When you go to see a general practitioner with a set of health complaints, he or she will certainly want to hear your list of symptoms. But when it comes time to specifically determine the cause or choose a treatment option, some doctors feel their patients will be better served by a specialist.

While specialists can certainly be helpful, the “referral routine” quickly becomes tiresome when you are passed from specialist to specialist with unexplained pain or dysfunction. Specialists can thoroughly examine the problem from their perspective and provide answers, but sometimes, they cannot catch connections between different bodily systems or distant structures. It is certainly not their fault; specialists are experts in one area and are trained to examine, diagnose, and treat this area day-in and day-out.

A classic example is unexplained infertility. If you are a female and experience problems conceiving, your general practitioner will recommend you speak with a gynecologist. When your gynecologist cannot find a problem, he or she will likely refer you to a reproductive endocrinologist (RE). The RE will do a thorough work-up. If the RE cannot find a cause for your infertility, she may recommend various medications or procedures such as IVF.

While this approach certainly works for many women, the RE may miss vital mechanical components between different structures due to their specialist viewpoint. For example, if adhesions cause the pituitary gland to be constricted, they may impair hormonal function and prevent fertility. Our therapists have also treated some women who were in severe car crashes and subsequently experienced unexplained infertility. Although these women didn’t correlate the car accident with their infertility, their therapists noticed severe adhesions that likely formed after the car accident and impaired their fertility (see Could Your Unexplained Infertility Be Due to an Accident or Surgery in Childhood?)

Unfortunately, specialists sometimes miss these connections. At Clear Passage Therapies, we believe a holistic viewpoint is the best way for us to address the causes of unexplained conditions like female infertility, chronic pain, and sexual dysfunction. Regardless of what condition brings you to CPT for treatment, our therapists thoroughly examine the entire body for restrictions, imbalances, and adhesions. They then work to resolve anything abnormal they find. It is this approach that has led CPT to help over 250 women conceive and led hundreds of others out of chronic pain and dysfunction.
To learn more about our treatment philosophy, please visit our treatment philosophy page or read Playing An Active Role In Your Health Care Team. To read more about our treatment for unexplained conditions, you can also see Providing Hope for Women with Unexplained Infertility or our chronic pain page.

In Western medicine today, trained medical professionals are given incredible amounts of authority. With extensive knowledge and medical training, doctors have certainly earned the right to diagnosis and treat numerous medical conditions. However, this does not give them the right to exclude you from the health care team. Countless times, we have heard men and women complain that their doctors did not care about their input or did not truly listen to them before making a diagnosis.

Just as doctors have a responsibility to create an open relationship with their patients, patients also have a responsibility to play an active role in the health care team. Larry Wurn, clinical director of Clear Passage Therapies (CPT), explains, “Sadly, patients often take their bodies to the doctor just as they would take their car to a car mechanic.” Patients quietly sit as the doctor finds what is wrong, prescribes a treatment, and sends them away “fixed.” Larry and the CPT staff feel that this unfortunate circumstance is why we see so many chronic pain patients at CPT. The cause of the pain cannot be found because doctors and patients often do not work together.

At CPT, our patients play an active role in treatment. It is not something CPT therapists do to be polite; they do it because the input of a patient is fundamental to finding the cause of pain and dysfunction and creating a successful treatment protocol.

During the initial evaluation of a patient, our therapists ask about past events and experiences known to cause adhesion formation. This information is crucial because it helps therapists understand what adhesive patterns have formed in the patient. Therapists use this information to develop an effective treatment protocol.

When a therapist begins examining the patient’s body, answers to key questions help to further shape the treatment plan. Questions such as, “Do you always stand with your right foot turned slightly inward?” or “What level of discomfort do you feel when I stretch this area?” help a therapist determine the extent of adhesion formation and how long it has been present.

Then, while treating a patient’s body, the therapists ask for feedback about what a patient feels. Often, the therapist and patient find connections in distant parts of the body. For example, a patient might experience pain in the left hip when the therapist stretches the right shoulder. This kind of information is crucial for unraveling the adhesions and tight spots that cause a patient’s “unexplained” pain.

Throughout treatment, the therapist continues to actively involve the patient by educating them about their body so that they understand and mentally partake in the healing process.

A former patient who suffered from unexplained chronic abdominal pain told us, “Every step of the way I found caring, smiling, people who listened to me and encouraged me while the therapists worked; rather WE worked together – I had to be actively involved, mind and body.” It was only through the patient and therapist working together that this patient was finally able to be free from her chronic pain.

To learn more about our treatment philosophy or treatment for chronic pain, please visit our website.