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Getting to the root cause

I ended up in an emergency room twice with my lower back. After the first time, I went to a neurologist and she diagnosed me with a bulged disk and ordered a physiotherapy. It helped somewhat, but did not really improved a lot.

Than I found a personal trainer, who mentioned to me, that it does not necesarily needs to be an issue with the bulged disk, but with SI joints (Sacroiliac joints).

Source: Wikimedia

I had no idea what he was talking about at the time. But we have trained weekly for about 45 minutes together and I did for about 15 minutes each day and I never really had another issue. Until the time when we were rennovating our flat and I had not that ideal living and working conditions for about 3 months (e.g. I worked from bed most days, not walking a lot etc.)

So I ended up in the emergency room the second time. This time my disk bulge was even larger and operation was maybe needed according to my neurologist. Thankfully, she has sent me to an neurosurgeon and after seeing the MRI and talking with me about the issue he told me, that the pains are maybe from the SI joints and for now, if I do not have chronic pain, I should just do physical therapy and it can really improve (altough the disk will probably never be 100 percent ever again).

Finally, I have started waching some videos about the bulged disk and SI joint issues and I finally started to understand where the pain is coming from and why we are excersising in such a specific way.

Recovery was much faster than the first time and now I know what to do when even slightest pain comes, as I understand the root cause better.

However, I did not need to understand the root cause the first time to get better. Actually a lot of excersises for the bulged disk are the same as for SI joints. The root cause just helped me with motivation. The knowledge, that this is an issue that can be actually solved, over long time, not just moderated, is something that changed my perspective a lot.

What I am trying to say is, that if the renovation and my bad habits during it did not happened, I would never tought about the root cause and probably would not need to know it. The excersise worked.

But it was really important to get to the root cause after the issue came back. Because now I can address the issue much more effective and solve it (hopefully) for good with focused effort.

The same can be used at work. You do not always need to get to the root cause if you can apply standard best practices and they seem to solve the issue. But if the issue repeats, get to the root cause and be more specific with the solutions applied.

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