THE HUMAN SPRING APPROACH TO
THORACIC OUTLET SYNDROME

by Dr James Stoxen DC., FSSEMM (hon) FWSSEM

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Dr. Robert Goldman, MD, PhD, DO, FAASP

Top celebrity entertainers and the rich and famous all agree that Dr. Stoxen has “magic in his hands.” Many consider him a wizard, and others say it is as if he has extrasensory perception (ESP) in the way he is able to predict where problems lie, even before the first sign of pain. Well, he doesn’t have ESP, he’s not really a wizard, and he can’t pull a rabbit out of a hat.

The secret to why he is the top requested doctor on the international lecture circuit at medical conferences, why he zigzags the globe treating A-list actors to top recording artists, elite athletes, and the rich and famous of the world, is because of the new approach you are about to learn from this book.

In 2002, I sustained a severe back injury during a workout in Australia. What scared me was I started developing herniated disc symptoms. I later found out I had a herniated disc that was so bad, it led to a severely pinched sciatic nerve in my lower back, causing severe lower back pain, numbness, and sciatica leg pain. I couldn’t sleep for days. The combination of no sleep, a herniated disc, a pinched nerve causing constant numbness and severe sciatic pain make me think surgery may help.

What’s worse was that this bulging disc was pinching the deeper portion of the nerve (the motor portion). I had developed a form of foot paralysis that is called a “drop foot or foot drop paralysis.” A drop foot gait is an abnormality in the pattern of walk called foot slapping gait or drop foot gait. This is where a person has a foot dragging due to severe damage to the sciatic nerve and/or the peroneal nerve of the leg.

Normally, there is no foot drop treatment. Usually an individual is rushed into spine surgery.

On top of the severe lower back condition, I had extreme neck and shoulder pain. I started to feel right arm tingling and numbness and the tingling sensation kept me up at night. When I looked in the mirror, I noted a general muscle mass decrease and, specifically, muscle atrophy in my shoulder and chest area. I had a severe case of thoracic outlet syndrome.

I had heard that Dr. Stoxen made several trips to the former Soviet Union to study the work of famed sports scientist, Yuri Verkhoshansky, the father of modern plyometrics. Doctors and scientists told me he had developed a new model based on Verkhoshansky’s research that was reversing severely herniated discs and thoracic outlet syndromes, so went to see him.

For more than 30 years we have been teaching doctors that the human body is designed to move with a series of levers. We examine you by asking you to bend and twist, while checking range of motion of your injured area.

Then, in 2002, Dr. Stoxen made this bold statement that it’s impossible by the laws of physics and nature for the body ONLY to move as a series of levers. He proved to the medical community that the way the body moves, protects itself from impacts, recycles energy, and, most important, how it’s engineered to open spaces and tunnels for the safe passage of blood vessels and nerves can only be accomplished with spring engineering. In a sense, the human body is engineered as a lever system and a spring.

Verkhoshansky’s new plyometric approach to training involves putting the body through impacts, and strengthening the body’s spring mechanisms has become a game changer. Dr. Stoxen’s new model of studying the body as a spring and examining and treating the human body as a spring based on Verkhoshansky’s research has become a game changer in medicine.

When your nerves are pinched in your lower back, and your blood vessels and nerves are pinched in your thoracic tunnel, you hope that his theory and treatment approach will work. You are hoping for a miracle, because you are not supposed to recover from foot drop and the amount of nerve damage in your upper body from thoracic outlet syndrome.

In less than four weeks, his human spring approach completely reversed both the herniated disc in my lower back and the thoracic outlet syndrome. My back pain, paralysis of my leg, neck pain, upper back pain, shoulder pain, and the thoracic outlet syndrome were all gone. I have been training with the exercises listed in this book for the past 15 years with absolutely no exacerbations.

You probably expect that medical doctors and chiropractors don’t see eye to eye. The fact that Dr. Stoxen is a chiropractic physician addressing the world’s medical elite at major teaching institutions, hospitals, and associations is something truly unique. Dr. Stoxen’s approach to understanding how the human body moves and protects itself is revolutionary.

Regardless of where doctors got their degree, doctors and patients come to realize the integrated spring mass model—aka the human spring model—is the most advanced model of human mechanics in the world today. This new, extraordinary approach to examining and treating the human body as a spring, instead of a lever, has spurred breakthroughs in medicine, fitness, and overall health.

This new model and the approach have made Dr. Stoxen one of the most sought-after speakers in the medical world today. With every lecture, he puts this new model and approach on the line in front of live audiences of medical doctors, with doctors from every specialty of medicine, including neurosurgeons, orthopedic surgeons, and other spine specialists.

Once doctors and patients understand the human spring model and the information featured in this book, no one will look at the early detection, treatment, and prevention of thoracic outlet syndrome the same way again.

I’m one of Dr. Stoxen’s many thoracic outlet syndrome recovery stories and one of the only foot drop recovery stories I have heard of in my 40 years in medicine. It changed my life. I am confident that understanding how your body works, using the human spring model and the human spring treatment approach, you can effectively reverse your thoracic outlet syndrome.

Dr. Robert Goldman, MD, PhD, DO, FAASP