It's like the heavyweight championship of the orthopaedic physio world ... and I can just hear the ring announcer now ...

"In this corner, wearing the white trunks ... from various authorities worldwide ... weighing in at 180 pounds ... 'Manual Therapy' ...

"And in this corner, wearing the blue trunks ... the challenger ... also weighing in at 180 pounds ... hailing from New Zealand ... 'Mechanical Diagnosis and Therapy' ...

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A revolution in the world of health ... is needed. And it needs to start ... here ... and now.

Let's face it - as it stands right now, the current system of health care, injury prevention, and health promotion - faces some tremendous problems. From the provider side, if you are providing exemplary care you're no better off than if you provide average or outdated care. You don't get paid any more or less for the quality of your work. From the payor side, we're told that "well care" is covered - but this typically amounts to an annual check-up and not much else (if that). From the patient side - I may not want to partake in any of this because they (the powers that be) either aren't going to pay for it, or the cost is exhorbitant (without health insurance), or they're just going to tell me to rest and take some pills anyways. And from the health promotion side - well, good sound educational programs are hard to find and even harder to have reimbursed by a third party payor.

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Over the past few weeks, there have been a lot of stories coming out of Coeur d'Alene regarding this year's Ironman CDA on June 24. My sources tell me it was a difficult day between the very choppy water for the swim and a challenging new bike course. Reports put the waves at up to 3 feet, though from what I could see on the live video, I highly doubt that the whitecaps I saw were on top of 3 foot swells. Having grown up next to the St. Lawrence River, I know my whitecaps!

They gave the participants the opportunity to not do the swim - and to simply make it an "Iron-duathlon". This decision wasn't made until just prior to the swim start.

I have no difficulty whatsoever with keeping participants safe. I totally understand the rationale - and the liability involved.

But let's face it - Ironman SHOULD be difficult. Ironman SHOULD have it's own set of risks. Isn't that part of the appeal in attempting it?

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Have you ever seen the movie "What The Bleep Do We Know"? It is a metaphysical journey into quantum physics - by way of our own life experiences and how we perceive reality. It is truly an adventure - in the sense that it addresses a journey we all experience - in parameters that perhaps we just don't realize or at a magnitude we can't even comprehend.

In many ways, it's about life being so much more - and so much less - than we envision. In the grand scheme of things, we are but a perceptual conundrum, a conglomeration of cells ever-changing in a stew of homeostatic mechanisms. We are just a bunch of electrons, protons, and neutrons - a cloud of electrical charges separated by huge chasms of virtually empty space and nothingness. There is so little true "matter" to our being, but we perceive so much more. We live on the quantum edge - of reality, of living, of experiencing, of perceiving, of existing.

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