If You Brush Your Teeth You Already Practice Preventive Medicine

​We wash our hands to prevent infections, wear helmets to minimize head injury, and brush our teeth to reduce disease and decay. There are tips to preventing musculoskeletal problems as well. I put it succinctly recently: Move your joints. In all directions. Quite often.

Learning the basic tenets of prevention goes a long way. My goal is to help patients with their current problem and, just as importantly, to teach them what is occurring so that they can minimize or prevent recurrence. Advice to stay active, flexible, and strong to prevent injury is valid. What is lacking in my experience, however, is nuanced advice on maintaining joint balance and health. If people had a basic understanding of how joints worked, and some daily or weekly prevention strategies, a lot of aches, pains, and “injuries” that come on for no reason could be avoided. (Most musculoskeletal complaints, after all, cannot be blamed on major, or even minor, trauma.) -- Laura