Peking Best

Whilst genuinely sympathetic to those suffering illness/injury, the recent deluge of 'I've got XYZ, can anyone help or tell me what to do...........' worries me. Seeking, or acting upon, medical advice obtained from the 'net, however well intentioned the advisor may appear, is simply asking for trouble.  Few running related injuries are life threatening, but improper diagnosis or treatment can certainly reduce your running lifespan.   Some illnesses can be detected earlier in runners than in the general population, but if Usenet is your medical guide will the symptoms ever be picked up? Of course we all know this, yet look at the 'requests for medical advice' postings over the past month and the variety of advice provided.   Some may be right, most will be wrong, but how do you tell which is which?   And what happens to the poor innocent that follows the junk?  Not everyone has the desire or ability to discern locker room tales from sound anecdotal advice. We have two responsibilities.   One is to ourselves - to seek the best, most up-to-date, information we can on the way our bodies function.   The second is to others - to ensure we don't damage or mislead others, either intentionally on unintentionally, with our opinions.   I've read enough here to be convinced - let me say that again, TO BE CONVINCED - that the quality of running related medical advice on rec.running is uniformly poor. So don't listen to me.   Don't listen to anyone here.   Find a medical advisor that you trust and follow their advice.   And if you simply HAVE to post your advice here, do so with a caveat, both before and after the post, saying; This worked for me.   It may work for you.   But the best advice I can give you is to visit a medical professional and seek their opinion.  I'm just a dumb runner. And if I catch myself offering advice, I promise to do the same. Needless to say, I don't practice medicine in your fine country.   Neither do any of my friends.   Nor to I seek to increase the income of my professional colleagues, from what little I know they already earn too much. I'd just like y'all to keep healthy and stick around for the next few years so I can irritate you with my posts.

is simply asking for trouble. most will be wrong, locker room tales TO BE CONVINCED - that the quality of running related medical advice on rec.running is uniformly poor. I'm just a dumb runner. they already earn too much. Your last one even shows contempt for drs in our country. Being scottish (Frankenstien-son) I can understand what you are trying to say, but so far I have yet to see anyone claiming to be a dr when giving advice, nor anyone asking for a drs advice, (they can go to drs.com if that's what they seek, instead they asked for RUNNERS opinions) they simply asked for OPINIONS, which seems to cause you a great deal of grief and confusion. Just admit drs are arseholes, and we'll all get along fine! <G

One thing nags me, however.  Ozzie, what's with the constant reminder that your tips are all folklore ?  I mean, why not just call them advice or whatever?  Is this done for legal purposes, as in the standard see your physician before starting any exercise program (like anybody really does that) or this is not intended to be used as a diagnosis ?  I mean, information is information, and we'll all grown-ups, responsible for our own use of the information we receive.  You don't have to call it folklore ... just call it what it is: the voice of experience and damn good advice!  -Tom  Thomas P. Way   This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Tom, After 25 years of doing therapy with families and individuals, almost 25 years of coaching people to run and marathon, after almost 3 years as a group support leader in a reversing heart disease program, after 14 years of working with CEO/presidents/managing partners I have to continually remind myself that I can only educate myself. Others have to educate themselves.  I also have the belief that while I can't tell where it came from, there was someone who had similar thoughts, theories and insights but it didn't influence many people so they were forgotten.  Or someone is better at marketing and they succeed. My belief is that the community knows the answer.  The real test is being wise enough to ask the right questions so that people can educate themselves. It is too easy and seemingly simple to have someone tell me what to do.  I do it.  It works and I pass it on never thinking or questioning about the why.  It's the Reader's digest story of the woman being asked why she cuts the ends off the roast.  She says her mother did it.  She asks her mother, and the mother says, Grandma did it.  When Grandma is asked, she tells them it was because her pan was to short to hold the roast so she cut off the ends. My experience is _base_d on being inquisitive over these past 25 years and continually asking people to report back to me what worked and didn't work.  I collected what worked, and continue to work and rework that knowledge so that it can be demonstrated or shared in numerous ways.   I appreciate what you have to say, but as much as it may nag you, I am nagged by the others who neglect to tell the story of the other person who shared the knowledge which they now espouse as its creator and origin. My reason for using folklore is to remind people that they are in charge of their own life and care of it.  When I start to believe in experts, I can forget that I am still responsible.  It's easily for me to blame the expert when something goes wrong.  With folklore, life's a no-fault life. Use it.  Don't use it.  It's all the same.  No energy given when something doesn't work.  Only an inquisitive mind seaching for understanding of something which does work. Most injuries are the result of me not thinking that there is a correct way and to query what is that way.  My reason for starting Tai Chi years ago was to get that sense of whole body movement.  The reason for giving my daughters gymnastics was to give them one of the gifts that I couldn't:  A sense of their bodies movement in space.   If I think I'm doing something right and it's wrong, I won't change because I don't know that it's wrong - so why would I change something that I don't know. I've also learned that I can only speak for myself.  I can't speak for anyone else.  And the more I speak for myself, the more it allows others to speak for themselves.   So for me, my folklore means that it's something that works for me.  Others have tried it and it seems to work for them.  Others question it.  When then do, they bring to rec.running a question.  As I have said over and over,  I'm here to have my answers questioned.  That's the only way that I continue to learn and to educate myself.  So rec.running allows others to question and query so that those listening can see that the questioning of answers never stops.  That for me is what science and wisdom is about.  No one has a corner on it.  And when they think they do, it turns to gorilla arm pit odor (GAPO) In closing I'd like to share what Rebecca Tursilino shared with me.  Don't know where she got it but it made me laugh.  So the Oz Way and the Tom Way are just two ways of looking at something.  I appreciate your view Tom.  I could be a bit more considerate and not use the f word so much. Many thanks!  And now for Rebecca's story The Banana Experiment Start with a cage containing five monkeys. In the cage, hang a banana on a string and put a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs,  spray all of the monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result - all the monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it. Now, Turn off the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The New monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted. Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace  it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous Newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm. Again, replace a third original monkey with a  new one. The new one makes it to the stairs and is attacked as well. Two of the four monkeys that beat him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs, or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey. After replacing the fourth and fifth original monkeys, all the monkeys which have been sprayed with cold water have been replaced. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs.  Why not? Because that's the way it's always been around here.  And that's how company policy begins.... And finally from some people who continue to educate me at http://www.newsscan.com/ WORTH THINKING ABOUT:  WHY DO THE STUPID PEOPLE ALWAYS WIN?      Do you know the answer to that question?        The eminent 19th century British critic Walter Baghehot posed it in this passage about the ancient Romans:       Is not a certain dullness their most visible characteristic?  What is the history of their speculative mind?

I'm one who posted with hip pain, not because I expected M.D.-quality advice, but because, being rather new to running, I thought perhaps what I was experiencing was something fairly common and not something unusual and exclusive to me. I don't (as yet!) know a lot of other runners personally with whom to talk about experiences (bad/good/painful) - at the present, that's what y'all are for.    And there are a lot of things nobody talks about that turn out to be really common, and when it happens to you, you feel like you're the only one/isolated/more victimized than the situation warrants. Just my $0.02.  Not that I disagree with you!

Over the years that I've been around rec.running, we've had a number of doctors come and share their perspectives regarding various injuries and also come to rec.running to get some other perspectives to the medical diagnosis given for their injuries. Good, as long as they went no further than gaining perspective. George Sheehan would tell runners to talk to other runners about their aches and pain and injuries rather than a non running doctor.  I think that was in line with the idea that we really are all experiments of one. I liked Sheenan, but I consider this advice unsound.   I wouldn't trust my health, and certainly not my running health, to someone who didn't have a fundamental understanding of the functioning of the human body. The research released this week which finds that although 225,000 arthoscopic surgeries are done yearly for what doctors call osteoarthritis, it has been shown that the surgery is as effective as no surgery. Are these findings applicable to running-related injuries? I  believe in the motto:   Do no harm.  I agree with Doug's  Caveat Lector (Reader beware) It should be at the beginning and end of EVERY post, yours and mine included. Steven Robbins, M.D. research that shows that the cushioning in shoes may cause more harm than injuries has not stopped the shoe companies from continually increasing the high tech cushioning. Spend a few months running in racing shoes.   If that works for you, fine. If it works for 'joe average', I'll be dumbstruck. I ran in canvas Tiger 'Cubs' in the early 1970's and almost cried with joy when I got hold of one of the first pairs of New Balance in the UK.  Over the next year I tripled my mileage and reduced my running injuries to the odd ache.   Thank god for EVA. I'm not sure that much medical advice is dispensed on rec.running.  A lot of personal anecdotes, and this is what worked for me.  Often people preface it with I'm no doctor, however.... Read the posts.   How many act on the advice/comments provided?   You tell me you're comfortable with the possibility that some people may use this information as a medical resource? I take responsibility for myself, the doctors are my consultants.  Why are we often told by doctors or others to seek a second or third opinion? Not everyone has a PhD Oz.   One can inform everyone, but not everyone has the ability to make informed choices. I like this quote from Ida Rolf's book:  Rolfing: the integration of Human Structures from Buddah: Do not believe in anything merely because it is said, nor in traditions because they have been handed down from antiquity:  Nor in rumours as such: nor in writings by sages because sages wrote them: nor in fancies that we may suspect to  have been inspired in us by a Deva; nor in inferences drawn from some haphazard assumption we may have made: nor in what seems to be an analogical necessity: nor in the mere authority of our teachers and masters. Yeah, it's a nice quote, I just wouldn't live my life by it. Believe when the writing, doctrine, or saying is corroborated by reason and consciousness. The world if full of things I don't know, so sometimes I trust an expert. Ask Denny about flying in cloud (I still have the nightmares).   All your instincts, all your reason, tell you one thing.   Your instruments usually tell you another.   The pilot that doesn't trust his instruments usually ends up wishing he had.   Sometimes it's wise to trust in something with which you neither agree nor understand. Roger.

Just admit drs are arseholes, and we'll all get along fine! <G What makes you think I want to get along with you?   I told you last night I was - what's the American _expression_ - just looking for trailer trash, now you want a relationship?    Get real.