Where to Find Real Experts for Sports Injury Advice Online

This is the Performance Place Sports Care Podcast, session number 38. You sound like you're from London. Welcome to the Performance Place Sports Care Podcast, where you can learn about sports injury theory, rehab, diagnosis, and how to understand the doctor lingo you didn't understand at your appointment. And now, your host, Dr. Sebastian Gonzales. Hey, everyone. It's Dr. Sebastian Gonzales with the Performance Place Sports Care Podcast. Again, this is the place where you can come to hear a bunch of topics that are relevant to sports injuries, as well as how to rehab them, as well as figuring out what the heck your doctor was talking about when you went in there and he threw a bunch of mumbo-jumbo at you in terminology. You didn't understand any of the stuff he's talking about. I remember, actually, when I took my dog in one time that the vet was talking about, stuff that was, I mean, I thought I would really understand exactly what she was talking about, but I think after about two hours, and two hours by meaning, it was a very detailed exam. My dog had a C, not ACL, but CLC, I think, of a dog. It's analogous to the knee. My dog had an injury to the knee, so I really wanted to understand this, but gosh, after about two hours, she was throwing so much information at me and so much good stuff. Not bad at all. Really, really good stuff. I had to go home and just lay down. I could not understand or digest any of it, and I wish she had stopped at around the 15-minute mark, and I would just come back the next time. This podcast is intended for people like me who cannot go to the vet or go to the doctors and understand what the heck is going on because there's just too much information.

So today's podcast is just going to be me. I've had a bunch of guests in the past. By the way, if you have not subscribed on iTunes, please do so and review it for me. The more you review and the more you share, actually, the more this becomes prevalent and searchable on iTunes. I don't know if everyone knows that, how search works on iTunes. So shameless plug right there, but please do subscribe and share with friends because it helps me get a little bit higher in sharing my information with you guys. So it's a win-win. But so today's was actually, it was actually a podcast I wanted to do about a week ago, passionately, passionately. And when this happened in the morning, I about lost my mind. I almost thought about going for a run before work, which I didn't have time, but I kind of wanted to do it just to make sure my head was clear. I couldn't think about anything but this. And to this, I guess I'm going to title the podcast, Where Have All the Authorities or Experts Gone?

Because when we're looking on the internet now, how do we know who's actually the expert and who has, who's actually just BSing us? And for all you guys know, I'm the one who's BSing you guys. And I actually don't know anything. Hopefully, I do know something. And hopefully, you can tell by now, if you've listened to all the other podcasts, that I don't really edit these too much. And hopefully, I do know all my terminology. And at least, I don't like bashing a bunch of different types of treatments and care. But I do believe that everyone should be educated about what types are out there. So anyways, back to the expert thing. This is the story of how this came to my attention was that, so one morning, I absolutely could not sleep. I got up around, I think around four. I usually get up around 630 or so. So I had a couple hours that I just had to kill. And I went on to YouTube, which is where a lot of my content and free videos are. And I get a lot of people that ask me questions.

And I've not really done a good job in the past of narrowing down like having 10 videos in a row of knee conditions, or only focusing on shoulder conditions or so on. So because of that, when I actually answer a lot of these questions, I mean, I get one that's on a hip, I get another one that's on a lady that fell and slipped and she hurt her ankle. I get other ones where people are talking about how I look like Christian Bale. I mean, I get stuff all over the map. So I woke up that morning and I had like 60 comments that I was going to comment back to. So by the end of it all, like I was thinking, gosh, like I wish I was able to concentrate on one topic this morning. One specific population of person or of athlete and one type of injury. It'd be nice to only do runners and knees only because it's easier to give good information that way, I think, because my mind was just being pulled all over the place.

Kind of like when you're talking to somebody and then you keep getting texts by other people, you can't hold a really good conversation because your attention is not in one spot. So anyways, I thought, you know what, where do you, where can I go where I actually get only one type of person or one type of athlete and hopefully one type of condition, or at least I can screen what I'm going to answer. And I thought, hey, why don't I just go to a forum? And if you haven't been to a forum before, there's bodybuilding forums, there's runners forums, there's backpacking forums, there's stuff all over the place. And I'm sure that if you have a hobby, you've searched how to do X, Y, and Z, or you've had a condition or a shoulder issue with maybe throwing a javelin. I mean, it could be anything.

And you'll eventually find a forum on something. So I did. I went and found a forum. And from here on out, I was just searching, searching for something that was catching my interest that I really wanted to answer. And so I found someone with an ankle condition. And this just happened to be a running one. So this person was talking about how they were not able to, how they had a race coming up in about a month or so. They wonder if they should continue training, what should they do? They've been to their doctor, blah, blah, blah. So I kind of took this as an instance where I could just give a little bit of wisdom, maybe. Because I've seen enough people with ankle or Achilles conditions of that sport.

Why don't I just give them a little bit of information? Because at this point, five weeks till the event, they don't need any quick fix or anything like that. They need to know where their head's at. So I basically just answered, hey, look, here's my experience of working with people like this. Here's some things that typically do work, but it could take a little bit of time. You're probably not going to have time for a taper if you're trying to taper and so on. I left it at that and pretty much said, hey, if you have more questions, feel free to reach out to me. Didn't provide any links. Didn't push anything at all.

So from that, and I'm holding back from some words on this because I was infuriated at the time. And since then, since over last week, I do now see both sides. So, but the next person that comments on it actually, so they usually get, usually get on your email, they'll, they'll link you up to the person that's talking on that thread or someone that answers or someone that responds to your comment or whatever. So not even like a couple minutes later, I got, I got an email saying, hey, someone responding to your comment. I said, cool, great, cool. This is exactly what I wanted. Just a nice little form where everyone can, you know, help somebody out and so on. But it wasn't that. It was actually someone saying, I can't believe this doctor is spamming our forums. And I thought, holy heck, I thought I gave this person really good advice. And I can't help it if I have a credential behind my name. And by the way, since I have a credential behind my name, wouldn't I be giving better information and more valued information than somebody who just maybe does taxes for a living? By the way, nothing against tax or CPA or EAs. Two of my best friends are, are CPAs. So I would never respect what they said about their injuries because I've talked to them at length. But by God, I really call them about tax stuff all the time. I was blown away by this guy making this absolutely just rude comment about my giving information to someone who I thought was in need. So I kind of pushed back a little bit and said, what was so wrong with what I said? You know, like, how did I spam you guys? How did I make this a terrible forum to be in just by me responding?

And he basically said in so many words, like, doctors come on here and spam and they're trying to get business and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, it's unwanted. It's unwanted solicitation. And I was thinking about the things all I had on there. Actually, I had that usually they have this signature, signature, which basically is it goes on to your posts and it basically says who you are, something about you. And then it reminds me of like the like on emails. So on emails, I have mine as my credentials, my website. And basically, if someone were to if they needed to reach back to me, they could. So I had this on there. No other links, no other, no other solicitation of any type.

And that's the response I got. So I actually reached out to the mediator of the forum, because usually there's somebody who kind of mediates what's going on and make sure that everyone gets along, because apparently, people don't always get along in these. And I could totally feel that. So I asked them, like, what are what's the criteria of responding in these forums? And the guy basically said, you know, we don't we don't have the ability to check someone's credentials. So you can't say your credentials, you have to respond as a fellow hobbyist or athlete. And, you know, my response to that is that I, you know, if I wanted to go to a tax forum, and if I wanted credible tax information, I want someone who's a CPA to respond. That's, that's who I absolutely want. I don't want a peer. And if I was coming on to this forum, and I had an ankle injury, I don't want everybody else's how this is how this injury went for me. I mean, I kind of want it. Actually, I'm lying. I kind of want it. But I want really a game plan. I personally don't go on to places just to talk about it. I don't go into forums and post things there just to talk about it. I want to be able to figure something out. And I figure that's the reason why everybody's on there. So with that being said, they said, they said they couldn't really vouch for people's credentials. And you can, you actually can. And I don't know how this other, another forum called Quora, I think is what it's called. Q-U-O-R-A, I think. But I think they have it where they've, where they designate actually people who have been proven to be credentialed to answer questions. And I think that's awesome.

Absolutely awesome. And in response to, I guess, like, I, this forum that I was on, I don't know if I'm going to respond on it ever again. And the sad thing is, and I know it's me having an issue with probably someone calling me names and so on. But realistically, I spent like an hour on this forum responding to things because I had some free time. I actually wanted to relax and just write some content specifically to people and help people just get out some good karma. And as a result, I don't doubt that those comments will be taken down. So it's almost like it reminds me of all the times where I was spent, where I spent writing new articles for my, for my website. And there was one time where actually I lost only a couple, it was only a couple of pages, but my Mac crashed. And I lost a few pages of this article, article that I was writing. And, and if you've read any of the articles on my, on my website, you'll know that at the bottom, majority of them have a ton of references. Some of them have 50 plus references on them. So one page of content or two pages of content, it's not just writing random stuff. It's writing stuff that has valid backing. And I had to digest other content from other research articles to put in this article so you guys can get it really easy.

And that was the whole point of why I redesigned the website in the first place. So losing an hour of my life writing to something, it makes me feel as an expert, I don't want to put my advice on that forum anymore, which devalues the forum. So again, back to the original topic, what I thought would be a good concept for this podcast is where have the experts gone? Because if they're not posting on these forums, because they're not allowed to say the same things, or by the way, I retract a little bit because after clarifying with the mediator or the moderator, they did say, you can say your comments or you can say exactly what you said, except for you can't have credentials after them and you can't designate that you're trying, that you're really anybody of any, of any education. So by the way, I don't know if that forum is listening to this at all, but I'm not bashing on you guys at all.

I'm suggesting, I think that all the forums that say they don't have a way to credential people, I think you should. I think you should find a way. And I know that if someone was looking for a license for an attorney, is this license still up, is it still being upheld? Is it still in good standing? Is there any claims against it? You can search all this kind of stuff and you can do it with our profession as well. I don't know how it is with other types of, I'm guessing real estate, you probably could. CPAs, you probably can. Anyone with a professional license, you can look up their credentials. And I know it's more footwork. And for the, I mean, I know that I've gone on to Airbnb and they want what, two forms of ID, I think. They want you to have X amount of Facebook friends to be able to like stay at someone's house. But we could possibly do the same with these forums. If you want to be able to include your credentials, because do you think it'll be more useful for people to listen to what you have to say, then I think there should be a way to submit them. Or here's another idea.

Anyone who's listening to this who actually reads a forum, just why don't you contact the forum or the website of the place that hosts the forum and ask them or tell them what, who your expert is. And again, this is not just to get me on a forum. Um, I don't know if I'll do that anymore at all anyways. Um, just because, uh, for, well, for multiple reasons now, but, uh, I think mainly everybody should call or email them and say you like, you know, say you like Joe Smith, say we're into like a strength conditioning forum and everyone likes coach Joe Smith. Joe Smith might answer on there and it never really gets posted or validated. And I think whatever, with everybody calling in and saying, or emailing in and contacting them and saying they like coach, coach Smith, I think it'd be extremely helpful that they will put coach Smith's responses to the top of the food chain on those forums. Okay. I'm going to say that again. I think everyone should email the forum of their choosing and designate their own expert. And obviously we might not know who the heck Joe Smith is. Maybe only one person nominates him, but there could be a bunch of people that nominates him. And for that reason, we're going to get Joe Smith's information way up high so he can help more and more people. So back to the original topic, where have the experts actually gone? Cause I know that I've actually gone to seminars. That's where I like to see people who, um, I wouldn't necessarily call them experts, but they definitely have good ideas. Um, and I like to see the people with innovative ideas like new stuff. Um, a lot of the people that I watch are, um, at strength conditioning types of, uh, seminars. I watch them at symposiums for, uh, sports medicine. There's multiple places and multiple different types of degrees that I like to learn from. Um, but I, I can recall one person and, and I'm not going to name any names with this because, um, he's, he's a good guy, but he's been around for a little while. And I, every time I hear him talk, I think, ah, I hope it, I hope it's something different. I want, I want it to be something different. I want it to be something new, innovative, and I don't even care if it's wrong. I don't care if it's wrong at all. I want to, I want to see that there's gears spinning in there, that someone is not stuck in time from presenting the same thing from 20 years ago, because it happens a lot. I want to hear new things. I want to hear current research. And actually one of my favorite presenters at one of these, uh, symposiums or, uh, uh, seminars was, uh, a good friend of mine. His name is Jerry, uh, Jeremy Summer. He's, uh, he was working with USA Fencing at the time. I'm trying to get him on here to talk about actually some shoulder conditions. Let's see if he does. Um, but he did a great one and it was a very non-biased opinion. It was based upon current research, research for shoulder conditions, which is why I would really love to hear him talk about shoulder conditions because he basically just presented the most up-to-date information that we have out there. And that, although he might not have been the person that's been the expert for the past 20 years, in my eyes, he had some good information and good, good research. Oh my gosh. Like I was blown away with some of the stuff that he actually put up there. It was amazing. Another place where you can find some experts actually that I would consider, um, I consider them experts because they know their material well enough where they can put it on video. I would say YouTube and granted there are some terrible things on YouTube. There are some terrible information on YouTube, but at least you can see how many people agree and disagree with these people by the likes and dislikes. Okay. And you can probably check my videos too. How many people like it and hate it and so on. And it's not about the views anymore. It's mainly about how many people like it, how many people comment on it, uh, and seeing how high it's being posted or how, how high it ranks. And I've actually found some really good content buried, absolutely buried in the information.

Um, I was looking at one the other night for, uh, complications with IV contrast, which I will talk about in a completely different, uh, podcast and probably a YouTube video as well. Whole side story. I won't even go into at this moment, but there was some great information, great information. And so I think just the fact that some of these people can teach and you can tell by the confidence in their words, if they know their stuff or not. And you can see by the comments below, are they answering people intelligently? I think these are very, very good indicators that someone knows their stuff or not. Now, is there stuff valid or not? Maybe not, but I would still consider them someone of valid content because they're putting something out there, which now we can decide all the other peers can decide all the other patients and athletes can decide and see if it works for them. Naturally, I think the better stuff will filter through and eventually we'll get to see what the terrible results might be of one certain type of technique or one certain type of methodology of treating a certain condition. Now, another place that I think is very good for finding experts is going to be podcasts, obviously. And that has nothing to do with this show at all, but I know that my eyes were really opened up about a year or so ago to podcasts and it wasn't just in the sports injury world. It was more about, um, it was more about podcasting. Honestly, I listened to podcasts about content sharing and I've learned so many good things on it, but one thing I really did recognize through that was that some of the people that I listened to on podcasts were absolutely terrible on, uh, websites or they didn't really produce a lot of text or copy content. They didn't write a lot of things and other people were absolutely terrible at videos and some are great at all of them. But people digest information differently. And I think some, someone that speaks well doesn't necessarily go on camera well. Um, I had a great, uh, colleague that used to rent space for me here.

Um, he did very well with his patients. Um, everybody was super excited, uh, to, uh, with the results that he had with them. Um, but I remember the one day where he's like, Hey, Seb, you do a lot of videos and I see that there's a lot of activity on those videos. Can you help me make one? I'm like, yeah, sure. Let's get the camera. Let's do it. So all we wanted was an introduction at the time. Hi, my name is blah, blah, blah. Right. So we put them in a chair right there, put the cameras on, put the lights on and just waited. I kid you not, I'm not making this up. He had about 45 minutes of not being able to get one sentence out before laughing. And he looked like he was a zombie on camera, but in real life, he's the most charismatic guy that I've met in a long time. And patients loved him for that.

And he knew his stuff extremely well, but just could not get it out on camera. Um, stage fright, I guess that would be. So I think podcasting is an awesome way. And you might not find the same people on podcasts you do on YouTube or on written form or anything, or anything like that. Now back to the written form. And this is the last place, I guess, where you'd probably find your experts. And I guess the way I would explain this is based upon what I know from how web pages rank now. And obviously someone that does SEO or does some type of, uh, that knows all about those algorithms might say, Oh, I'm a little bit wrong. But for the most part, this is how I understand it first. So everybody knows that Wikipedia is one of the highest. So if you look up what a microphone is, you're going to find probably Wikipedia first. And the reason for that is because everybody references it. And number one, I guess this doesn't make this great content, but it does make it does make it an authority. So usually when someone has good content, when it becomes viral, viral, good content is something that will rank higher. And also two things that people share that they share in social media usually ranks higher as well. Obviously the things like, you know, cats being afraid of cucumbers and, you know, bunnies, bunnies being bathed in sinks, like they, they rank high too, you know, it's, it's not the same type of con, uh, content, but there, there's multiple, there, there's more factors now in Google and these ranking, uh, these search engines that they screen out really, really bad content. So if you see someone's content consistently being at the top, it might not be the most technical stuff, but it's the, it's usually some of the more valid stuff. Um, WebMD is usually high up there, although everybody seems to not love it nowadays, but they do have some good content.

I don't know if they update their pages, uh, extremely often, but it seems like a lot of people do reference them. Um, but also too, now there is a ranking factor, which is more of word, uh, word count and also how long you make the article. Here's an example. So I have an article right now that I wrote on knee conditions for runners and knee conditions. I used to actually write, I'd write an article on the IT band syndrome. Then I read another article, another webpage on runner's knee, then another on meniscal tears. And you see where I'm going with this. So I'd have multiple, multiple webpages.

Now I make the best darn webpage that I possibly can. I link it to the best research that I possibly can and put the best images that are the easiest to understand that I possibly can. For this reason, hopefully everyone sees that it's good content and they share it. And also too, when they share it, it provides backlinks. Okay. So most of the best content, like let's say, let's go back to Wikipedia example. Again, the best content is shared and it's linked to. So although there are exceptions to these rules, obviously like people who produce great content, they have not done great work to get people to link to them. But a lot of times you get some of the best content out there. Like I noticed one in the lifting world is called strength theory, strength theory.com. Man, one of my friends send that stuff viral to me and like over and over again, like multiple times a week sometimes. And it's great content. And I see that the amount of detail that he spent on learning how to squat. And he went into so much detail and the leverage and the angles and the muscles and all this stuff and different setups.

It was great. And I cannot find, actually, I found one more place that was actually good too. But a lot, I have a hard time finding places that are even parallel or even close to the level of comprehension that he put into this one article. So I guess our resources now. So we're going to say podcast or one way, like, pull one place to find experts, seminars, YouTube, copy text, or that is Google searches. And I would say currently, I'd say lastly, forums. So if you're looking for some self-help on forums, just remember the story that I told you. Okay. I, again, I'm not trying to bash on the forums at all. I'm just trying to present a solution to a problem because there are a lot of people that go to forums looking for solutions. And I remember way back in the day when I was, uh, God, this probably is almost 10 years ago. I don't remember how I got on Yahoo Answers, but gosh, I cannot believe the amount of people on Yahoo Answers asking questions. You know, and again, I don't know the validity of the people who are answering them, but, um, they did have one thing on there, which was interesting to rank. Uh, uh, actually YouTube has this as well. They, they rank the comments with one of the best comments. And on there they had, uh, people would vote for it. There was like a 24 or 36 hour window where you'd have, people are answering these questions and then people would vote for which is the best and valid answer. Hopefully they weren't voting for like the most comical one. Obviously there's a hard way to screen the, uh, the election type of, uh, or voting and so on. But YouTube has the same thing. They have thumbs up to be able to see which is the best comment. So these are the places where I would suggest you go to check out experts. Um, and hopefully you find some information that helps you out. So this again was the performance-based sports care podcast. If you not have not found it, or you're listening to it on someone's website, cause some people do embed it. You can find it on, on, uh, uh, iTunes. And I did have a client who said, how do I, how do I review this thing? I don't see anywhere. I'm like, well, you're listening to it on someone else's website. So you got to go to iTunes. You got to review it there. You got to subscribe there as well. So if you're trying to contact me, go on to my website. That is P2. That is the number P2 sports is plural care.com. So again, P2 sports care.com. Um, there's tons of information on the site and I'm currently probably not the top of search engines right now, but, um, I'm trying to really improve these pages. The content is there right now, but I really do have to work on, um, I'm currently working on some really good infographics or graphics where it's easy to understand, um, the condition or the pathology that we're speaking about on that page. Um, I currently just had one, uh, completed on sports hernias the other day, so I've yet to upload that. Um, but it's going to be, it might be on by the time you listen to this, but I have one of the longest web pages you've probably ever seen on sports hernias. Uh, and I'm going to do a couple, uh, videos on it as well, but, but anyways, so I'm trying to rank higher as well.

So if you do have something that you, that you like, please share it and put it on Pinterest, put it on Facebook. Uh, these all really help out, get some of the best content to the surface. Um, and also too, if you see some good content on someone else's page, please share with me. Um, you can find me on Facebook as well. So my handle is at performance HB. If you need to contact us again, p2sportscare.com. And if you have an expert or question, leave their contact on our page. There's a voicemail button right in the center. So I appreciate you guys listening. And again, I don't intend any malice on the places that I spoke about. That's why I left all the names out too, um, to protect them as well. So talk to you guys soon and take care.