We were lucky to catch up with Jennifer Shepherd recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jennifer, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. When you’ve been a professional in an industry for long enough, you’ll experience moments when the entire field takes a U-Turn, an instance where the consensus completely flips upside down or where the “best practices” completely change. If you’ve experienced such a U-Turn over the course of your professional career, we’d love to hear about it.

The term “best practices”…especially in medicine…who determines them? Some of the “best practices” in the past were actually turned out to be harmful, such mesh implants, celebrex and opiates for pain. Research and those at the university levels tend to the be drivers in what is considered “best practice.” However, when we look at humans, and the human as an organism, it is extremely challenging to determine best practices. In my small subsect of my industry, Physical Therapy, we often talk about the n=1. Each human come with his or her own unique set of genetics, birth history, environment, injuries, illnesses, external, social and familial environments, food intake…ALL of this contribute to the health or lack of health. Going further, the human body is made of multiple systems, multiple organs and body parts that brilliantly work in sync with each other. My dream is to be a catalyst for a U-turn in medicine, or at least in my Manual Physical Therapy profession, to learn, explore and begin to understand how the body adapts to injuries, traumas and illnesses over time and consider addressing the many systems involved rather than chasing pain, chasing symptoms or throwing a treatment or medicine against the wall and seeing what sticks.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many people who perhaps do okay with “best practices” for various maladies. The patients I see in my practice do not fit in that box,

Jennifer, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I like to say I am classically trained in Physical Therapy, but have evolved into holistic, multi system problem solver and resolver of complex health issues. I almost quit the profession early on, twice, as I just didn’t see results in my patients, nor myself despite doing what I had learned in PT school. Thanks to significant divine intervention along the way, I was introduced to some of the most brilliant, curious, out of the box thinkers in my profession. We look at humans as a whole, interconnected system, of many systems. And what a trained eye can see, and most importantly what trained hands can do to feel and identify areas of trouble and restore the efficiency and health to the organ, joint, system…into the whole.

Someone described our work as “finding the needle in the haystack.” Symptoms are important to understand, and sure, people want relief, but addressing symptoms rarely addresses original problems. There may be multiple needles we need to find and explore…understand how the body adapted from these “needles” thus straining another system while doing so.

For example. back pain, everyone has it. Most of us have a bulging disc at L4-5, in many of us it is not symptomatic, but would show up on an X-ray. Patients do exercises, get adjusted, get injections or take medication, all focused on the low back. So, what caused the bulging disc? Especially if there was no injury??? Normal part of aging a doctor would say…common, I would say, but not normal. In my clinic, I watch how my patients walk, I can see where there is increased strain on the low back, which is ACTUALLY caused by may an old fall on the tailbone, c-section scar tissue, and infection of the dura, a concussion, diverticulitis or appendix surgery, among many other contributors we have discovered. Even injuries that occurred 40 and 50 years prior changed the mechanical landscape of the body thus stressing the back. EVERYTHING in the body needs to be able to slide and glide and move when you do, organs, joints even blood vessels and nerves. Forces from old traumas and injuries change the tissue mobility of structures and they lose efficient mobility. But your brilliant body always finds a workaround…until it has so much trauma that it runs out of options and tips into the disease and pain state.

Yes, we need to support the back, but if we never get the forces that are driving the strain and degeneration of the back a patient will continue to deteriorate and end up in surgery (which remember, surgery fixes the damage, NOT what contributed to the damage over time.

So, I am a detective of your body, using my knowledge of anatomy and physiology, along with my eyes and hands, I identify the players, I problem solve how these old players contribute to your current health issues (or maybe not), and then I restore efficient mobility and functioning of these structure to take strain and burden off your system.

This work has further evolved into helping people with unresolved digestive issues, autoimmune, neurodegenerative diseases and mental and emotional trauma which can stored in the organs causing the body to compensate elsewhere. Great work from Steven Porges and Bessel Van de Kolk in the Neuropsychology world supports the concepts of trauma being stored in the body and the body’s goal of keeping us safe. (I will add the body will always right its eyes to the horizon, keep one moving (to find food, shelter and safety, and maintain bloodflow to the most important organs…all primitive innate instincts if you will.)

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

People are searching for medical practitioners who spend the time to listen and truly try to understand what is going on. Most practitioners do not have the time or spend the time to listen fully and ask good questions. People are also frustrated with huge medical systems and insurance companies that dictate treatment.

I spend an hour to an hour and a half working with my patients. Some have years of trauma and injuries for us to identify and restore, some have less. My goal is to have each person leave each session with less strain on their system. I pre and post test often for my patients to see and feel the changes in their body.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

A few years back, I wanted to go back to school to be an Osteopath or a Naturopath as I wish I could address labs and additional testing, which I cannot do because of my license. However, my journey is the one I need to be on and still do. Both of those professions likely would have NOT resulted in my meeting of the mentors who restored my awe and wonder of the human body and the possibilities of what we can do to help people heal, better, more efficiently and effectively.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tscfih.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenshepherdpt/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shepherdipt/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-c-shepherd-pt-cfmt-ffmt-faaompt-34ab061a5/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jenshepherdptcfmtffmtfaaom8650/about