INCONCEIVABLE!

This word always reminds me of the movie “The Princess Bride,” where the character, Vizzini, says “INCONCEIVABLE!” over and over no matter what situation he finds himself in. And the infamous Inigo Montoya’s reply, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

All jokes aside, over the past few weeks, it seems some of our patients, who DO know what the word means, thought the same thing:



The five senses, that is, the sense of sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell, provide us with necessary information regarding the world around us.1 These precious capabilities enable us to navigate our environment with seemingly instantaneous feedback with reference to our actions and activities in our immediate surround. The loss of one or more of the five senses requires compensatory enhancements of the remaining senses, the long-term results of which may lead to equivalences in capability and optimized functioning. Regardless of the number of sensory formats to which one has access, it is important to recognize that all individuals need to maintain high levels of health and well-being to derive the greatest benefit from their physiological processes and sensory inputs.



Obtaining sufficient restful sleep is an essential requirement for optimal human productivity. Such a practice is a key component of a healthy lifestyle, which includes a nutritious diet, regular vigorous exercise, and a positive mental attitude. How much sleep one needs varies from person to person. Importantly, failure to obtain sufficient restful sleep will negatively impact every aspect of one's physiological and cognitive capabilities and functioning.1, 2



Summer is a subjectively fleeting season and school days are upon us once again. For children, this bittersweet time marks the completion of a period of relative freedom and the beginning of a new set of responsibilities. For adults, the onset of late summer and early fall signals yet another turn of the wheel of life, reminding us of our mortality on the one hand and of all we have accomplished and have yet to achieve during our time on earth on the other.



A repetitive motion injury (or overuse injury) involves doing an action over and over again, as with a baseball pitcher throwing a baseball, a tennis player hitting a tennis ball, typing at a computer keyboard, and most notoriously, typing with your thumbs on the tiny keypad of your phone. It may be reasonably asserted that our musculoskeletal systems were not designed for such repeated motion sequences utilizing small muscle groups, but rather for a wide variety of tasks involving bending, lifting, twisting and turning, and walking and running that confronted early human progenitors a million and more years ago.