Dr. Abhinav Gautam, MD has an innovative new fascia based treatment to target musculoskeletal pain that involves the hydration and release of the connective tissue layers.

Nuoro Wellness

With recent notable back injuries plaguing the PGA Tour, the health of golfers’ lower backs and soft tissue has been in the spotlight for the past few years.

Players like Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, and Tiger Woods have pulled out of tournaments, sought treatment plans, and undergone surgery in an effort to alleviate back pain and return to full functionality.

“I had six broken ribs and they had to plate four of them, so it took a while for that to heal—for all the muscle and the tissue to kind of start to integrate with the titanium plates they put on.”

Source: Golf Channel

While many treatment plans focus on physical therapy or orthopedic surgery, Abhinav Gautam, MD, of Nuoro Wellness focuses on muscle fascia and is producing notable results.

“When it’s functioning properly, we are kind of not aware of it. If you rewind back to how you hit golf balls when you were a kid, there is this complete freedom to move how you want. But when you get into your 30s, 40s, and 50s, you start to become more aware of what your body is having difficulty doing,” Gautam said. “People then accept this as the new status quo.”

Fascia is a fibrous connective tissue that overlays and separates muscle bundles. Inelasticity in the fascia can be associated with movement restriction and pain.

According to the Nuoro Wellness website: Fascia is the body’s integrative tissue—a continuous, connective network that links muscles, bones, nerves, and organs into a single, coordinated system. It shapes how force moves through the body, influences how fluid every action feels, and plays a key role in how well you recover from stress or strain.

“The fascia of the back has a technical name—the thoracolumbar fascia—and this layer is the central force-transfer hub between the glutes, lats, core, and spine. When it’s healthy and force is distributed efficiently, you’re unaware of it,” Gautam said. “When it’s dysfunctional, the tissues start to become stiff and dehydrated, the layers lose glide, and force becomes concentrated in the lower back.”

For decades, fascia remained one of the least explored areas in musculoskeletal medicine. Research now shows that it contains up to ten times more sensory receptors than muscle, making it a major contributor to balance, stability, and pain perception. When this network is healthy, movement is efficient and joints are naturally protected. When it becomes dehydrated or fibrotic, muscles begin to compensate and recovery slows—often long before anything appears on scans.

Treatment with Nuoro Wellness is broken down into three areas:

1. NuoroFlow Diagnostics
2. Restart Procedures
3. Restore

NuoroFlow Diagnostics is a comprehensive, AI-driven biomechanical checkup. The team uses kinetic markers to track range of motion and fluidity of movement. By identifying potential problem areas throughout the testing process, it generates a FASCIA score that highlights dehydration, compression, or scarring. High-resolution ultrasound is used in real time to confirm problematic areas.

Restart Procedures are ultrasound-led, injection-based treatments performed under local anesthetic. The injections restore the structural environment by hydrating and separating adhered and scarred fascial layers, relieving strain on the nervous system and restoring natural glide. To encourage hydration and healing, placental growth factors are injected. The procedure typically lasts less than an hour.

“We are trying to recreate a fetal microenvironment. By injecting this mixture into these planes, we are able to ‘trick’ the body into thinking it’s a baby, and it really modulates the myofibroblasts (scar tissue–producing cells). So we are physically breaking up the scar, telling the immune system to clean up the debris, and preventing activation of the scar tissue–forming cells,” Gautam said.

Two weeks post-procedure, 85% of patients reported pain relief. At six months, 78% reported sustained pain relief, with 98% saying they would recommend Restart.

“They worked their magic. I don’t know any other way to put it,” PGA Tour player Bud Cauley said of his Restart treatment. Cauley was involved in a car accident that resulted in multiple broken bones, including ribs that significantly hindered his ability to swing. With Nuoro and Restart, he was able to return to competitive play. Cauley is currently ranked 65th in the world and had four top-10 finishes in 2025.

Source: Nuoro Wellness

Post-procedure care is focused on continued support and maintaining and improving a full range of fluid, pain-free movement. Justin Thomas, following a back injury, underwent treatment with Nuoro Wellness and has since returned to a full PGA Tour schedule.

Dr. Gautam and Nuoro Wellness have offices in Aspen, CO; Manhattan, NY; Miami, FL; and Los Angeles, CA, and are accepting new patients.