Dr. Schmuel Tatz is an incredibly talented physical therapist. He possesses a gift for finding the…read moreroot of your pain and treating it at the source, and also for helping you gain a sense of awareness of your own body to prevent further problems. I am sharing my stories here in hopes of more people discovering the joy of living pain free through the work of Dr. Tatz.
I first went to see Dr. Tatz in 2012 after a recommendation from a ballet teacher of mine. I was in a great deal of knee pain from a patellar tracking problem. After a few sessions and the simple home exercises Dr. Tatz recommended for me, my knee started feeling much better. One session, after he worked on my knee for a bit, he asked how it was feeling, and I replied it was doing much better. He then said, "Okay, now let's work on your back." I was surprised to hear this, so he began to explain that he could tell that my spine was a bit out of alignment, and that we should do some preventative work so that I would not have problems later on. We did a few more sessions working on my back and knee, and I left with a sense of relief that my knee pain was finally diminishing.
3 years later, I had long since forgotten about Dr. Tatz's recommendation for my back exercises, and low and behold, I injured my low back lifting a heavy object. I sought advice from a sports medicine doctor, who said he thought it might be a disc problem, and recommended 6-8 weeks of physical therapy at a neighboring facility. I followed suit, and the therapists gave me a series of exercises designed to strengthen my core, as they believed that weak lower abdominal muscles were the root of my problem. This surprised me, as I am a very physically fit individual, but I followed suit nonetheless. Over the next 8 weeks, I began to feel stronger in my core, but my lower back pain was not ceasing. It would seem to get better one day, but then be worse again the next. I began to feel very depressed, as it seemed my low back pain was becoming a chronic problem.
It had been 3 months since my injury, and I began to lose hope that I would ever return to my normal activities without a great deal of pain. It was then that I remembered Dr. Tatz, and I quickly made an appointment. Upon entering for my first session in 3 years with Dr. Tatz, as I was taking off my coat and before I uttered a word, he said, "Ah, you are here to work on your back." With a look of amazement upon my face, I replied yes, and I told him about the first round of physical therapy I had finished two weeks before. He was not surprised that the other physical therapy treatment was not working. He said the problem was not that my muscles were not strong enough, it was that my spine was not in the proper alignment, and thus the muscles were always working hard to try to correct this, thus causing my constant pain and muscle spasms.
I should note that I had also seen an orthopedic surgeon the same week and finally had x-rays taken of the area. The x-rays completely confirmed Dr. Tatz's theory: they showed no problems with my discs as the first sports medicine doctor had thought, but rather a "straightening of the lower lordosis", which means that the lower curvature of my spine was slightly flattened out, exactly as Dr. Tatz had described before I ever had the x-rays done.
I've been to Dr. Tatz for 7 visits this year, and I'm thrilled to say my back pain has completely disappeared. My posture has also greatly improved, which was a problem I wasn't even aware of until I went to Dr. Tatz.
Even after all that however, this is the most amazing thing I have experienced with Dr. Tatz: I was in a session last week, and he asked if I had any pain here, and was pointing to an area between my ribcage, around where my stomach is. I replied no, that I didn't think so. I did not have any pain there at the time. He asked are you sure, you have some vertebrae here that are not happy. I then thought about it for a few minutes, and it dawned on me that I had been in the hospital just five weeks earlier with incredible abdominal pain. After a day in the ER and numerous tests, the doctors could not figure out what was wrong with me, and sent me home with some pain medication. The pain went away and did not return, and I did not think about again it until Dr. Tatz asked.
I relayed this story to him, and he laughed with a knowing smile, and said, "Ah yes, the mind forgets, but the body does not forget!!" This last story is further confirmation that Dr. Tatz is a true master of his field. Just by simply touching an area on my back, and without any fancy tests or imaging, he could tell that I had had incredible stomach pain in my recent past.
I greatly encourage anyone with pain anywhere in their body to see Dr. Tatz for an appointment, and give him my highest recommendation.
