You Don’t Have To Live With Pain – Jacob McGill Has A Hundred Year Plan
Jacob McGill’s Hundred Year Plan is a program designed to help keep the mind and body healthy and connected. It speaks of the concept of not just the lifespan, but the health-span – it speaks about enhancing the overall quality of life by reducing pain, increasing mobility and wellbeing. There is a fascinating personal story behind the program Jacob devised, which we discuss in part one of my podcast. In part two we speak more about how he has been helping people with chronic and acute pain, sports injuries, balance issues, musculoskeletal problems, degenerative disease, scoliosis, osteoarthritis and more.
Health and wellbeing as a whole.
I had a question to ask of Jacob – about how someone like Tom Brady continues to play a game that is notorious for causing injuries, well into his 40s. Jacob speaks about making informed choices; more importantly about working together with and sharing information with a team of health professionals. With someone like Brady, there would be a common goal of maintaining the wellbeing of the athlete, and everyone working in concert to make that happen. So if you have an acupuncturist as well as a massage therapist and a doctor, each should be in the know of what the other is doing.
To me this makes a lot of sense. It ties in with what I have learned from all the other learned guests I have had on my podcast series over time. The body is a whole interconnected system and not a sum of unrelated parts. The wellbeing and good health of one part of the body corresponds to and even impacts the wellbeing of other, seemingly disparate parts of the body. For instance, spine problems can manifest as leg pain or foot pain or even headaches. Targeting merely the pain is not going to help because this is merely a symptom. Unless one addresses the root cause of the pain in a holistic manner, healing remains incomplete.
The Hundred Year Plan.
Jacob’s program is designed to treat the person and not their symptoms. He tells me how he can gauge a person’s postural problems from across the street, even with all their clothes on. Very often, a bad posture is at the bottom of a lot of chronic pain problems. Sometimes, we get into the habit of moving a limb incorrectly, because of a faulty shoe, a heavy bag or whatever reason, and this then results in problems down the line.
Often we tend to ignore injuries simply because we think they aren’t serious or because the symptoms fade over time. However, there is a concept of homeostasis where the body makes adjustments that are optimal for survival. This is not the same as healing. Jacob stresses the importance of not ignoring injury and about not reacting only when the symptoms are severe. When Jacob takes on a new client, he does so only after a full 90 minute assessment of each person’s health history, any injuries they have had, their symptoms and so on. He only takes on people he is sure of being able to help because he likes to maintain his near 100% success rate.
If you have chronic pain issues, learning about Jacob’s story and his program could be interesting and instructive. Tune in to a new episode of The Adiel Gorel Show with Jacob McGill.
