Took kid to PT for her back - spasms & Trps - hmmm upper back and lower back. I thought she was just complaining to get out of classes - me bad.

The PT who I think seemed to be pretty well informed on all things body related noted hypermobility right off the bat.
and explained how it can be a cause of troubles.
I was impressed by her overall knowledge, she also explained what she was doing and testing and the results as she went along.
Dang I wish I had found & gone to this dr and PT at the start of my RSI troubles!!

PT asked if we were German?? Yes- prob 80% for me and 70% for hubby- so kid is high % too.

This PT is into study of genetics,ancestry and body types etc.
it seems German types may have longer rib cages?
and she said the German upper body structure reacts often by knotting up "potato knots" she called it

tried to google but not coming up with the right search terms to find related info on the subject.

anyway it made me wonder as to if anyone here with TOS - does your ancestry include a predominate amount of German or near German bloodlines??

OOoo I've always wondered about this.

I'm 1/2 German (Father 100%German) and I have his skelatal structure.

He grew up in the depression and his parents were VERY old when they had him...so there are no medical records from those times. No 'family stories' to suggest TOS...but I have a picture of his Mother at about age 65 and she's got the 'potato shoulders'. They were all very hard workers.

Mother's side is Welch.

I will strive to keep a closer watch on my daughter's complaints and remind them of how TOS starts out. I've complained much about the bookbags.

Anne

Hmmmm....interesting........My mother's maiden name is a very common German last name.

wow, i am only a small part german but my 14yo is half (like bio dad has a german passport half)

chiro said she has tight neck and shoulders....I should keep up with that treatment for her.

thanks for the insight, jo

Johanna

Jokat -If you are still seeing superjoyce PT - I wonder if she has insight or thoughts on this.

johanna,

my maternal grandfather was 100% german american.

george keller, son of gandy mom and gandy pop from ze olde country...

he married a norman/english gal name of helen torrey (yes that's right, people, her married name was [drumroll, please.......................] helen keller!) she died, sadly, at the tender age of 34 of TB, i think it was. my mother was a small child of only 4. she (my mom) had horrible "back problems" from what little i remember of her (she abandoned ship in 1961, i'm sorry to report).

everyone else on both sides were a bunch of interbred puritan WASP's going back to the mayflower.

boy, there were a lot of people on that boat. (everyone from back east claims to have ancestry going back to that ship! no small wonder it didn't sink mid-crossing.)

they were all certainly uptight enough to have had major neck, shoulder and back issues. would have totally lied about any german blood, though, because that was neither patriotic nor fashionable in new england where we hailed from.

i think their bodily issues could have been from the sticks up their arses, however .

hardworking puritan ancestry, fleeing from the anglican church, survivng that brutal first winter on the cape, quite a visual i must say. thanks for that.

the german side all immigrated to rochester, NY. judging from the given name of the patriarch, which was jean baptiste, it was probably an area of germany geographically close to the french or belgian border (or swiss?) i am bad at geography and too lazy to get a map out right now. anyway, rochester used to be the "flour" capital of america and subsequently became the "flower" capital of america. jean baptiste was a florist by trade.

most of his 5 sons became engineers; they all went to cornell - wasn't an ivy league school back in those days, just where you went to become an engineer, johanna, and ithaca of course is not too far a stone's throw from rochester (i don't think it is anyway, but i'm a linquist, not a geographer).

thought you would appreciate the engineer thing anyway.

my dad and two of his three brothers also went to cornell for engineering. which is neither here nor there as far as the german thing goes.

now there's a WHOLE thing about PA and german american immigrants we could get into, if you really want to get weird and eerie in respect of TOS! but i'm not goin' there today.

i'll leave that for mark and/or dimarie...

thanks for this thread. it is very interesting and something i hadn't thought about in years, actually. one of the first chiros i went to back in the mid-70's when this TOS monster first struck me was down on the subject of a genetic connection in terms of the muscular bracing, the amount of physical activity our "stock" was designed for, having to work to survive the hard life of a farmer and stuff like that there.

it must be a terrible burden on you being the smartest person in the room

i'm just kidding, you know i love you,

alison

Wow,

Very interesting... My Grandparents (Dad's side) came from Germany... So I am 50% German.. Mom is Finish so 50% Scandinavian.

Ok I am 1/2 english and 1/2 pollack....my momsays tha brains are from the polish side. So am I the exception to the rule....like always

It's OK shelley, we still love you

i just realized i have committed a grave wrong which needs correcting.

ahem.

i gave the wrong jo credit for starting this fascinating thread.

jo55, my hat's off to you, and my nazi side salutes you with boot's properly spitshined and egg on ze face. heil~

if i am 25% german can i still be found 100% TOS disabled. that is my question for the hour. ponder this and get back to me posthaste! (i have no litigation pending whatsoever mind you, i just like to ***** with peoples' heads.)

...und vhere vere your during ze var, zhen?

johanna's still the smartest person in the room and it really ****** me off.

she's such a punk...

this is off topic, maybe not as much as you would think at first glance...

i think we never talked much about the german ancestry in my family because there was a deep shame attached to it in this country, starting around the time of the first world war. (then after a certain point, like i posted earlier, my mom did a "board fade" and we lost touch with that whole side of the family. such a pity.)

few people realize that german americans were horribly discriminated against in america. some were even interred (sp?), much as as the japanese americans were here in CA, during the second world war, had their businesses burned to the ground, or were run out of town in an atmosphere of hatred - even though many had been in this country for well over 100 years, as my great grandparents had been. disgraceful part of our history, and typical that our textbooks, largely written and published out of the east, are silent about it.

you don't hear much about righteous gentiles, either, i notice, unless you go looking.

but i wouldn't wish TOS on the most cold-hearted nazi walking the face of this earth. that's just how i feel about it.

getting back to the point i came dangerously close to making above, i wonder sometimes about the personality type of the "typical" TOS'er (i happen to think there is one, just an observation, a personal opinion if you will) and how much that plays into the development of the syndrome.

character traits and belief systems like perfectionism, obsessiveness, compulsivity, feelings of being driven, the puritan work ethic, performance-based, goal-oriented behaviors, shame-based family systems, all of it. i just wonder about it.

(now, why does such a large percentage of that stuff sound kinda germanic to me? also, sorta stiff upper lippy, though....veddy, veddy british. right-e-o! tennis, anyone? ouch, too one-sided, hurts to even think about. oy...)

do we have any asians on the TOS forum, ever? just a question

alison