RIOT stands for Restorative Integrated Osteopathic Treatment, and at its core, it’s based on the principle that injury and age don’t have to mean a lifetime of pain or loss of function. We’re rioting against the idea that your choices for back pain, knee pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, foot pain, and other chronic pain aren’t simply suffering or surgery. You have a non-invasive, non-addictive option to help you feel better: let’s start a RIOT.
You’ve heard of physical therapy, massage, cortisol shots, surgery, exercises, and likely many more treatments for pain. But you might not have heard of osteopathic manual therapy, a method for finding the source of the dysfunction and addressing the whole body to create long-term results.
This type of treatment is not a massage, physical therapy, or chiropractic work, as they tend to focus on only one aspect of the problem. When you experience pain, there are no shortcuts to identifying the true cause of your symptoms. There are an endless amount of variables that can contribute to your symptoms.
Most other practitioners are focused on symptoms, and because of this, their treatment methods are ineffective. Our focus is on the root cause and not the symptoms. This allows us to appropriately identify and treat what is creating the symptoms.
Manual therapy is a physical therapy technique that involves manipulation of soft tissue and joints using a variety of techniques including:
An analogy that perfectly explains this is to treat the fire, not the smoke. Fire makes no noise yet creates smoke. That smoke travels and hits smoke alarms, creating an alarm. If a firefighter broke into a building and went after the smoke alarms, that would be highly ineffective. Instead, firefighters are trained to ignore the smoke alarms, trace the smoke to the fire, and put it out.
In this analogy, smoke alarms are our sensory nerves picking up pain or irritation. They make all the noise and let us know there is a problem. But the pain doesn’t always identify where the problem is, just that there is a problem. Smoke is the muscle or nerve dysfunction that has adapted or reacted to that root cause or initial trauma.
Smoke is sneaky and quiet, just like dysfunction. Most dysfunction in the body goes unnoticed. For example, one shoulder or hip is higher than the other. Since dysfunction doesn’t create pain, it makes it tricky to appropriately identify where the problem is coming from on your own.
The fire is the original trauma or dysfunction that created all these problems. Left untreated, it only grows with time and creates more destruction. Our training and treatment methods are focused on identifying the dysfunctions or “smoke” that lead back to the original trauma or “fire.” When we can adequately put out the fire and treat the dysfunctions, the pain or “smoke alarms” go away on their own.
By addressing the root cause and identifying all the factors that contribute to your symptoms, we can help restore the body to its full function, getting you moving and back to doing the things you love.
Chiropractic focuses on bones and joints. They shove the bones back to where they belong rather than addressing how they got there in the first place. Not all chiropractors are bad, I have some colleagues who are incredible practitioners. This is because they pursued further education after their doctorate program. In their own words, “I didn’t have any clue how to treat someone after school. I had to go outside of it in order to learn how to help my clients”. Chiropractic as a standalone treatment is highly ineffective
Physical therapists, massage therapists, athletic trainers, and personal trainers all focus on the muscles. They believe that if you exercise the weak muscles and stretch the tight muscles, you’ll be able to fix and correct the problem. However, that doesn’t work because muscles are strictly obeying orders from the nervous system, and those methods don’t adequately address why the nervous system is irritated in the first place.
At RIOT, we teach that there is no such thing as a weak or tight muscle. Tight muscles are being told to lock up deliberately by the nervous system to protect something. Until you fix why that nerve irritation is there, the muscle will never let go long-term. On the other side, there is no such thing as a weak muscle because nerves also tell muscles not to fire. This is called inhibition. We have over 600 muscles and millions of nerves that are trying to appropriately balance all of the joints and bones in the body. When things are out of balance, the nervous system deliberately tells muscles to not let go, and not to contract. By not addressing why this is happening in the first place it is highly ineffective just to tell the muscles to let go and to try to strengthen the muscles that are not firing appropriately.
Tight muscles are being told to lock up deliberately by the nervous system to protect something. The muscle will never let go long-term until you fix why that nerve irritation is there. Weak muscles are inhibited because nerves tell them not to fire. Over 600 muscles and millions of nerves try to balance all of the body’s joints and bones properly. When things are out of balance, the irritated nervous system deliberately tells muscles not to let go and not to contract. If we do not address why this is happening in the first place, it is highly ineffective to just tell the muscles to let go and try to strengthen the muscles that are not firing appropriately.
