174. Beyond the Pain Point: Treating the Whole Person in Physical Therapy

May 27, 2025

Treating pain without seeing the full picture is like fixing a leaky pipe without checking the water supply for the real issue.

Dr. Andrew Fix shares a story about a patient who followed all the rules of rehab but still couldn’t shake her knee pain. Months of physical therapy focused on the joint itself, yet her mobility was limited and the discomfort persisted. Why wasn’t it working?

As it turns out, the problem wasn’t only in her knee. Her hip and ankle on the same side were stiff and weak, issues no one had looked at before. Dr. Fix explains how a more thorough, full-body assessment changed the course of her care and revealed what had likely contributed to the pain all along.

If you’re dealing with lingering pain or stuck progress, this episode is a reminder to zoom out. Are we really treating the cause, or just the symptom? For physical therapy to be effective, the whole body has to be part of the conversation.

Quotes

“Sometimes we don’t do quite as thorough of an evaluation on those people because we’re just so focused on the surgery that they just had.” (04:37 | Dr. Andrew Fix)
“What we found was that she has a significantly stiffened hip on the same side, that same leg, the left side, compared to the other hip. Her ankle, super stiff on that left side compared to the other side. And of course, that’s the side that she’s still having knee pain on.” (05:01 | Dr. Andrew Fix)
“We cannot look at this person, this individual, because they had a knee surgery, just like we need to rehab their knee. We need to think about how this interacts and how this plays with the entire body.” (07:37 | Dr. Andrew Fix)
“It’s not rocket science, right? If we have pain in a joint, we can’t just look at that joint. We need to look above. We need to look below.” (09:53 | Dr. Andrew Fix)
“You can’t treat issues in a vacuum because otherwise you’re going to have results that are in a vacuum that aren’t going to expand to be widespread positive changes.” (10:31 | Dr. Andrew Fix)

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