Special Report Bryn Jones, N.D.
New Self-Treatment for Back Pain
Author: Bryn Jones, N.D. SPECIAL REPORT No. 12009 Published by Snowdragon Clinic The specialist virtual clinic for back pain and other disorders www.SnowdragonClinic.com
A Note from the Publishers This report is designed to give a simple orientation tool for people with chronic back pain. The Publisher and the author have taken great care in the preparation of this booklet and have given suggestions for some bodily movements or exercise. We accept no responsibility for any accidents or damages that may result from trying out these movements. Please make sure by checking with a qualified health care provider that you are not suffering from a serious life threatening disease before taking any untoward risks with your body.
Copyright Š 2008, 2009 Snowdragon Ltd. We support open access literature. Open access literature, is defined as being digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire booklet, and only in its entirety, are permitted worldwide, without royalty, in any medium, provided this notice, and the copyright notice, are preserved.
Introduction - “Can I cure Back Pain without medicines or drugs?” Start off by looking at yourself in a mirror and ask yourself the following question "Can I cure my back pain without medicine or drugs?" Then try saying the following. "Yes I can". So, you say to yourself, "what a load of rubbish", or "how on earth can I say that when I'm in pain", or “...................................” But don't forget that in 2008 when Barack Obama started his campaign, a lot of very clever people laughed about his so simple slogan "Yes we can"! The campaign had no money, hardly any support from the established parties and institutions, BUT they did it, and in 2009 Barack Obama was President of the United States of America. So, go back to the mirror and try it again. Just try saying "Yes I can". OK, so you think its all a bit silly, but you are still suffering from your back pain and are prepared to carry on reading this Report in the hope that you will find some serious information, rather than wasting your time in front of the mirror. Right - you will get serious and valuable information but I am going to ask you one more time, the very last time, to go and stand in front of the mirror, ask yourself "Can I cure my back pain without medicine or drugs?" and then try saying "Yes I can". So, what did you do? Did you say it or not? Now be prepared, you might get very annoyed with me, because I am going to say to you that it really does not matter whether you said it or not! Yes, really! Believe it or not it does not really matter whether you answered the question and it does not really matter how you answered the question. The only important thing is that you spent some time, no matter how short, in just facing the question "Is it possible?". If you are still with me, that tells me that you have an open mind, even if it is a sceptical mind and are prepared to spent a few minutes of your life looking at the question. That is in essence what it is all about. It all has to do with the basic question ..."Can I personally influence my state of health?" Naturally there is no simple straightforward answer, apart maybe from "It all depends!". But you have taken the first step by transforming the question from 'Can one...' to the more personal 'Can I cure my back pain........' So lets start off with looking at the bodily/physical symptoms of back pain - Chapter 1.
Chapter One - Back Pain as a Bodily/Physical Symptom Are you one of the 5,000,000,000 *, yes that's right ... Five Billion... people in the world who are now suffering or have recently suffered or who will shortly suffer from back pain? ( * based on the generally accepted premise that about 80% of people suffer from back pain at some time of their lives. This figure is published by the British Government as applying to the UK, but maybe we can apply it to the rest of the world.) In any case, back pain is a major health problem, particularly in the so-called 'civilised' world. Every day huge numbers of people cannot work, cannot do anything, because of back pain. So, if you are reading this report the chances are that you or a loved one is suffering from back pain right now, and if it is a comfort for you - you are not alone. The Back is a complex structure. It consist of bones forming the spine to support your weight, discs to help the spine bend and to cushion the bones, ligaments to hold discs and bones together, tendons to connect the spine to your muscles, a spinal cord carrying nerve signals to the brain, as well as nerves and muscles. So there are quite a few things that can go wrong in this structure. The good news is that, apart from back problems directly connected to serious illnesses like cancer, it is rarely that one has to have surgery on the back. Lower Back Pain This is by far the most common form of back pain. Sometimes the pain can go down through the buttocks and into the legs. Very often this is caused by stress or trauma or as a direct result of a fall or injury. In most cases your back will heal itself within a few days or weeks. If the pain does not go away after three months it is usually appropriate to call it 'chronic back pain'. We will come back to this point further on in this report.
Upper Back Pain Sometimes referred to as 'Neck and Shoulder Pain'. It is usually a result of injury or stress. A typical injury is 'Whiplash Injury' as a result of a car accident, where a person is sitting in a car, as a driver or passenger, and another vehicle crashes into the car from behind. Through this impact the head is sometimes thrown forward and then backward and the muscles and ligaments in the neck and upper back are stretched or even torn. Often painful but rarely leads to a chronic condition. Stress induced pain in the neck and shoulder area is often a result of long periods of sitting at a desk or work bench with restricted movement apart from looking at a computer screen. Not surprising, this is a condition that has increased enormously with the use of computers as work tools and TV as a 'hobby tool'. We will now go and look at ways of diagnosing back pain - in Chapter Two
Chapter Two - The Symptoms of Back Pain In Chapter 1 we looked at the problem of back pain and what it is. We are now, in Chapter 2 going to look at the ways of diagnosing back pain. This is a very important stage because, as you will read below, some serious illness can cause, as side-effects, pain also in the back. So do please check that you are not suffering from some other illness.
Lower back pain is usually defined as a pain or ache in the back in the area between the bottom of your rib cage and the top of your legs. You may find people describing your condition as lumbago, sciatica or even lumbar pain Sometimes the pain spreads to the legs. On other occasions it is associated with a tingling feeling or a sensation of pain 'radiating' from a particular source. Upper back pain is pain or ache in or around the back part of your shoulders as well as your neck. It sometimes affects arms or even hands and fingers.
Before you go any further, stop and think:
Could it be that my posture or habits are affecting my back?
Could I have done something to hurt my back?
Do I have a medical condition that could affect my back?
As mentioned above, most of the acute back pain related to bodily or physical trauma clears up after a few days or weeks. If you experience one or more of the following symptoms, get medical advice very soon.
Inflammation or swelling near your spine
Pain that spreads in the chest
Loss of control over bowels and/or urinary organs
Let us assume for the moment that you are not suffering from any of the above critical symptoms but that you are still in pain. OK, how much pain do you have? Do you even have any idea how to evaluate or even measure the amount of pain you have? Have you ever thought about the question? The fact of the matter is that pain is subjective and is impossible to test objectively. There are no clinical tests that can be objectively verified. Please take a moment and think about it – no one on this earth really knows how much pain you have at this moment. You are really alone with your pain. Surprised, shocked or don't care? Whatever your reaction, please bear in mind that your pain is a very personal matter – it really has to do with you, however you care to define that 'you' – as someone/something outside you or as an integral part of your body. When we come to look at the various treatments that are on offer – and there are an awful lot of treatments on offer, try to bear in mind how you personally define you, or 'yourself'. Perhaps that's enough of philosophical thinking for now, let's go on to look at more practical things like ... what treatments are available in the world for alleviating or curing back pain. On to Chapter Three ...
Chapter Three - Ways of Treating Back Pain without Medicine In Chapter 2 we looked at ways of diagnosing back pain. We are now going to assume that you have checked your general state of health and, for better or worse, have come to the conclusion that your back pain is not a side-effect of an other illness but your very own back pain. The subject of this chapter, looking at ways of treating back pain, is so complex and complicated that we are going to ask you to stop a moment and think about “Why did I order this Report?”. Was it primarily bacause it mentioned 'back pain' or was it because it mentioned 'without medicine'? If you are reading primarily because of 'back pain' and don't place all that much weight on the 'without medicine' part, you may be better off using your time to look at the various pain-killers and medications that are readily available in most parts of the world. Why?, may you well ask. Simply because you are going to have to invest time and energy if you want to go along the path of 'without medicine'. It is as simple as that. The choice is yours. So, having sorted that one out, be prepared for a trip into the jungle, a jungle of different treatments that have in the past been thought of as being useful for treating back pain, some that are today often recommended as being useful and a mere handful of treatments that have stood the test of time and can truly be presented as appropriate treatment, in particular for acute back pain as opposed to chronic back pain. Some of you, maybe even yourself, think that going to bed and having a good rest for a few days, even though you really have no time, is probably a very good thing. Wrong! It is not at all a good thing. Movement, no matter how little or how restricted is good. And now for something quite tricky. What can help me get relief from the pain? Well of course you could always go to your local pharmacy/drug store/chemist shop and get all kinds of pain killers over the counter, BUT you are reading this report about curing WITHOUT medicines, in the hope that you will find something else. So what can you do? Part 1 Lower Back Pain So lets look at one possible 'worst case scenario'. You are down or your knees and cannot stand up, because it hurts so much. So don't even try! Stay on the floor, be aware of how it feels to be on your knees and slowly, very slowly, adjust your position so that your hands are flat on the floor directly under your shoulders and your knees underneath your hips
Looks a bit doggy, doesn't it? Right! It is the 'doggy posture'. However you will now try to arch your back more like a cat, first up and then down. Did it? Excellent. Even if it was just a minimal movement, barely to be seen as a movement, you can afford to congratulate yourself – you have taken the very first step to success! You have cooperated with your body rather than treating it as your enemy who wants you to suffer.
Now, please slowly let yourself kip over on your side that you are completely on floor level, and then slowly, very carefully, turn over on to your back, so that you end up something like th
First make sure that you are completely on the ground – head, shoulders, arms, hands all in touch with the floor. Spend a moment being aware of how you feel, both in your body and in your mind. Just be aware of what's going on, without necessarily doing anything! Now comes a rather tricky part. First see if you can change the angle between your upper and lower legs whilst keeping your feet on the ground. Then bring your feet nearer to your bottom/buttocks and then away from them, until you find the most comfortable and 'right feeling' position. Then bring your knees together and your heels together, without changing your position. See if you can lift your feet just slightly off the ground. Then very slowly, keeping your knees together, twist your legs first to the left and then to the right, all the time keeping your back, your head, your shoulders and your arms, flat on the floor. After a few movements, turn on your side, get back to a kneeing position and then slowly get up off the floor and slowly stretch your back. Whilst getting up, try to keep your head in particular hanging down towards the floor, get into a crouching position and lift yourself up using your legs rather than your back and only attempt to straighten your back after your legs are upright. Got it? Good. If not, try reading it again and think a bit more about what it could possibly mean. These minimal movements of your spine, firstly the bending like the cat and then the slow twist can be effective in relieving the pain provided you stay fully aware of what you are doing and could well be, over the next few days, an alternative to pain killing tablets. Hopefully you are now in a better position to think and act clearly about the next stage. Quite often lower back pain affects the whole body and can lead to increased tension in the neck and shoulder area, which is the main theme of Part 2 ...
Part 2 – Upper Back Pain, Neck and Shoulders Very important – get medical help if you were recently involved in any kind of accident, but particularly if you were in any kind of vehicle, and rule out any serious damage that could be the cause of your pain.OK, we've clarified that one, so what's next on the agenda? Stand up straight, remove wrist watch, bracelets, bangles, etc from your wrists.Twist your left hand so that the back of the hand rests flat on your back, between your shoulder blades with spread out fingers. Leave it there for the time being. Stretch your right arm up towards the ceiling/heavens/roof, relax your right hand and the lower arm, leave your elbow up in the air and let your right arm hang down behind your head, try to let it get in touch with your left hand, all the time keeping your right elbow up in the air. Did you manage to do it? If not, don't be concerned, just slowly, very slowly, bring both hands out of the position and let them both hang loose by your side. Then repeat the movement but in reverse. That is, start off with your right hand behind your back and your left hand up in the air and then try bringing them both together as described above. Notice a difference between the two positions? Quite often one side is more flexible than the other, that's pretty normal. Now you either were able to touch your hands in both positions, in only one position or not at all. If not at all is probably a good idea to practise a bit until you are just able to make contact. If you like you can try standing in front of a doorway, do the movement which seems to be easier, rest the elbow which is in the air, on the door frame and use your body weight to help you bring the two hands nearer. Sounds difficult but is actually quite easy once you have got the hang of it! Lets assume that sooner or later you have got to the point where the two hands are in touch. Stand up straight and slowly, very slowly turn your head away from the elbow which is pointing up. That means if your right arm is up, you move your head to the left and vice versa. slowly back to facing front. Now slowly reverse the position so that your left arm is up and your right arm down and slowly move your head again, this time away from your left arm, towards the right. Doing these movements over a few days can often bring some relief from the pain as well as helping you get to know about any stiffness in your shoulder and neck area. Hopefully you now have some increased knowledge of how your body functions, particularly around your back. Maybe some of the pain is gone or at least it is a bit more manageable. In any case you have possibly learnt something about the role of movement and elasticity in association with back pain. Both are very important factors in reducing your present back pain as well as reducing the risks of future episodes of back pain in your life. At this point, please think seriously about learning more about yoga, stretching, Feldenkrais, Alexander training, Taichi, Aikido and other techniques based on increasing your body awareness. Just go to www.google.com or to www.wikipedia.org for more information! Hopefully you will now take more care about the external movements of your body. Part 3 on the other hand looks at the internal movements of your body.
Part 3 – Internal Movements in the Body In Parts 1 and 2 we looked at how specific movements can be of help in treating both upper as well as lower back pain. Maybe you have also discovered that increased awareness of your body can sometimes lead to a different assessment of the things that are of importance to you in your life. Whatever; at some point you are sure to be confronted with the question of 'nutrition', the basic question of whether what you take in to you as food could have any influence on your state of health and well-being. So here you are, still with your back pain, maybe easier to deal with after you have tried the movements described in Parts 1 or 2, but still there. The next experiment that you are invited to participate in has to do with your bowel movement. Your bowel is a very important organ – think of it as part of a very long tube that starts as your mouth and goes all the way through your body under various names like 'throat', 'stomach', 'intestine' etc and ends up as your anus. A long internal tube that, in a way, is in constant connection with your environment, both at the upper and lower end. The bowel is also an important muscle, and like all muscles, respond positively to appropriate exercises. That brings us to the next point. Please consider, as an 'experiment with pain' trying to change your nutrition – no coffee, no tea, no alcohol, fresh fruit and vegetables, preferably raw as salad, soya and vegetarian products rather than meat, and water rather than cola. After a few days you may be able to notice how your body reacts – how some nutrients enhance the feeling of well being whereas others highlight the difficulties you and your body have when it comes to deciding what is really good for you. In any case, whether you are motivated for reasons of a possible increase in betterment of your state of health, through a commitment to doing something for the global environment, or simply through a sense of adventure, do rest assured that a change towards a more healthy diet will almost certainly have a beneficial effect on your back and on the way you experience it. This report is not intended to be a 'course in changing your life', but is intended to be a course in inviting you to change your way of thinking and feeling about your pain and about your body and how you treat it and how you relate to it. This report is also designed to help pay attention to the difference in attitude between 'having' a body and 'being' a body. And that brings us to Part 4 – Movement of the Mind
Part 4 – Movement of the Mind Do you remember that first thing that I asked you to do – standing in front of the mirror and saying “Yes I can”? That is what this Part 4 is really all about. About being open to change, to even the slightest possibility of change. Think of movement as change – chnage of position, change in time, or whatever takes your fancy. Think also please about the scientific fact that no one and no instrument or machine in the whole world can measure your amount of pain. Your pain really and truly belongs to you and to you alone. Now you have your very own instrument to measure your pain and that is called 'mind'. There are lots of other words around, like 'consciousness', 'awareness' and so on, but for the sake of simplicity we are going to stay with 'mind'. Mind is a very strange phenomena and sometimes difficult to grasp. How often have we thought “I will just concentrate on this problem so and so for a while and I am sure to come to a solution.” Really? Most of us get drawn away from the main topic very soon, through thoughts, emotional feelings, bodily sensations like pain and so on and so forth. Then there are further complicatory factors – things like 'unconscious mind', 'family and national cultural behaviour habits', even 'genetically programmed patterns', just to make the whole picture more interesting! But at the end of the day, there is only one person who really knows whether the pain is acceptable or not and that is you. There is a very interesting person by the name of Adam Rostocki from the United States who coined the term “Knowledge Therapy” to describe the extremely important process of getting to know your pain and getting to know yourself. http://www.cure-back-pain.org/knowledge-therapy.html” It could well be that, particularly if you are suffering for the very first time from an acute back pain, you say to yourself 'Why on earth should I even think about things that sound very psychological when all I have is a pain in the back?”. Maybe you really don't have to; maybe it will go away without you having to do anything – we do know that most cases of acute back pain do go away within days or weeks no matter what you do or don't do. However there are an awful lot of people, maybe yourself, who are experiencing back pain not for the first time, who have tried different treatments and therapies, over months or years, even medication or surgery but still have back pain. To those people, we have the following to say ... ... ... Treatment usually has to do with managing or controlling the symptoms that have been deemed to be associated with a specific, diagnosed condition and to be helpful they must be continuously and/or permanently applied. That is one of the reasons why back pain, or at least the treatment of back pain, is very interesting for the pharmaceutical industry as well as other businesses associated with health care providing organisations. Cure describes another process – the process of locating the cause of the problem, correcting it and ensuring a pain-free life in the future.
Chapter Four - A cure for Chronic Back Pain? Well, here we are at last by the 'Million Dollar Question”. Is there a cure for chronic back pain?This is the moment where our lawyer comes in to remind us to say to you: “Neither Snowdragon Clinic, its parent company, Snowdragon Ltd. nor the author Bryn Jones N.D. claims to have found a universal cure for chronic back pain”. Having said all that where do we go from here? Straight back to you! But you are not alone. We will do our best to point you in the right direction. We will inform you about possible next stages. Last but not least we will try to clear up some of the mystery surrounding various techniques, share with you some old secrets, and give you some tips on how you to find people who have found their solution to the problem of chronic back pain. Let's start off with some questions relating to the mystery of chronic back pain: If medication, surgery and all the other supposedly wonderful treatments are so good, why is it that chronic back pain has reached almost epidemic proportions, certainly in the industrialised countries? According to the US American National Pain Foundation, chronic back pain is constantly on the increase. Why do more than 5,000,000 – yes, five million people per year, just in Britain alone, look for help for back pain? How many of these (5%, 7%,10%?) will end up with chronic back pain? Why is the British National Health Service seriously interested in the role of Spiritual Healing in the case of chronic back pain? Why do most people with chronic back pain also suffer from depression? What is so mysterious about treating chronic back pain if it is just a simple mechanical problem? Why are there more than 70 million entries on www.google.com when you type in 'back pain'?
There is no simple answer but it could well be that it has to do with a concept that has been around for a very long time but that only recently has found its way into mainstream medical thinking ... and that is the concept of a 'mind/body', sometimes referred to as 'psychosomatic'. It is based on the idea that your mind and your body, together with emotional feelings (pain and depression both come into this category) form a complex ongoing process which is called life. If that is the case – and it is extremely difficult to argue that we are not 'one unit', as opposed to a random collection of 'spare parts' – then any activity we undertake on a physical level is intimately bound up with our mental processes and vice versa. This concept is by no means new – even the ancient Greeks, in the medical healing temples of Asclepios used information from the unconscious mind, through dreams, to help them diagnose the condition and prescribe treatment. And that is really the mystery – how to find out what is the real cause of the chronic back pain. Before we go on to explore that question we are going to share with you three simple secrets that will help you on your journey: ●
Move! That's right ... go, go, go and don't fall into the trap of staying in bed.
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Write a journal and don't forget to write about your feelings in it.
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Start relating to your mind/body.
So, come on, is there really a cure for chronic back pain?As we said earlier, we do not know of an universal cure for back pain whether acute or chronic. But we can with confidence suggest to you that if you personally are prepared to spend time and energy getting to know your pain and your back that there is a very good chance that some day you will be able to tell your family and friends “I have cured my chronic back pain!”
Well lets start our journey by looking at some of the words and concepts that you may have or possibly will come across ... Placebo is a substance having no pharmacological effect but given to a patient who supposes it to be a medicine. Interestingly enough, and that it is in itself a mystery, a lot of people do get better. The phenomena is called the placebo-effect. Nocebo on the other hand also describes a harmless substance but one that has a negative effect on the person. Sometimes used to describe words used by a practitioner. Referred to as the nocebo-response. Both reactions, getting better or getting worse are results of a known or unknown relationship between the person with back pain and the treatment/medication or even ritual, possibly with the involvement of the administrator of the procedure – the health care provider. The unknown factor falls within the realms of emotions and feelings. Both placebo and nocebo are examples of mind/body or psychosomatic phenomena. Then there is another very important concept – that of 'self-responsibility'. Self Responsibility is usually deemed to mean taking responsibility for your actions in a positive way and is often associated with self-reliance and being accountable for what goes on, as opposed to letting someone else decide whereas the someone could be a person or an institution. If we think about the fact that your pain is very much your own pain, it does make sense for you to take responsibility for making sure that your research into the cause of your pain is conducted very thoroughly and methodically, that you document the steps you take to alleviate your pain, that they are chosen with care and that the process of curing your chronic back pain is conducted with an open and loving attitude towards yourself and a conscious and aware sense of mindfulness. So let us look in detail about the the following words and concepts ... Research is a systematic search or investigation with the study of sources and materials in order to establish facts and possibly arrive at new conclusions. Since you or someone you know probably downloaded this report from a computer, you already have, through the internet, access to a world wide tool for your research work. If you have little or no experience in researching, try going to: http://www.studygs.net/research.htm Documentation is basically to do with noting your research work in an understandable form, organising it and making sure that you can retrieve the information when necessary. In your particular case you can set your own standards, use either paper or computer, but whatever form you use, do incorporate your journal into your documentation. Journal is the term used for a logbook or record; in this case it is the record of what goes on in your mind. Your thoughts, ideas, associations, emotions, dreams, relationships, pain, back etc. Think of it as the documentation of your internal research as opposed to the other, external research.
Alleviate means lessening or making it easier to endure the pain. A useful guide is KISS – 'keep it simple, silly'. For instance, try drinking fresh water for three days and document the results in your journal.
The process of curing is from most accounts, a long one. Research is very very important, particularly the work you undertake in the still underdeveloped zone of mind/body phenomena, with special emphasis on your journal work. You may well find one or two professional health care providers who are prepared to accompany you on this journey. They are few and far between but there are some out there. So, don't give up! Then experiment. Yes, experiment with fasting, with changing your diet, with exercising, with mental attitude, experiment in your relationships to other people and living things, to nature, even to the universe. Just try it! You have absolutely nothing to lose! During the process of moving towards your own cure, you may find yourself going through periods of up and down. Days when you feel everything is going OK and days when nothing seems to work! Well, you are human after all, and this is quite a normal human response. Try to get into communication with other people, to share your experience, to learn about their experiences, to get motivated, to give hope to others. Basically the word cure has to do with care, with taking care, with taking conscious, tender, loving care of your self. During this process, this path, you will get to know your body, your mind, your back and your pain. That's the way. Remember the old proverb that says that a journey of a thousand miles starts with the very first step that you take.
No more but my love, The Author Summer 2009
www.SnowdragonClinic.com