Our Approach

We take the extra time to help determine the root causes of your condition we have found that we are sometimes blinded by technology. Relying solely on diagnostic studies can have consequences as you will see below.

We have found that once the treatable root causes of medical conditions are successfully identified and treated, this can lead to more effective, non-surgical, affordable, longer-term results.

Having come from a Traditional Medicine background, and having spent over 25 years doing Regenerative Medicine, we have a good understanding of what works well for different conditions using using each approach.

Blinded by Technology

An MRI can sometimes be a valuable technology. But when we base a treatment solely on an MRI this can result in expensive treatments that can sometimes result in the treatment of the wrong areas.

A study reported in the American Journal of Neuroradiology found that disk degeneration is present in 52%of pain-free adults aged 30–39.

1. A study reported in Skeletal radiology found abnormalities in 97% of people with no knee pain, including meniscal tears in 30% of these people with no pain or any symptoms.
2. A study reported by the Journal of Orthopaedics reported that 65% of all rotator cuff tears identified in a general population were in people with no pain or any symptoms.
3. A meta-analysis reported by the Journal of Shoulder and Elbow Surgery showed that rotator cuff abnormalities increase linearly with age, regardless of pain.
4. A review study reported by the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM) reinforced the fact that MRI findings are often “normal” and poorly correlated with pain.

Diagnostic Injections

Although an MRI is a non‑invasive procedure, shows the whole structural picture, and detects pathology that injections cannot localize or safely assess, diagnostic injections can often be helpful for the following reasons:

They identify the actual pain source more directly

• MRI can show multilevel degeneration, but not which level causes symptoms. In cervical radiculopathy with two-level disease, selective nerve root blocks identified the symptomatic root even when MRI was misleading. In this study, MRI and clinical findings alone were “not reliable enough,” while diagnostic injections helped choose identify the exact level and resulted in improved outcomes.

They provide functional, symptom-based confirmation

• Diagnostic injections temporarily numb a suspected pain source (joint, nerve root, facet, SI joint). If pain relief follows, the source is confirmed; if not, another structure is implicated.
• Intra‑articular anesthetic injection into the hip had 90% diagnostic accuracy for detecting intra‑articular pathology, outperforming MRI (which had 8% false‑negative and 20% false‑positive interpretations).

They reduce “false positives” from incidental MRI findings

• Disc bulges, labral tears, or degenerative changes are common on MRI in asymptomatic people, which can mislead diagnosis and surgery decisions. Clinical assessment plus diagnostic blocks help avoid operating on the wrong level or lesion.
• A review of diagnostic injections for lumbar radiculopathy notes MRI and clinical data alone can be insufficient, and diagnostic injections are particularly helpful when multiple levels show similar degenerative changes.

They can both diagnose and treat at once

• Diagnostic injections (e.g., facet, SI, intra‑articular, nerve root) can relieve pain while simultaneously confirming the pain generator: improvement after a correctly placed injection strongly implicates that target.
• This dual role can shorten the diagnostic–therapeutic pathway compared with MRI followed by separate procedures.

They may be more cost‑effective in selected scenarios

• Because diagnostic blocks can directly guide which level to treat surgically or which joint to inject long‑term, they can help avoid unnecessary surgery or interventions at the wrong site, reducing downstream costs.
• Reviews of diagnostic blocks emphasize low complication rates and potential to refine treatment planning.

They are often more sensitive to subtle pain generators

• In some patients, a root cause with less dramatic MRI changes turned out to be the true pain generator.
• Diagnostic injections can also pinpoint pain generators from small joint structures that are hard to see clearly on MRI.