Lately I’ve been listening to the BBM podcast and I’ve ran into the interesting topic of red flag symptoms,
in one of the podcasts Jordan stated that general pain, soreness and stiffness is generally not worrisome as longs as it’s not accompanied by red flag symptoms.
I’ve been following BBM for quite a while and taken the nuanced approach to pain management into my own life many many times.
(also I’m extremely thankful for both the programs you provide and the podcast)
I experience pain quite often and I get less and less “freaked out” by common and acute injuries I pick up on during training.
But this question has always been in the back of my mind, what are these red flag symptoms? I understand this is a complicated and nuanced subject so I’m not expecting
a full blown list but just a general direction or signs that an injury might need to be taken seriously.
Hey talarbatov - unfortunately this will be difficult to provide an answer without context. Overall, red flag symptoms are subjective (reported to us) or objective (we found via some type of examination or investigation) that increases our likelihood for suspecting a particular ongoing issue that necessitates a particular intervention. For context, new onset low back accompanied with fever, unintentional weight loss, progressively worsening neurological symptoms, bowel/bladder dysfunction, post-trauma like motor vehicle accident or high fall, etc. Any one of these related variables may spike our suspicion for wanting to investigate further. For low back pain, generally speaking these are rare instances (1-4% of cases) and outside of these scenarios further investigation is usually not recommended. In essence, when consulting on a case we formulate a differential diagnosis list and begin factoring related variables (perhaps red flags) into the equation to decide if we investigate further to rule in/out a particular diagnostic label to begin a specific intervention. Hopefully that provides some clarity.
Hi, thanks a lot for the detailed replay, this has answered my question for the most part, I hope to understand this issue a bit further as my training goes on since for almost every “new” injury I have this small thought that “this might be different” and that maybe these symptoms are “red flags”.
Again I appreciate the replay and the time you took to answer me.