Case 4, Part 5 - Simon Crittenden, I'm Dirty on the Medico's and Therapists

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I am perplexed by the medical world's ignorance of the fact a short right leg is a dominant genetic trait. I am completely dumbfounded they do not understand the fundamentals of the condition and the extent of the long term effects to our health and well being. I am dirty on the medico's and therapists who did not assess me for leg length discrepancy when I was young. They left me to carry a common postural hip anomaly, problematic since my teens, that eventually degenerated to an acute issue disabling mobility and impacting internal health. My life would have otherwise been very different.

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It comes back to the First Cardinal Sign of Short Right Leg Syndrome…the left hip rotation thing. In my fourteenth and fifteenth years I grew six inches each year. I suffered as the left hip began rotating doing its anatomic adjustment to accommodate an increasing leg length discrepancy. After a few months the initial discomfort passed but for the rest of my life I was dogged by a twinge in the left Sacro-Iliac Joint that was NQR. In my 60's it degenerated to acute injury and disability. This was accompanied by escalating symptoms of Kidney deficiency as described by Traditional Chinese Medicine from the impact of the Pelvic Block constricting the Bladder meridian in its convoluted passage through the lumbro-sacral region. All of this and several lumbar injuries could have been avoided if screened for SRLS in my teens and treated accordingly. A 5mm heel lift proved sufficient to turn the condition around yielding dramatic enduring benefits after 5 years of inexplicable deterioration. Eventually progressing to a heel lift roughly half the leg length discrepancy together with mobilising exercises for spine and sacrum resolved the condition.

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Five decades have passed since my fifteenth year. I have lived in six countries. I have attended three universities and achieved a 98.3 Tertiary Entrance Ranking along the way in this country if that means anything. Four times I have trained my body to a level of athletic development surpassing my peers. Training partners in my 50's were retired professional athletes, Olympians and national champions. Spending ten years as a young man in the dojo of a Grand Master martial artist, Prof Wong Lun OBE AOM, 10th dan Tang So Do, I learned to sense, cultivate and control Qi. I have worked in four careers. Life has not always been kind and I have suffered physical and emotional injury. I have now been practicing as a Remedial Therapist for 20 years employing an assessment and treatment framework based on the fundamentals of Physiotherapy incorporating energetic Qi flow principles. It is a fusion of East and West.

 

I have some understanding of postural assessment and the majority of my clients present with a structurally short right leg and a vast array of complications, pain, dysfunction and injury resulting from it. I am pretty sure I am not being delusional. This is not taught in basic training. It would seem it is not taught at all. I have not yet encountered a medico or therapist that is aware of the condition in its entirety. Most are ignorant of it or choose to disregard it and are blind to its effects. I am not being unkind. This is merely the truth of the matter.

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I have identified the key features of SRLS, have a plausible theory for the presence of this dominant genetic trait and specified a rudimentary assessment and treatment protocol. My experience treating the condition is not yet extensive. However, considerable success has been achieved with a number of clients who suffered long term acute conditions. I would describe my understanding of the condition as advanced. My research findings on the topic are described on this site.

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