Hi again. I have to throw in a couple of questions regarding your posture and core. You do in terms of time masses of training sessions adressing weight lifting and also core and cycling to work (you don't say how far each way but it's good cardiac work). Do you have supervision whilst training or not? It seems the efforts you take don't seem to make your quality of back/neck fitness "better" in the end..do they? Apart from less pain what are you aiming for? "Posture" is poor you said. Why? Now we all have certain body shapes dictated by what we got and developed whilst growning. We have backs with curves and backs that are flatter and backs that have left-right curves and basic structure is there to stay.....BUT with adequate muscles and awareness of HOW we are using our bodies we can make the best of a bad handout and can maybe prevent the normal state of getting older causing too much pain and stiffness for example..Also not everyone has the same muscle handout....people who sprint 100m are not the same as marathon runners. Adaption for various uses is possible to a certain extent but if we, despite our efforts at weight lifting sit around like a couch potato for 8 hours a day (what is your work?) and present at physio with really bad sitting posture when you could do better....even with your given superstructure...Weight lifting will not help you sit straight. Sitting straight and being aware of how you are sitting/standing/whatever helps you sit straight. And maybe your skeleton won't sit as straight as the guy next door, ever. Maybe you need Pilates sessions...something else? something completely different? As to MRI and all the rest of the picture taking: a bad or good picture is OK for finding out that you bones are not collapsed or riddled with cancer. Otherwise there are limitations to helping in diagnosis of "WHY and WHAT" one has. Lots of people put too much emphasis on a picture like MRI 's to find out what is wrong and lots will be dissapointed because the picture shows the picture but not always (in fact most of the time not) why the body hurts. It might give you piece of mind if nothing is really bad but then, as we can't replace your back and neck with a new one it's down to sensible sport and lifestyle and the realisation that "less" can mean "more". I recently spent 2 months convincing a fairly fit determined 70 yr old to change his attitude (as well as doing hands on physio for a terrible neck pain problem) and take more notice of his posture and do less punishing exercises and running that he'd been convinced of having to do them for years. He finally listened after putting up a fight and defending his exercises and was 200% better. Think about it!!
It's a shame the NHS physio seems to have blinkers on.....in your experience, glad I am out of it! Regards Judith Mollet