Back Pain & Sciatica Pain, exercises and treatment

Back Pain

What IS the best treatment for Back Pain?

Have you considered Surgery?

Detox your Body for Back Pain Relief

Getting your body more therapy friendly

How’s Your Posture?

Do your exercise the easy way

Why your Exercise Program hasn’t Fixed your Chronic Pain

Stretching - Is it causing you long term damage?

Diet and its Role in Back Pain

Back Pain

Prevention is always the best approach, always be very conscious of your posture especially when you are sitting and standing and recognise that diet plays a key role.

Keep your body balanced and flexible with the right exercise program for your level of health and fitness and get regular massage . In general terms most back pain results from an accumulation of stress in the body from physical, emotional or chemical imbalance. This includes a combination of one or more of them. When you overuse an area of your body affected by this stress you cause muscle fatigue or spasm, then irritation. inflammation and pain.

It is important to know yourself well enough, so that you can identify the causes of your stress and learn how to deal with them on a day to day basis.

When you hurt your back don't waste time and money with treatments that don't work. If the therapist or doctor knows what they are doing, the results should be fast and lasting, and when you find the right solution follow the program and don't try to cut corners.

Take a pro-active role in your recovery. For the best results, get a good understanding of what is wrong with your back and seek out the right treatment for YOU. What works for one person doesn't always work for another. Look at all your options before you make decisions that are going to cost you your valuable time and money and never think of yourself as incurable.

Mary was a typical 20-year-old who worked as a waitress, went out with friends and enjoyed her lifestyle until a fall at work caused sciatica pain from a bulging disc in her lower back. After numerous visits to the specialist and referrals to physiotherapy she was no better and after nine months was told nothing more could be done for her. She would have to go to a pain management clinic and learn to live with her pain.

Not being content to accept this diagnosis Mary began searching alternative treatments and eventually found a unique form bodywork that concentrated on correcting the imbalances in her muscles that came about because of her fall. The treatment involved one hourly session weekly and follow up exercises for 1 hour a day and after 4 weeks she was significantly better, off all medication and able to keep her discomfort to a minimum with the daily exercises.

Exercise in the past hadn't worked because they aggravated her pain as the therapy she was receiving didn't take away her pain before her exercise program started.

In Mary's case her decision to look elsewhere rather than accept the prognosis from her specialists led her to finding a cure, but many others haven't been so lucky and their search continues as they spend large amounts of time and money without success. In fact in many cases irritating the pain they started with. Others still, have given up the search and just live with their pain every day.

WHAT YOU MAY, AND MAY NOT KNOW.
Up to 80 percent of adults will experience some form of back pain at one or more times in their life and at least 50 percent of them will never find out the cause of their pain. This is probably because 85 percent of back pain can be attributed to muscular causes with only 15 percent able to be diagnosed using an x-ray or scanning equipment. Unfortunately medical specialists rely on these machines to discover the cause of a person's pain, consequently many of them are left in the dark and are unable to give a confident diagnosis or prognosis.

The commonly spoken myth that most people who get back pain will get better within 6 to 12 weeks regardless of treatment they receive and even with no treatment at all was dispelled by a recent study published in the British Medical Journal. It found that this myth came about as a result of figures based on the doctor's appointment book. When the majority of patients go to a doctor for low back pain and the treatment does not effectively addressed the problem, the patient naturally does not return for further treatment. This led the doctors to believe the patient was cured when in fact it was found that even after 12 months time had passed only a minority of people reported a full recovery.

Back Pain is not an illness as some believe, rather the result of a physical, emotional or chemical imbalance in the body that has manifested itself as stress. Often due to overuse this results in an area where irritation and inflammation occurs, where a person feels pain.

If left untreated the body starts to compensate which can lead to wear and tear on joints, including the vertebrae, discs, muscles, nerves or ligaments and a weakness in various parts of the body. If the inevitable pressure or tightness is severe or left untreated, a more serious problem can occur, causing pressure on a nerve resulting in acute pain episodes that can last weeks at a time.
Find out more about what to do when you get Back pain by ordering your FREE copy of The Bad Back Book.

What IS the best treament for Back Pain?

Although a common question, it is one that cannot possibly be answered as a generalisation. One of the most confusing decisions for a back pain sufferer is what treatment to undertake to deal with their problem. Everyone they speak to has a different opinion based on what worked for them and the fact that there are literally dozens of options out there, all making similar claims, doesn’t make the decision any easier.

The most common choices would be chiropractic, physiotherapy and massage, not because they are any better than the other options available but more because they have been around longer and are more established throughout the world. Because the cost of these treatments are largely straight out of a persons pocket, those sufferers who are on a limited budget tend to be impatient when it comes to waiting for a result or alternatively, they prefer to see a doctor and go down the rebated drugs and surgery route.

Most people don’t really understand exactly what it is that the different therapies are trying to achieve to fix their pain and just go on faith because a friend of theirs recommended it. They expect fast results and only stick with something if they are making progress or the therapist is very good at convincing them it will take more time and to just keep coming.

The reality is everyone is different in the way their body has developed the patterns that set up their pain and back pain is never just the product of an isolated area of the body going wrong. It really involves so many things which vary a lot from person to person.

The responsiveness of one person’s tissue to a stimulus may be very different than that of another person and that is one reason why, what worked for your friend might have provided no benefit at all for you.

Strength is definitely a limiting factor when it comes to how much a person’s problem has spread throughout their muscle system. The naturally stronger a person is, the more protected their joints are against movement and irritation that can affect the discs and nerves. Strength is usually not something a person can do too much about after they are in acute pain, because strengthening exercises often just irritate an existing problem. But it certainly is a good idea to stay strong all the time as a way of protecting your body against pain.

How a person uses their body throughout the day can also have a big bearing on whether a treatment for back pain will have any lasting affect or not. If sitting down brings on your pain and that is what your job involves all day then chances are, treatments that are traditionally slow to get results like physiotherapy and chiropractic will not give much relief. It is often a case of one step forward during a treatment, followed by one step back over the next day or so.

One of the pain sufferers who attended the Thailand conference with me recently was a good example of someone that I felt would have struggled if I was treating them with a weekly session as I usually do. Especially as they would have been trying to fit their normal life in around those treatments, with little to no exercise. It would take me a long time to get the same result as we did in Thailand over an intensive 2 week period when their diet was very good and they were able to do exercises every day to support the bodywork we were doing. Not having the 8 or more hours a day at their desk with no exercise meant we could do around a years worth of changes to their body in the two weeks.

One of the most noticeable ways a person can affect their body is of course their diet and that tends to change from person to person, sometimes significantly, making it very unlikely two people will respond the same way to a physical treatment. Because the right diet makes a body supple and naturally strong and the wrong diet leaves them stressed weak and tight, the reaction to ‘physical’ therapy work done on the body can be very different. That is one of the reasons I push the diet aspect so hard in my treatment programs and books, because I know it will greatly affect the result of a treatment and the level of pain a person feels whilst getting that result.

So the next time a well meaning friend suggests you must visit a certain therapist they know to fix your back pain, consider the above and ask yourself how similar you and your friend are in respect to lifestyle, job, diet, exercise, cause of your original problem and even emotional state. Then you will have a fairly good idea if is in fact worth you spending your money on their recommendation.

The reality is, no one persons back pain is exactly the same as another’s and that’s why a hand out sheet of exercises that everyone gets will usually do very little to give you relief. Any therapist you see needs to look at all the aspects I’ve mentioned as part of a tailored rehabilitation program that is put together after an accurate assessment of your body and lifestyle is carried out. Therefore, the better condition your body is in when you start any treatment process, the better chance you have of getting success in the shortest possible time.

If you would like to take steps to help yourself get your body into the best possible condition for whatever treatment you choose, my self treatment program will go through all the important considerations in much more detail for you. I have also added a feature to the money back guarantee it carries to ensure it’s a totally no risk purchase for you. To see what I mean exactly, visit here www.backpain.com.au/help

Have you considered Surgery?

In this months healthletter I want to discuss surgery.

I want to make it clear here that I am not attempting to try and convince you that surgery is always the wrong way to go because I am realistic and agree there is a place for surgery. I do see it as a last resort if nothing else is working and I have had patients who have gone onto have surgery with my blessing when everything we tried failed to give them enough relief, from an impinged nerve.

Although most came through it well you can never be sure of the long term outcome, at least for many years because the scar tissue or a relapse can always come back to bite you later.

There are some important things to consider if you are contemplating having an operation for your back pain which I will go over after you read Geraldine’s email.

I have suffered back problems since I was eighteen when my first (of many) slipped discs occurred I experienced these on and off for many years visiting Osteopaths but in the end they could no longer help. The upshot of all this was I was recommended for Surgery in 1988 I was undecided which path to take in the end it was so acute I couldn't carry out my job in Personnel and Recruitment so had to take the surgery option reluctantly in 1990. I had the Lamenectomy Surgery during which my spinal cord was "nicked" and leaking fluid - I was eventually informed of this after I asked some questions. I was left in constant pain, unable to walk or stand up, the Surgeon said he wouldn't re-operate as he was worried about the stability of my spine if he did, however attempt Epidurals under local and general anaesthetic neither of which were successful due to stenosis of my spine. I was eventually transferred by ambulance to another Hospital when a second operation was carried out with the same result I was finally discharged three months later. During my time in Hospital I had a XRay on my right hip because of the intense pain I was experiencing there as well as my back and legs; they thought my hip might have been fractured during surgery which proved negative. Since then I have had several more hip Xrays, recently I was informed it was Bursitis by one Senior Houseman and had a cortisone injection which only lasted for under two weeks when I went for my next appointment I saw someone totally different and was told it was referred pain from my back and they couldn't help me any further. When I returned to the Hospital for a check-up I was in a wheelchair still in constant pain. Another MRI Scan (to date I have had approximately seven of these) was ordered which resulted in showing all the bone growth had returned again and was told I had the spine of an eighty year old (I was forty two at the time). After the first Op the Surgeon tried twice to give me Epidurals one under local and the other under general anaesthetic but the stenosis in my spine was too far gone to get the needle in. Following on from all the above I have been "through the mill" having seen two Pain Specialists neither of whom could help me. I have had subcutaneous injections, combined anaesthetic and painkilling injections, hydrotherapy, acupuncture, Physio was tried but was always too acute for any treatment to be tried, Epileptic drugs to try and interfere with the pain receptors, opiates, Arthritis medication the list goes on and on. I was recently prescribed some very heavy drugs which I had an extreme reaction to, since then I have stopped taking any medication as looking back nothing actually took the pain away and I want to feel like a human being again. I also have sciatica but am pleased to say that I am now able to walk with crutches but on occasions have to revert to the wheelchair.

I feel very sorry for this lady because in all probability if she had the right help as a teenager it’s likely none of this would have happened. Instead she has ended up a real victim of a surgeon’s carelessness because of the inability of conventional therapists to deal with her problem properly. If you are under the illusion that you can confidently put you pain in the hands of conventional doctors or therapists and everything will be find, think again.

Geraldine may well have had an fairly successful and uneventful operation if the nerve wasn’t ‘nicked’ but as a result, the flow on effects to her body from the drugs and inactivity have left her in a state which will be very difficult to come back from. Talk about a twist of fate that can change the course of someone’s life so dramatically.

One point I think really needs to be made is that, for people who have decided to go for surgery, or even if you have already had it, don’t think that is the end of the story, even if you no longer feel pain. The nerve impingement or chronic back pain is only the symptom of a bigger problem that exists.

This is the point I try to make strongly in my books and articles and it is something doctors never cover. A disc doesn’t bulge or a joint doesn’t ache for no reason, there is always some form of muscle imbalance causing pressure to build up and set up the problem.

A muscle imbalance is present when a key structural muscle on one side of the body has a different tension level, length or strength to the same muscle on the other side. When the muscles are switched on during exertion this causes the pelvis to twist or tilt.

To explain it another way, gravity pushing the body into the ground causes the muscles to be under pressure. If the body is balanced the muscles all share the load or weight evenly. If the muscles are unbalanced the pressure is intensified onto a small area in the centre of the body. The lower back. Over time this pressure can cause a disc to bulge, herniate or rupture or just a joint to be out of alignment, but either way it always ends up causing some degree of pain.

When the surgeon operates to repair the damaged disc or fuse the vertebrae they don’t do anything about the muscle imbalance which is probably more important. This is something that still needs to be addressed to ensure the surgery has every chance of lasting success.

Statistics show that around 50% of back surgeries are successful in the months following, there are no statistics that assess a person 5 or 10 years later. You can be pretty sure the 50% that are not successful are people who had significant imbalances that were not able to be held at bay by the surgery.

If the imbalance is not taken away, it keeps putting pressure on the lower back and over time that can easily cause the pain to come back either in the same area or in a joint above the one that was operated on.

The worse thing about the surgery is that it often masks the presence of the imbalance for a time, perhaps months or years, adding to the deterioration of the body so when the pain does come back the body is that much older, weaker and more difficult to fix.

Imbalances cause a body to become tight and inflexible. They cause certain muscles to become dysfunctional, the circulation to some areas to be restricted and the tissue to begin deteriorating and therefore weak. The longer it is left untreated, the more difficult it is to reverse this deterioration and get the body balanced and working properly again.

There are very few people who have had ‘successful’ back surgery who can go back to a physical lifestyle without suffering a relapse or another chronic pain somewhere else that is also coming from the same muscle imbalance.

If surgeons understood the implications of the muscle imbalances and worked in with a therapist who could fix them, not only would so many of the surgeries be unnecessary but the ones that were would be a lot more successful in the long term.

So the moral of my story is that no matter what type of back pain you have or whether you believe you need or have had surgery, you must, as part of the recovery process, have your body rebalanced by someone who knows what they are doing.

To help you find that someone or even so you can do a lot of the work yourself I have put the self treatment program together. I hope you will realise how important it is in the big picture because you only have one spine and every decision you make could mean the difference between a happy and healthy pain free future, or a lifetime of pain and expense such as Geraldine has had to endure.

Warm regards

Steve Lockhart

The self treatment is available here www.backpain.com.au/selftreat

Detox your Body for Back Pain Relief

If there is one really important thing I believe people don’t get when it comes to ridding their body of back pain and sciatica it’s detoxing. It is like trying to get paint to stick to dirty walls or like trying to clean clothes with dirty water. If you don’t get the sludge and toxins out of the body and out of the muscles they will never release and stay loose and flexible when you get treatment for your back pain.

Today modern medicine recognises the presence of toxins in the body, especially heavy metal toxins such, lead, mercury, arsenic, aluminium, nickel etc. The presence of these toxins can lead to serious health problem and even when they are present in small amounts the body and muscles will not function the way they have been designed to.

As well as toxins from our environment we are also subjected to all sorts of chemicals and toxins from the food we eat. These are added to processed foods sold by manufacturers who are much more interested in making money than looking after our health. They are also added to fresh foods like the antibiotics they spray onto fruit and vegetable crops or the chemicals they give beef or chickens to boost their size etc,

Sadly we have come to the point of accepting these things as normal occurrences and very little is said or done about it in the way or complaining or making a stand to bring about change. It is this tendency to just accept the situation that has led our body to a toxic state.

Do you feel washed out and sluggish when you wake up in the mornings?

Do you feel exhausted and ready for bed before most other people at night?

Are you the sort of person who gets told during a massage, “your body is so tight everywhere”?

Because if that describes you there is a good chance you would benefit greatly from a good detox and if you have pain on top of those symptoms, the reason you are not getting better could well be because of the toxins blocking up the muscles and making your body feel stiff and sluggish.

A good detoxification should be carried out every 3 months and so if you haven’t done one for three, five, ten or even twenty years or more, now might be a good time to start. The longer it has been and the more toxic your body is, the more of a reaction you will get as you detox. Things such as headaches, skin breakouts, tiredness initially and loss of appetite are all symptoms you could experience in the early stages. In the worse cases they could even last for a few weeks.

After the detox you should feel light and energised, with clear skin and eyes and a lot less pain. I am sure you would agree, worth the effort in the long run especially considering the added health benefits a regular detox provides.

How do you go about it?

You can get the best detox by attacking it on a number of levels,

Firstly, by eliminating any excess build-up in the colon using a product such as Fibreblend and drinking lots of water and fresh juices.

Secondly, by adding a whole food probiotic like InLiven before meals 3 times a day.

Thirdly by consuming a healthy diet containing no processed foods, sugars, dairy, or red meat, perhaps by following the Liver Cleansing Diet by Dr Sandra Cabot.

By doing 30 minutes of easy exercise such as walking or yoga every day and of course drinking plenty (2 litres) of distilled or purified water every day.

If you are sick and tired of being sick, tired and in pain, perhaps wondering why the treatments you are doing are not working, why not visit my shopping cart where you can pick up the Fibreblend and InLiven www.backpain.com.au/zen and check out your local bookshop for Sandra Cabot’s Liver cleansing diet (or a similar book overseas) . I know you won’t regret the new body it will give you.

If you detox your body properly you will surely see a huge decrease in any back pain or sciatica you are suffering from and this be very useful if you do not have the services of a really good therapist on hand. Similarly when you combine a good detox with some effective treatment or even my self treatment program you will see much faster and longer lasting results.

Getting your body more therapy friendly

I am regularly using this description both to my students and patients because a body’s ‘treatability’ is such a critical factor in determining whether you are going to get rid of your back pain or sciatica easily or not and for how long it is likely to stay away.

Many of you would be familiar with the self help exercises that are contained in my Self Treatment Program and judging by the emails I have been getting, a lot of people have been getting really good results and either reducing your back pain or taking it away completely which is fantastic and very satisfying for me. Being realistic I am sure there are some of you out there who haven’t had the same success and maybe one of the reasons is because your body is not in its optimal ‘treatable’ condition yet. This relates to other forms of treatment you might be getting for your back pain or sciatica.

I have new people come into my clinic all the time but only a small percentage of them don’t need to make changes to get their body into a condition where their back pain or sciatica is easy to fix. Managing them is not so difficult if they want to spend the time and money seeing me regularly, but that is not my goal. I like to have people coming in for the shortest possible time and so for me, educating them on diet and lifestyle issues is an important part of providing an effective service. It is very much the same information I cover as part of my self treatment program and teach to my students who are hopefully passing that same message on to their patients as well.

I find a lot of people who come in with back pain or sciatica involving tight stressed muscles are under the impression they are eating fairly well and I’d have to admit on the surface it often appears to be the case. I think the main weakness I have picked up from these people is that they are not eating foods in the right balance or they are not eating properly for the amount of exercise they are doing in a day.

What I would like to do in this article is give you a few things to think about for yourself so you can better decide if you need to make some changes to your diet or perhaps lifestyle, to get your body into a more treatable condition so that you will respond better to the self help exercises you are doing or the treatment you are getting from your SLM or other therapist, for your back pain or sciatica.

The first question I want to ask yourself is, are you drinking enough water? Is there a chance that your body could be dehydrated? If you exercise a lot or work in a physical job such as a tradesperson, massage therapist or even do lots of flying in an aeroplane (very dehydrating), the answer could well be yes. If you work in shorts and T-shirt or the equivalent and feel quite comfortable even on a coolish day when everyone else is dressed warmer, you might well be losing a lot more fluid than you realise, even if you are not sweating a lot on the surface. If this describes you then just drinking water may not be quite enough and you may need to add a small amount of mineral salts to your water to help absorption and replace the lost minerals to help counter dehydration.

Secondly, a lot of back pain and sciatica sufferers who come in to see me suffer from not eating enough protein and far too many carbohydrates like pasta and bread or drinking soft drinks, alcohol, coffee and tea. Too much of these foods and fluids cause the muscles to feel stiff and dry and not very responsive to techniques that would normally work to loosen them up, but that’s not the only problem they can cause. Let me quote a small section of a very good book you could read if you were interested in learning more about food and diet and the way to better health and wellbeing. It is called the X Factor Diet, written by Leslie Kenton. I quote “In 1988 in a burst of enthusiasm the US Surgeon General officially directed all Americans to cut their consumption of fat, especially saturated fat- and increase the number of carbohydrates they ate. The rationale was simple, cut the fat intake to almost zero and you will leave behind heart disease, diabetes and obesity and most of the degenerative conditions plaguing modern man. However, in the 10 years following the US surgeon generals dietary directives, obesity in the US tripled, adult onset or type II diabetes soared while other degenerative diseases continued to mount.” The book goes onto a more detailed explanation but the important message here is to cut back on carbohydrates, don’t be afraid of fats in moderation but eat more protein especially vegetable proteins and fish so as not to consume too much red meat or chicken which is generally very poor quality protein due to the way they breed and feed chickens and cattle for the mass market.

I find getting someone to cut down on the carbohydrates, especially at dinner time, and eat more protein and even add some magnesium, to their daily intake helps soften their muscles sufficiently over a couple of months. I use this formula more for active people who like to exercise at least a few days a week or people who work in a physical job. Magnesium helps muscles relax which is great if you suffer from back pain or sciatica.

As a way of increasing their protein intake but not eating too much meat I recommend more vegetable proteins like beans, chick peas, lentils and tofu or mixed nuts for snacks. For the very active I add some protein powder like the Musashi LP1 which contains a high quantity of amino acids, the building blocks for protein. Best taken as a protein shake for breakfast or straight after training. More protein in the diet generally leads to softer more supple tissue and less stiffness that triggers back pain or sciatica.

Obviously you can’t beat eating lots of fresh fruit and vegetables during your week but unfortunately these days we hear that they are also being sprayed with antibiotics and pesticides and picked before they are ripe then kept in storage and gas ripened to suit everyone except the consumers. We need plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables for their vitamin and mineral content, to help our body function properly and although I don’t avoid the regular trips to the fruit and vegetable market because of the things I mentioned above, I make sure I also take a daily serving of the probiotic super food In Liven to get whatever I might be missing out on from the fresh produce. I give it to my young children as well in their juice or milk and as I am sure they don’t get as much as they need. To that end I also give them another concentrated organic form of fruit and vegetables called VegeBuddies which come in the form of gummy bear sweets which they love and see as a treat.

I understand eating well is an effort for many people because they are busy and preparing healthy nutritious meals takes time and planning, but believe me you need to make the effort because without it your chances of suffering from back pain or sciatica or getting another type of injury for that matter are greatly increased, let alone getting rid of the back pain or sciatica you may already have.

The final point I would like to make on helping your body to become more treatable is getting enough sleep. Nothing will stress the body faster than a lack of good quality sleep, like 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep in a dark room. If you find it hard to sleep because of your pain, try to do some meditation for an hour everyday as this can also have the effect of relaxing and rejuvenating the muscles without you needing to actually go to sleep. It can also be a useful mental exercise for dropping tension from your muscles and reducing your pain levels. I have put together a totally new form of meditative exercise that will be a big help for sleeping better and taking away pain. It is called SLM Yoga and is an important part of the Self Treatment Program for back pain and sciatica.

In the meantime I am going to take my own advice right now…good night.

Disclaimer: The information above should be taken as a guide only and is just the opinion of the author Steve Lockhart. It is not a prescription that should be followed without first consulting your health professional as to its merits and relevancy to your particular situation.

How's Your Posture?

One very important thing to address as far as back pain or sciatica is concerned is posture, how you hold yourself as you go about your day. This is something all therapists should address with you whenever they are giving you treatment for back pain because it has such a huge bearing on the amount of stress that is placed onto your muscles as you do the things you do.

By now you are probably over hearing me talk about a short leg and how it causes undue stress on the joints where a person feels pain. The reason I go on about it so much is because it often has so much to do with why you have pain in the first place and bad posture is one fast way to give yourself a short leg.

I often hear of doctors and therapists who tell their patients that everyone has a short leg and it has little bearing on pain, but I can assure you that is not the case. They say the body is strong enough to withstand the pressure it causes and whereas for some people this may be true, for the large majority it is not the case, especially after a long period of time when poor circulation, common in back pain and sciatica sufferers, weakens the muscles..

When the treatment given for back pain or sciatica is strengthening exercises and they work, it demonstrates that strength is a great counter for imbalance, but strengthening exercises can also irritate pain in many cases. To benefit from a strengthening program a person can’t be suffering from acute back pain or sciatica and they need to have healthy responsive muscles which can cope with that exercise. In today’s society there are many things about our lifestyle that make muscles unhealthy and unresponsive for many people. Things like; poor diet or a diet full of process ‘dead’ food, a lack of regular exercise, too much stress, carrying an imbalance in the muscles for a long time, or very importantly poor posture which has the effect of over loading the muscles physically, causing them to get fatigued and tight which affects circulation and causes them to become weak.

The people who do tend to respond best to exercise programs for their back pain or sciatica are younger people who are naturally stronger and suppler and who haven’t allowed their muscles to deteriorate too far, generally because of a lack of time passing in their life. But this is also the time a lot of people begin to develop bad posture habits because they don’t feel the effects straight away and by the time they do the damage has been done and the back pain or sciatica has become chronic.

When you use an exercise program to strengthen against your pain the benefits can be very short term if you are not also focussing on your posture. Both exercise and any treatment you get for your back pain or sciatica are generally only happening for a few hours a week, but your posture on the other hand is affecting you every moment you are sitting or standing and that can amount to 16 or more hours a day.

If you focus on good posture especially holding the symmetry in your body and try to use the muscles on both sides of your body evenly, you will help to keep your spine straight and your pelvis balanced and this has a profound effect on minimising or avoiding any back pain or sciatica. It is the least stressful position for your muscles. By holding a good posture you can also more easily become aware of the areas of your body that are tight and blocked and then you can work on these areas with the self help exercises I go through in my Self Treatment Program. Slowly but surely you eliminate these blocked areas until your body is more supple and balanced and good posture is easy to maintain, added to your strengthening work, you will get a longer lasting effect.

You can find more information on posture in your free copy of The Bad Back Book or my Self Treatment Program specifically designed for back pain or sciatica sufferers.

For now, always be thinking of your posture and see how much better it makes you feel.

Do exercise the easy way

We all know that exercise is very important and should be a part of our day, especially when you suffer from back pain or sciatica, but there is no dodging the fact that it takes time, often time we don’t have. Well there is another way you can exercise without allocating time to go to the gym or head off for a walk. That’s right you can do your exercise as you go about your normal day just by concentrating on what you are doing and using your body in the right way.

Take walking for example, when most people walk they actually stroll using mostly momentum and don’t concentrate on switching their various leg muscles on and pushing off with them to go forward. Try it next time you have to walk any distance and purposefully use the heel toe action and different muscles in your legs to switch on and push off with each step. By doing this you can turn a 20 minute walk into more work than a normal 1 hour stroll and of course do it while you are getting to where you have to go anyway. If you suffer from back pain then this action can help retrain your weak or dysfunctional muscles to switch on and off again which is an important part of your rehab such as with the self treatment program for back pain and sciatica.

A lot of people spend their day sitting at a desk and end up with back pain or sciatica or at least a stiff body from the lack of movement. In fact it is often these people who end up with chronic back pain simply because they don’t give their muscles enough exercise as they sit for too much of the day.

Next time you are sitting for any length of time try to switch on the muscles around your hips and pelvis by putting your feet on the floor in front of you and pushing your buttocks down into the seat whilst holding a slight arch in your lower back . I am sure you will feel the muscles tire very quickly and it will be difficult for you to hold that pressure for any length of time. This will show you just how weak these muscles have become but by doing this regularly you will in fact loosen and strengthen these muscles and soon notice you can hold the pressure a lot longer than you could when you started. This will help you strengthen against your back pain or sciatica. By doing this exercise you will also become aware of any imbalance you carry in the pelvis and attempting to hold the pressure evenly with the muscles on both sides will help you work towards correcting that imbalance. You will see much more about exercising this way, to correct any imbalances in your body, in my SLM Yoga DVD .

If you are one of the luckier people, your job will involve your moving around most of the day doing a variety of different tasks as you go. Even if that is getting in and out of a car and walking short distances, perhaps up and down stairs, the odd bending movement and lifting or carrying things. The reason you are lucky is that you have a great opportunity to do a variety of exercises during your day and give your body a great workout just by carrying out your job.

For the next week take the time to think about what you are doing as you go about your day and consider the ways you can do the same things as you focus pressure on different muscles to give them a good strengthening workout. If you already suffer from back pain or sciatica this will help a lot but even if you don’t these are perfect exercises to protect you against a back pain or sciatica problem developing.

Walk up the stairs more slowly and deliberately and make your leg muscles do all the work then sometimes run up as you push off with your legs so you get some cardio vascular fitness at the same time. If your job involves bending and lifting ( a sure fire cause of back pain and sciatica if you’re not careful) be sure to use your legs to squat down and keep a straight back so as to strengthen your leg muscles and lower back rather than put strain on it. Treat the object you are lifting as a weight by sharing the weight evenly between both arms and hold it close to your body. It might not feel like a lot of effort each time you do it but the accumulation of lots of little efforts make a big effort and you will be surprised how much strength and fitness you gain without spending any extra time than you had been previously.

There are lots of ways you can turn your day to day activities into a good all over workout it just takes a little imagination and thought as you go about things until it becomes a good habit.

Why your Exercise Program hasn’t Fixed your Chronic Pain.

The normal approach people take when trying to fix back pain is to prescribe a series of stretching and exercises. I want to go through some of the reasons why in my opinion exercises don’t work as intended either.

Over the years there have been many programs designed with the aim of fixing back pain and sciatica, but those of you who have tried them will surely agree that none have been successful at providing a permanent solution for your chronic back pain, to the point where you can stop doing the exercises and the pain will stay away. Why is this? I am sure it is a question many of you are wondering.

Many of these program’s provide temporary relief because the underlying component in them is strengthening which helps protect the body from the pressure and irritation to a joint that causes inflammation and pain. But when you stop exercising the strength slowly drains away and often the cause of the pain re-surfaces, especially where its origins are located in the core muscles that you rely on in your everyday movements.

Those that have had success from doing exercise most likely started when the pain was settled because it is very hard to exercise when pain is in an acute stage due to the irritation it can cause. Those people who are constantly bothered by their pain without respite are often unable to begin an exercise program without making their back pain worse and if they do start the pain is usually enough of a reason for them not to continue.

The answer as to why the exercise programs hasn’t helped you get that permanent fix is quite simple and logically as is most things to do with the body;

Chronic back pain is caused by imbalances in the muscles causing pressure to build up and irritate a joint. To give you a simple analogy, the imbalance means the muscles on one side of the body are in a different condition to the same muscles on the other side. So when you exercise both muscles together and strengthen them, they still maintain these differences and the imbalance. That is to say a tight contracted hamstring will still be tight and contracted, albeit stronger, after a period of concentrated exercise on it.

This confirms to me that problem muscles do not respond well to exercise or stretching. By problem I mean, the muscles are usually tight and often weak, have a poor blood supply and do not function to provide strength and support for the body the way they were meant to do. The nerves are not firing into the muscle the way they should. Because of the poor blood supply, the exercise, (which actually requires an increase in the volume of circulation) overloads the muscle causing it to tighten further. This is why after an exercise program a person with problem muscles will loose flexibility.

The reason the pain often goes away, along with the loss of flexibility, is because of the body’s ability to compensate or make allowances for the imbalances which help straighten up the pelvis and take some pressure off the spine joint, especially with an exercise program that focuses on symmetry, such as Pilates.

When this situation exists with a structural muscle, which is usually the case with chronic pain, it is more of a big deal and the body has little chance of compensating too much. The stretching that people add to try and regain the lost flexibility doesn’t work. It feels like it does because it stretches the connective tissue which can lead to long term problems (see article on stretching)

Once you get into the swing of things, exercise will manage or stave off pain whilst you are doing your workout regularly but when you stop for a few weeks or longer, the lack of good circulation and tightness causes the problem muscles to deteriorate and weaken very quickly. When a muscle is very important in the everyday movement of the body and in a poor condition, it doesn’t really get to the point of improving with the exercise and these are the times when exercise irritates the pain and forces a person to stop.

The best way to deal with these problem muscles so they will respond to the exercise in a positive way, and actually rehabilitate during the process, is to get the circulation working through the muscle again and restore function to the muscle before you start and in the days between the workouts. The best way of doing this is by physically working on the muscles in such a way that stimulates them back to a healthy, working condition. such as with the self treatment program I have developed for sciatica and back pain sufferers. (www.backpain.com.au/diy.htm)

Some people have problems in their body waiting to cause them pain but they never experience it because they eat well and never stop doing their workout. The exercise holds everything together and keeps forcing the circulation through the muscles and as a result they generally feel fine.

For more information on how to treat your own back pain or sciatica and stop the frustration of wasting money on treatments that are not helping you visit the page on this site that covers the self treatment program. www.backpain.com.au/diy.htm

Stretching – Is it causing you long term damage?

For as long as I can remember people have been told to stretch as a warm up or warm down to prevent injuries and for just as long physiotherapists have been using stretching, along with exercises, as the basis for their treatment of painful conditions. Everyone has jumped on the band wagon from doctors to personal trainers and most therapists and whenever someone complains of feeling tight or sore there are invariable asked ‘have you been doing enough stretching’ or ‘I know a good stretch that will help you’.

But in saying that there are also varying opinions on the type of stretching that are good to do and which are bad or harmful and in fact whether any stretching does any good at all. Research conducted by Army physiotherapist Rod Pope and his colleagues on 2600 Army recruits showed that stretching provides no benefit in preventing injuries and his is not the only study that has reached this conclusion.

Now I’ll grant you that stretching a tight area will provide some temporary relief but what is it actually doing to our body when used regularly over a long period of time?

Before I discuss that question I would like to take you back to where it all started with the exercise craze of the late 70’s and early 80’s. Back in those times people didn’t go to gyms or do fitness classes like aerobics or pump and the topic of stretching was rarely raised because people hardly ever needed it. The only gyms that existed were for the serious sportspeople or trainers where you could use hand weights or punch a heavy bag in a dingy back room somewhere, run by an ex fighter or trainer. It wasn’t the place the average person would go and most exercise was confined to organised sports such as tennis, basketball or touch football. Injuries that people sustained were seen to by your GP and treated with rest and anti inflammatory drugs and physiotherapists were mainly used for helping people rehabilitate after surgery or treating the elderly in nursing homes.

When the exercise craze finally did take off and gymnasiums as we now know them started to spring up everywhere, people started getting serious injuries that doctors were not equipped to deal with either with expertise, or experience and so Physiotherapists inherited the job because they were the only option available and stretching became the new buzzword.

If you ask most people, they will tell you they imagine that muscles are like lengths of elastic that when pulled from both ends, stretch evenly just as elastic does and are not aware that a muscle works more like a telescope where the filaments slide over one another requiring ample lubrication and a healthy function to be able to properly lengthen through its range of movement. Healthy function refers to the condition of the muscle generally, whereby the tissue needs to be supple and strong and responsive to the nerve stimulation orchestrated by our brain.

The reality of course is that perhaps 10% of people would fit into this category while the other 90% are dominated by muscle tissue that is damaged, stressed, congested, unhealthy or overworked. The result for this group is an inability for the muscles to respond to stretching exercises without putting most of the pressure on the origin and insertion points and connective tissue around the joints. So what does that do? And more importantly what proof is there that indeed this is in fact what happens?

If you develop a pain in the body where does it usually manifest? In the joint. Most pains that people experience are things like knee pain, back pain, shoulder pain, elbow, wrist or ankle pain etc. And most of these pains when checked show that there is actually no damage to the structure of the joint, according to medical diagnosis they mainly come under the heading of inflammation or tendonitis and are treated with rest, anti inflammatory’s or cortisone injections. In fact most medical specialists will tell you they are not sure why a pain is felt in a joint that shows no signs of injury when scanned. If it hangs around for too long, some people are told the pain is all in their head or other are operated on anyway with arthroscopy’s so the specialist can ‘have a look’ because they can’t figure out what the problem is, but regardless of which category you might fit into everyone is told to do more stretching.

It may be found that the joint is tracking incorrectly or there is an irritated nerve, ligament or tendon and where some of these injuries respond to a bit of ice and ‘stretching’ most hang around and require constant ‘stretching’, strapping or strengthening before they eventually settle. The reason they eventually settle is the body compensates for the injured muscle(s).

In fact what is really happening is a problem with the muscle supporting that joint is either causing an imbalance or irritation that settles or recovers in direct relation to the improvement of that muscle problem. Many times that muscle doesn’t recover very well and despite all the stretching, the pain or irritation becomes chronic until the body slowly compensates and settles the problem away by itself.

Eventually as we get older and have an accumulation of these problems the body has no where else to compensate and the chronic pain stays with us, causing a curtailing of the activity that irritates the joint, tendon, ligament or nerve. On the other hand, if the problem muscle is able to be identified and its length and function restored, the pain can disappear overnight as mysteriously as it came.

Stretching doesn’t achieve this goal evidenced by the fact that chronic pain, of all types, is an epidemic amongst the masses of people who exercise and stretch and stretch and stretch as advised by their doctor, physiotherapist, other therapist or trainer, with no result.

If you do some research into stretching you will see it gets quite complicated, there is dynamic, ballistic, active, passive, static, isometric and PNF stretching or proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation which is really a technique combining passive and isometric stretching. Even the process of what happens in the muscle when we stretch is quite scientific, enough to tell you that in a perfect world maybe but certainly not in this world or stress, junk food and toxins where muscles do not behave in the manner that they are suppose to, at least for the 90% majority anyway.

The complicated anatomy we have that facilitates a stretch let alone the precise control and movements required that most people would have no idea about, should be enough to put doubt in anyone’s mind that the effect of a stretch would come anywhere close to what is expected.

Which brings us back to our original question of what happens to the body when we do all this stretching over a long period of time, the answer is many things:
Firstly as the connective tissue at the joint is the weakest point along the line we end up stretching the ligament, the small fibrous tissues that plays an important role in the support of the joint against dislocation and excessive, incorrect movement. Over time this constant stretching of a ligament causes it to stretch and become loose and weakened, making the joint hyper mobile and changing the important relationship that ligament has with muscles that also support that joint.

As we know from the science books a stretched loose ligament stays that way and doesn’t return to its original length even after a long time has passed, especially if it is continually being stretched.

As a result the person doing the stretching feels looser and they are, in the joint, but that only makes them more susceptible to injury’s like dislocation or more serious joint or ligament damage. A hyper mobile joint might work well in ballet or for martial arts kicks but it is not a good thing for a person involved in sports such as basketball, soccer, football, netball, or any activity involving body contact or where they are changing direction quickly.

If the ligaments are not providing the support for a joint that they should be, it is left to the muscles to pick up the slack and that causes them to become overworked and react by becoming tighter.

When the muscles become tighter a person feels like they need to stretch even more and the situation is exacerbated until you have the loose hyper mobile joints and muscles that are contracted in the belly and won’t let go. An experienced bodyworker will feel this condition quite easily when working on a person who has stretched consistently over a long period of time.

The body has the ability to know when a joint is weak or unstable and contacting the muscles is the way it protects itself and strengthens against the joint being dislocated. Over time the constant state of contraction affects the circulation and the muscles correct function and co-ordination with the nerves, which in turn causes the muscle to become weaker and the chances of dislocation, ligament, tendon or joint damage even greater.

So as you can see if you think about it logically there is a valid reason why stretching is not as good for you as perhaps you have been led to believe and in fact long term stretching is very bad for the ligaments, muscles and joints in particular. How do I know this, well as a Myotherapist doing a lot of deep tissue massage work over a 17 year period, working on all types of body’s, I have been able to compare the constantly stretched body with the rest and the difference is very obvious, loose sloppy joints and contracted belly of the muscles that does not respond to the usual techniques I successfully use to release the muscle contractions.

The chronic stretcher’s don’t have any fewer injuries than the non stretcher’s in fact I’d say they have more, especially niggling injuries. When I get them to stop stretching, (which is like getting someone off a drug), the ‘niggles’ disappear and the injuries become less frequent, providing their body hasn’t already changed too much.

What is the solution then?

Warm up and warm down very well before activity, using ROM exercises.
Eat a balanced healthy diet including supplements so your muscles and tissues are strong and will be supported for the activity you want to undertake.

Get full body deep tissue massage as regular maintenance for your muscles and when you feel the need to stretch, do so sparingly and seek out a treatment that can restore length and function to your muscles.

For a complete exercise program that gives you all the benefits of exercise and stretching without any of the negatives take a look at the SLM Yoga DVD either on its own or as part of the self treatment program for sciatica and back pain sufferers. Click Here

Diet and its Role in Back Pain

Back pain is largely a result of stress that builds in the body bringing physical imbalances into play and causing irritation to nerves, joints, muscles or ligaments. Stress has three main origins, physical, chemical and emotional so a poor diet which upsets the chemical balance has the potential to cause or heighten a persons back pain.

A healthy, balanced diet will help release stress because it provides all the necessary ingredients for a body to recover and regenerate and most importantly relax. When good nutrition is combined with a balanced physical body a person will feel and perform at their best, have good energy levels and be in the best condition to fight off or recover from injury or illness.

When your body is well balanced, chemically, nutritionally and physically, your nervous system benefits so you mostly feel relaxed and calm, with very little aggression, anxiety or pain. A balanced, healthy diet will also ensure you don't suffer from cravings because your nutritional needs are being met and more importantly you will be in the low risk group for suffering back pain in the first place.

The reality is that the large majority of people eat a typical diet, high in processed and packaged foods giving them much less potential to cope with a stressful, active lifestyle and therefore more likelihood they will suffer from chronic pain.

It’s a fact of life that food manufacturers are very good at making products that are bad for you, look and taste really good. Also, marketing people are very skilled at making you believe it's ok to eat them. But the reality is more often than not, the information we are being given is false and we are often, sometimes unwittingly eating food that is detrimental to our future health. It's been left up to us to work out the difference between what is fact and what's just marketing and most people are not trained to do that.

Barring a law being put in place to ban the sale of foods that don't contribute positively to our health, it's up to everyone as individuals to take the responsibility for looking after themselves. Don't be tempted by foods that do little but make huge profits for the manufacturer at the expense of our health. Foods that are pre-cooked, packaged, processed or fast foods serve only to take up space in your stomach and give you high doses of fats, salt, chemicals and additives. They do very little towards satisfying your nutritional needs, fuel your muscles or assist in your growth and recovery after exercise. They may take away your hunger temporarily but do not satisfy the needs of your body so your hunger will return before you burn up the high number of calories they contain.

Fresh, raw, healthy foods won't make you fat, give you bad skin or any number of the diseases that are becoming all too common in today's world so that must tell you something. Eating these foods sometimes, won't counter the harm the wrong foods are doing to your body either. It’s not about the balance of good food to bad food that you eat, all the bad food you eat will be detrimental to your long term health.

Think of your body as your temple and treat it with the respect it deserves. Look after it by not eating processed, pre packaged or pre cooked foods and it will look after you by making you feel good and energised. Refined foods not only rob you of your energy but they don’t properly metabolise and will therefore create metabolic waste and toxins that will be left in your system. This compromises bodily functions and creates additional burdens that add to existing problems and eventually may manifest as new health problems. Refined foods include all the foods that contain “white” flour, salt or sugar. Avoid all refined carbohydrates including cold breakfast cereals and white breads and pastries. Also avoid stimulants and chemicals in your food and water supply and in your environment. From my experience probably the worst irritants for pain are foods high in sugar like chocolate, lollies and alcohol.
Use only unrefined oils. Because saturated and hydrogenated fats are transformed into a hormone-like compound, prostaglandin, which promotes inflammation and pain you may need to reduce your meat consumption. But first and foremost, eliminate margarine, shortening and any food containing hydrogenated fat.

There probably has never been a truer saying than 'you are what you eat'. Over about a twelve month period every one of the billions of cells that make up every part of your body die off and are discarded then regenerated from the foods you eat. It's only logical that if you eat second rate foods you will end up with a second rate body and second rate health, not overnight, slowly but surely. As a consequence, your body will become weak and you will feel your back pain more intensely, sooner and take longer to recover than someone who eats a healthy balanced diet.

If you want to minimise your potential to feel back pain it’s obvious that you should try to eat a good variety of mostly fresh foods with an emphasis on fruit, vegetables, nuts and grains with lots of fish and some lean meats. As a guide the acid/ alkaline food list in The Bad Back Book* will assist you with your choices. You should aim to eat 75 to 80% of your foods from the alkaline list for the best results. If the ph level of your blood is right your physical body will feel much more supple and relaxed and you will have more energy.
When eating foods to help your pain level it is important to realise that not all healthy foods are good for you and conversely some are extra good for you and should be increased in your diet. For example chlorophyll reduces inflammation and so adding a generous serving of leafy green vegetables with each meal is helpful. You may wish to supplement with the superior chlorophyll sources like spirulina, chlorella, blue green algae, sprouts, wheat-grass and barley grass juice which are also excellent chlorophyll sources. Or you might want to simplify things somewhat such as by taking a natural daily supplement like In Liven.

Both cherries and pineapple reduce inflammation. Pineapple contains the anti-inflammatory enzyme, bromelain. This protein-digesting enzyme literally consumes foreign microbes and diseased cells in your system. So next time you're fruit and vegetable shopping and smell a sweet ripe pineapple buy it. Don’t get green pineapples, they have no aroma (especially at their base) and will never ripen.

The spice, turmeric, increases ligament flexibility and so is especially useful in the case of stiffness. Additional foods and culinary herbs that reduce inflammation and support healing of muscles, ligaments and tendons include the onion family, flax oil, burdock, ginger, yam, winter squash, sweet rice, millet and chamomile.

In terms of your overall diet, favor easy to digest, whole foods that are freshly prepared, organic if you can get them. They have the necessary nutrients to cleanse, build and maintain your whole body. Not only will your body function at its best but you will have extra energy to repair the inflamed and damaged muscles and ligaments.

Not only can some food help you fight your pain, other perfectly healthy food (and those not so healthy) can make it worse. A first step is to determine if you've any food sensitivities through allergy testing and, should you do so, then avoid those foods. A common group of foods that intensify pain, even in people who otherwise do not have food sensitivities, are the nightshade vegetables (tomatoes, potatoes, peppers and egg plant).
If you find it difficult to discipline yourself to eat well, try breaking it down by working on one meal at a time. Start with breakfast by limiting your selection to fruit, oats, grains and some tea and toast. Don't skip breakfast. Wait until you are happy and used to eating a good breakfast before working on your lunch time meal and the same before you attempt to change your dinner menu. Make sure your day is busy enough that you don't think about, or have time to, eat between meals and if you suffer from cravings for sweets or chocolate and the like, look toward vitamin and mineral supplements to take the cravings away rather than give into them.

The important thing is, don't beat yourself up or give up if you don't find the changes easy to implement straight away, be patient and take the necessary time to adjust slowly to the changes and before you know it you will be there.
The condition of your physical body can also affect your diet. Over the years I've seen people with a tight and twisted spine, due to a mechanical imbalance in the body, get cravings for sweets or sugar during active times because of the low energy caused by the condition of their back. These cravings then disappear when the twist is removed and the suppleness is restored.
You are probably aware there has been much debate about whether you can obtain all your nutritional requirements from diet alone, or whether you should take vitamin, mineral and protein supplements. Many so called experts differ in their opinion. To me the answer is simple, it depends on the amount of stress or physical pressure you are putting on your body. I would say that most people today, especially those who are physically active, would need supplements as a way of supporting their high stress levels. Very rarely do I see a patient come into my clinic who doesn't have tissue stress in their body and usually the more exercise they do the more stress they have.
After introducing them to a good diet/ supplement program I've noticed a steady improvement in their stress level and a lessening of their pain. To me this is a sure indication that no matter what the 'experts' are saying, good supplements are of benefit for many people. After all I can't think of a better indication of a body's needs than how it feels to the touch, especially when you can feel the difference between muscle tissue that is stressed and unhealthy and tissue that isn't.

Another consideration is that the food people are eating is becoming more 'manufactured' rather than in their 'natural' form and so many of the natural forms of vitamins, minerals and proteins are missing. Even fruits and vegetables are subjected to chemicals and pesticides and are picked and stored before they ripen, not to mention the soils they are grown in can be lacking essential minerals.

The average person doesn't eat huge amounts of food in a day so it's important that when you do eat, it is quality nutrition. Also when you do take supplements it is better to take ones that are in their natural form as organic whole foods, so they will assimilate into and work with the body better.
* For your FREE e copy go to www.backpain.com.au
For more information on In Liven go to www.mi-organics.com

More types of back pain including

Sciatica
Low Back Pain
Upper Back Pain
Disc Bulge & Disc Herniation.

are explained on this site and in more detail in The Bad Back Book.
Order it now. It's FREE