On the other hand, when people ‘complete’ treatment, and the treated structures are strong enough to handle typical loads, these structures continue to be symptom free unless a.) re-injured or b.) the patient’s ‘maintenance healing system’ is not working.  How do we know that we have reached this point?  The treated structures cease to cause any of the symptoms for which the patient sought treatment, AND these structures are FREE OF TENDERNESS.  Toward the end of the treatment course, symptoms may be INTERMITTENT (meaning you might not have any for a week or two), but some of the structures are still tender, and they are waiting to punish you if you pull on them in just the ‘right’ way.   Toward the end of a course of treatment, some structures will become non-tender (load-bearing) before others.  We do not treat these structures, only the ones that continue to be tender.  And, from this point, very soon all structures will become non-tender.  This is one of the principles that ‘makes sense’ in light of understanding the actual mechanism of the pain, and the treatment.  And this is one of the main reasons that we have so many 100% ‘pain free’ patients following our treatments…who STAY pain free.