I started The Wellness Digest in 2010 because I kept having the same conversations with clients, friends, and family about muscle pain. They'd ask questions that deserved better answers than "it's complicated", so I created a place where I could actually explain how muscles work, why pain shows up where it does, and what might help.
Turns out, people all over the world were asking the same questions.
Where This Comes From
I've spent most of my life working with horses – show, pleasure, and race horses. When you work with animals, you learn to read bodies differently. A horse can't tell you where it hurts, so you learn to observe, to connect dots between movement patterns and pain, to understand that everything in the body is connected.
I brought that same approach to my 18 years as a licensed massage therapist. Later, I became a full-time caregiver. Each of these experiences taught me something different about how bodies work and how they break down.
What I've Learned the Hard Way
Navigating the healthcare system taught me to question everything: diagnoses, treatments, prognosis. Sometimes the standard treatments don't work. Sometimes doctors make mistakes; they're human. Just because you hear the same advice repeatedly doesn't make it gospel.
I've learned that published studies can be skewed, over-medication is common, and there are plenty of people selling miracle cures for everything from hangnails to cancer. I've also learned that sometimes anecdotal evidence is worth trying when conventional treatment isn't working.
The truth sits somewhere in the middle. Doctors are good. Medical advancements are amazing. Medications save lives. But they're not the only answer. Alternative treatments can help – they can also harm. The key is knowing the difference.
Three Things That Changed How I Think About Pain
Everything in the body is connected. A pulled muscle in the back of your thigh doesn't just hurt your thigh. It causes knee pain, hip pain, lower back stiffness, sometimes long after the original injury heals. Dysfunction in one area ripples through the whole system.
Every body is different. What works for your friend or some stranger on the internet might not work for you. Your body handles stress, illness, injury, and life differently than anyone else's. This goes for standard medical care and alternative treatments alike.
You have to treat the whole body. Finding and fixing the primary problem matters, but if you ignore the secondary symptoms, you're not restoring health; you're just putting a bandage on part of the problem.
What I Actually Do
I study muscles. They fascinate me. I have 1,800 hours of additional training in massage and health-related work. I dig through studies, trials, and publications looking for methods and treatments – old and new – that might actually help someone.
The Wellness Digest brings together information from medical research, alternative approaches, and practical experience so you can see what options exist. My focus is on muscle and soft tissue function because that's what I know. But I'll share other health information when it matters.
I'm not a doctor. I'm not a guru. I'm someone who's spent my life observing how bodies work, and I'm sharing what I've learned.
What affects one area of your body affects the whole thing. That is where you begin.