CHAPTER
1
A New Approach to Back Pain

Back Pain Bulletin!
If you've been suffering with back pain, we don't need to tell you just how bad it can get. It's an ordeal. You suffer, your family suffers, your friends suffer, your work suffers. Your whole quality of life can take a nosedive. There are millions of other people with the same problem, but that doesn't make it any easier to handle. We know that it's hard to believe, but the book you hold in your hands can help-and help a lot. It's about an exciting new approach to understanding and treating chronic back pain that integrates the very best from both "traditional" and "alternative" medicine so you can resume your normal life as soon as possible. It is based on an explosion of recent scientific research that leads to a whole new way of understanding and treating back pain that has become a chronic problem (lingered more than a couple of months).
Simply put, the book makes three major points:
1. The cause of most chronic back pain is generally misunderstood by both sufferers and the medical community. It is usually thought to be the result of damaged or defective parts in the back. This is a perfectly natural assumption, but, strange as this seems, it simply isn't true. A great deal of scientific research has been done on chronic back pain, and the findings point in a completely different direction. So what does cause chronic back pain? The evidence tells us that while the problem may start with a physical injury or strain, those things usually heal quickly on their own. Tight muscles cause the pain to last, and stress is to blame for tight muscles-stress over pain, worries about the future, disappointments over unsuccessful cures, fears of surgery, anxieties about medical bills, problems at work, unhappiness over strained relationships. The pain is certainly not "all in your head." We know that it is completely real. Muscle tension and spasms can cause intense pain.
2. Most current back pain treatment methods don't work very well because they misunderstand the real cause of the pain. Again the research contradicts typical medical practice. If you are like most people, you've taken your back troubles to one or more doctors. You may have been told to rest, take medicine, or attend "back school." Perhaps you've tried special cushions, braces, physical therapy, a chiropractor, or even surgery. You're probably very careful to avoid reinjuring yourself. Some of these measures may have helped to a degree, but they probably haven't solved your problem entirely or you wouldn't be reading this book. Conventional treatments miss the real cause of most back trouble-they simply don't address the stress and muscle pain problem.
Most treatments also emphasize "taking it easy," "trying not to hurt yourself," or waiting for the pain to go away before resuming activity. Yet all the research and our experience with patients show that a quick return to unrestricted physical movement is