is easy to underestimate the tremendous effect our lifestyle can have on our bodies. Most of the time, bodies go wrong mechanically because of lifestyle issues, not because of “big” issues such as falls or accidents. What we sit on, stand on, and sleep on every day has a HUGE effect on our bodies. Naturally, we want your body to get better rather than worse. Provided you are in a “backward Unwind”, you should be coming back for your next visit feeling the same as when you left on the previous visit – if not better. If that’s not the case, here’s what we are looking for:
- When you started feeling “worse” again after the visit – when was the FIRST instance that you noticed it?
- What were you doing at the time?
- What position was your body in? (Example: after getting out of the car; while/after walking the dog; while sitting on the couch watching TV; first thing after getting up in the morning).
Your answer to these questions gives us important clues as to where to look first. We’ve written about the main lifestyle areas which are commonly causing problems. Have a look here for Sitting, here for Standing, and here for Sleeping. It is easy to underestimate the huge impact these areas can have on your body’s ability to heal. So, if we find one of them to be a cause of concern, we would like to address it. At that point, it’s up to you whether you let us help you. You can help first of all by being mindful of when things get “worse” again so you are able to answer the above questions. This helps us tremendously in our quest to help you! Next, it’s up to you whether you want to modify the lifestyle area in question.
Is that favourite pair of shoes worth a painful set-back on your journey? Is your pillow worth the extra cost of prolonging your care?
We’ve seen patients whose shoes caused problems within minutes of putting them back on after treatment; whose heavy necklace made it harder to breathe within seconds; whose wallet in the back pocket or whose purse across their body caused a flare-up of symptoms by the time they had made their next appointment at the front desk. These things may seem trivial – but are they worth the discomfort and prolonged care? Is it worth messing up your body because of a simple lifestyle habit that’s easily fixed/avoided? Your lifestyle can make your body more or less stable. Let us help you make it more stable.
Care plans exist for a reason
Another common factor behind why we aren’t seeing the results we expect in the timeframe we predicted is related to your care plan. Your care plan exists for a reason. Our practitioners have years of experience and know how quickly they can expect certain changes to take place in patients, on average. So when we explain your care plan to you at your third visit, we came up with the frequency/duration of care for a reason. Sometimes, of course, logistical reasons put a limitation on the care plan. Some of our patients drive a considerable distance; for some, work makes it difficult to come in three times a week; some patients work off-shore and are away for weeks at a time; some have difficulties affording the suggested care plan. Talk to us if any of these reasons are preventing you from following the recommended game plan. If we have to scale back the care plan, we may need to scale back our expectations in terms of recovery time, predicted short/long-term prognosis, etc. It doesn’t mean it’s not worth pursuing care, but both parties have to adapt the expectations to account for the change.
If you need to cancel an appointment, the best course of action would be to reschedule in the same week – if at all possible. Again, three times a week or two times a week was recommended for a reason – to allow your body to progress at the best possible speed. If you come in only once a week, progress will naturally be slower or might even halt. Skipping appointments is a cause of not making progress.
Wrong expectations
This is a tricky one. We often encounter wrong expectations on the part of our patients, especially when they first come to see us. In today’s society, many people expect instant results. Many want their pain to go away in 1, 2, or 3 visits – even though the underlying problem took a lifetime to build up. We try our best to explain how your body got to the place where your current symptoms are showing up; and how long it will take to get you out of symptoms and provide pain relief, stabilisation, or complete correction of your entire body structure (whatever your goals are). Generally speaking, getting a body fixed is more of a marathon than a sprint. This is because the body has to remodel bone and tissue as part of the process – and we simply cannot speed this up. On average, it takes 2-3 years to completely fix every mechanical problem that has ever happened to a person in their lifetime; longer if there has been trauma such as falls or car accidents. Pain relief, on the other hand, usually happens fairly quickly. Talk to us about your specific goals, so we can come up with realistic timeframes.
Having said this, sometimes we get the timeline wrong. Sometimes it simply is not possible to predict exactly how quickly a body is going to respond to ABC™. Respond they all do, it’s just a case of the exact timeframe. And sometimes a patient’s body is simply so twisted up mechanically, and the exact amount of twisting is not evident in the first couple of visits (short of taking xrays…). So, on occasion, we are simply unable to predict how long a person’s journey will take. You may, for example, progress more slowly than we had originally predicted. That’s not because we can’t fix your body. It’s because your body is so twisted up and mechanically so unstable that we have to go at a pace that’s much slower than we had originally thought. There’s no point pushing your body beyond what it is ready for. We take frequent Reviews of your progress, and if we run into any issues where we have to adapt our timeline, we will let you know at the earliest opportunity.
Limitations of ABC™: congenital malformations, serious illness and replaced body parts
Finally, another reason for lack of progress is based in congenital malformations, serious illnesses or replaced body parts. Let’s look at these points in more detail. We have written before about the limitations of ABC™ . If there are changes to a person’s bony structure that were present at birth (such as half-formed or misshapen spinal bones), this puts a serious limitation on what ABC™ can achieve.
If a patient’s bony structure has been changed by cancer, acute fractures or fractures which have healed incorrectly, or by bone or soft tissue infection, there’s only so much ABC™ can do. It still means it’s worth getting treated, but the prognosis changes and the timeframe most likely changes too. We do our best to rule out these more sinister reasons behind your current problem. That’s why we take so much time at your New Patient visit to go over your medical history in detail. The goal is to rule out that your current back pain may be related to any of these serious issues.
If you have any artificial joints (knee / hip replacement) or if you had spinal surgery which put rods or screws into your back, or had discs or bone removed from your back, there is only so much ABC™ can do. Again, in most cases it is still possible to make enough mechanical changes to address your current pain problem. But the prognosis changes, the timeframe changes, and “full correction” may simply not be possible – we simply can’t regrow your original knee or hip joint or disc unfortunately. If the new, artificial joint has been put into place even slightly misaligned, it may hold up your Unwinding journey and put limitations on what we can achieve.
What it comes down to in the end
Let’s sum up the key points of this blog post: ABC™ fixes body structure and mechanics better than anything else out there. The results are consistent, predictable, and reproducible. As we fix your body structure, your body pops up straighter, your posture improves, breathing improves, mechanical and neurological function improves, and pain/discomfort disappears. No excuses.
These results happen, provided the following points are in place:
- Your practitioner is trained to the highest possible standard and is certified in ABC™
- You are following the recommended lifestyle advice (Sitting, Standing, Sleeping)
- You are following the suggested care plan / frequency
- There is no underlying cause to your current symptoms which is putting limitations on what ABC™ can achieve
If you have any questions about whether ABC™ is for you, why not take advantage of our free consultation? Talk to one of our practitioners about what’s going on and how we can help you.
