Chronic pain, root cause diagnosis and the human side of medicine, with Dr. Sean Altman, functional medicine doctor, doctor of physical therapy and creator of Orthopedic Functional Medicine.

Dr. Altman's approach starts from one idea: the mystery is in the history. In this conversation with Bart Berkey he explains why so many people with persistent pain move from specialist to specialist without an answer, and why the detail that unlocks a case is so often missing from the chart. He also tells his own story of concussions and spine injuries from hockey and car accidents, years of test results that came back normal, and the six or seven years it took him to figure out what was actually wrong.

WHY YOUR HISTORY IS DATA

Dr. Altman shares cases where the cause of the pain was nowhere in the imaging: a patient whose relief came from a treatment no report mentioned, a hip that was not the source of the hip pain, and a frozen shoulder that let go once the grief behind it was named. None of those details surfaced on a screen. They came out because a patient felt safe enough to say them to a person, which is exactly what Bart means by HUMANALITY™.

In this episode:

Why care gets less personal as practices scale

The mystery is in the history

Normal testing doesn't mean normal function

Recovery as a path, not a switch

The root cause map and the diagnostic audit

Physical longevity versus metabolic longevity

Using HSAs, FSAs and employer plans for care

Why patients won't tell a computer what they'll tell a person

ABOUT DR. SEAN ALTMAN

Functional medicine doctor, doctor of physical therapy, researcher, educator and creator of Orthopedic Functional Medicine, based in Stamford, Connecticut. Author of Orthopedic Functional Medicine: A Root Cause Approach to Pain, Healing, and Physical Longevity.

Website: https://www.drseanaltman.com

ABOUT THE SHOW

Most People Don't... But YOU Do! is hosted by Bart Berkey, who spent 16 years as a global executive with The Ritz-Carlton before building Most People Don't, LLC. The show is in the top 2% of podcasts globally, with more than 250 episodes about the small, deliberate things that separate a good intention from an exceptional human experience.

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