Because of Dr. Fortier-Bensen’s continual interest in improving the lives of his patients, some of the patient requesting his services and continuing care have been athletes, high school Collegiate, Olympic, and Professional. For many of these athletes, they are dependent on the trainers, physical therapists and orthopedic physicians who remain in a very conservative let see what happens. They wait until an injured muscle or ligament, really tears and then they will do surgery. Some athletes are told by their orthopedic surgeon that the injury is non-operative, but their trainer or family physician has little to offer to help. In other words, they are not injured enough to receive surgical repair, but can’t get to 90% or better in functioning. They are stuck. Or, they are given anti-inflammatory medicine or injections which do nothing for repair, and it may even decrease repair abilities! Those athletes who are able to think “out of the box”, search for other options to help them remain optimal, and repair their injuries faster and more completely so they can remain competitive. Some of the treatment they have found to be successful has been acupuncture, prolotherapy, myofascial release, nutritional medicine and orthopedic medicine ,as well as homeopathy.

Recently, Dr. Fortier-Bensen has been using some additional techniques to assist athletes, but these are available to us mere mortals too. These are techniques learned in France by the French physicians who use Mesotherapie for professional athletes in France.

Mesotherapie like prolotherapy, are all tools, and like the artist it requires God given talent to use these techniques to help patients.

One must understand the natural progression of musculoskeletal dysfunction, joint degeneration and the cascade of events which occurs when a body is injured. Dr. Fortier-Bensen studied Pilates in the early nineties. He was taught by Pat Guyton who learned under Ron Fletcher, Dr. Pilates’ protégé. He has studied Egoscue, Bowen method, and other such structuralists as Janda. He has attended chiropractic, osteopathic, and physical therapy/trainer conferences to learn who exactly to send athletes and us weekend warriors to, in order to get an idea of what is needed to rehabilitate injuries.

The ability to see how the body “falls apart” or how it’s physical constitutional and inheritances affect our ability to move is very subtle and not easily appreciated. Simply being born with flat feet or high arches can change the body dynamic easily as an architect or a contractor could readily see in a building. We do have a plumb line in all our construction that must not be ignored or dysfunction occurs and our body will loyally compensate until it can do no more and then often it collapses. How the body stands against gravity is a marvelous feat of architecture!

Certain muscles are generally ignored by the public and these are sometimes the most telling of how excellent the body compensates. Remember when a patient finally comes to see a physician, it is usually a reluctant action, and about a long ignored problem. The problem took a long time to develop and will often take some time to resolve, sometime even up to two years to return to a more functional level.