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The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

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Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#31

Post by pcurve »

nostromo wrote: post #5
theseatoms wrote: post #2

> The author is often asked for her thoughts on certain forms of exercise, such as yoga or pilates, which she also covers on her website. What she tells people, repeatedly, is that “movement is essential.” The exercise economy is the real back pain industry.

Exercise fixed all of my back pain issues. I do heavy deadlifts. I can't tell you how many people told me that it would hurt my back. But it turns out having a muscular back to support my spine was exactly what I needed.

this was true for my Mon in her 70s. Her back problem got a lot better when she started doing exercise and gained more muscle mass around her back.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#32

Post by tcbawo »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #21
_delirium wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, the process of thinking through the book's contents itself healed the pain?

This Amazon review is too perfect: After months of intense low back pain, I was recommended this book. I read it and thought it made sense. I know our mind is powerful and stress can cause dis-ease. I completely jumped into his program spite the intense pain I endured. After 6 weeks I did not experience any shift in my pain. And, the pain intensified to the point that sometimes I couldn't even stand. I decided to see…

I think that the premise is that it is possible for some people to reduce pain symptoms by reducing inflammation caused by stress. I can't imagine this advice would solve everyone's pain issues, but it might help people who would otherwise become dependent on pain medication or endure unnecessary surgery.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#33

Post by arkitaip »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #21
_delirium wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, the process of thinking through the book's contents itself healed the pain?

This Amazon review is too perfect: After months of intense low back pain, I was recommended this book. I read it and thought it made sense. I know our mind is powerful and stress can cause dis-ease. I completely jumped into his program spite the intense pain I endured. After 6 weeks I did not experience any shift in my pain. And, the pain intensified to the point that sometimes I couldn't even stand. I decided to see…

Fakespot's score is a decent indicator of the quality of product reviews over at Amazon: http://fakespot.com/product/healing-back-pain-the-mind-body-...

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#34

Post by royinferno »

Yeah I remember doc telling me spinal fusion being an option. Refused because of the long term ailments it may give me. I have a herniated disc L5-S1. It's been 6 years since then. Did physical therapy and exercise. Last 2 years been lazy but I know having a strong core is key along with cardio and strength exercise. However I been saving to have a stem cell procedure done where they extract it from my bone marrow and inject it into the problem disk. I think cost is $7K and it's not covered by insurance. But it's better than the surgical alternatives at have now.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#35

Post by 0xbear »

thesunny wrote: post #28

I haven't posted in a while but had to jump in on this. I had very bad back pain before my first daughter was born. I wanted to be able to carry my daughter when she was born so I decided to try everything, whether I believed it would work or not. I had massages, shots injected directly in the back, manipulation, and basically lots of different doctors and specialists. Nothing worked. Since I said I'd try everything,…

Your muscles are locked in spasm because they’re insufficient to carry the load. The long term solution to that is not acupuncture, it’s building up those muscles through exercise, and in particular through training with free weights.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#36

Post by andreyf »

tptacek wrote: post #23
andreyf wrote: post #6

On the flip side, I had lower back pain of varying intensity for about two years before it got really bad really suddenly and I went to someone recommended by someone knowledgeable in the subject who fixed it in about 30 minutes of some serious stretching and twisting and turning [1]. Two months with not a hint of pain and I'm pretty sure this is yet another example of the medical industry being incentivized into ign…

This argument has always seemed pretty silly to me. Why, if this is how the market for medical services worked, would medical services cure any problem, when they could find ways to milk those problems for recurring revenue? Why aren't malaria or stomach ulcers "chronic manageable illnesses", rather than curable ones?

It's a very cynical argument, I'll give you that, and I'm certainly biased by wasting a bunch of time & money on x-rays and drugs and acupuncture. A slight more realistic explanation may involve liability - twisting and stretching someone who complains of back pain may be hard to teach / accredit at scale in a way that doesn't sometimes end disastrously, and MDs prescribing meds eliminates those cases of extreme liability.

Not sure about Malaria or stomach ulcers, but likely because those who developed the drugs were not acting to maximize their economic interests? Malaria seems like a relatively well understood parasite, whereas "back pain" could really be a symptom of nobody-really-knows-what.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#37

Post by Godel_unicode »

andreyf wrote: post #6

On the flip side, I had lower back pain of varying intensity for about two years before it got really bad really suddenly and I went to someone recommended by someone knowledgeable in the subject who fixed it in about 30 minutes of some serious stretching and twisting and turning [1]. Two months with not a hint of pain and I'm pretty sure this is yet another example of the medical industry being incentivized into ign…

> why would anyone ever fix it in a for-profit system?

For the same reason any other problem gets solved in a for-profit system; the best solver of problems will be the best getter of dollars. See for instance Apple, Honda, Nike, Harvard, etc.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#38

Post by memracom »

I've kept back pain at bay with a simple 3-point plan. Sleep on an uncomfortable bed with a firm surface and a thin futon for padding. Sit on uncomfortable chairs, mostly the wooden kitchen chair type. Lift free weights, i.e. barbells or kettle bells. No levers and pulley systems. The weight has to be free to fall and hurt you. Just never overdo it so that it never does fall like that.

Works for me, probably because it keeps all the little muscles between the ribs working smoothly. Humans are not built for comfort but paradoxically, avoiding modern comforts will have you sleeping like a baby, avoiding back pain, and give you reserves to climb a mountain when you feel like it.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#39

Post by briantakita »

> Ramin reports that they are impossible to point at on an x-ray, because they don’t exist; a dislocated joint in your spine would be the result of a horrendous injury that sends you to the hospital, she explains, not to a massage table.

The Chiropractor I visit utilizes x-rays & a thermographic scanner to identify the subluxations.

From consistently seeing my x-rays, it's obvious where my subluxations lie. The thermographic scanner analysis also corresponds with what I feel & what my x-rays show. The targeted adjustments increase my range of motions, blood flow, & "good feeling" in the areas of the subluxation; in a progressive way. The spine (especially the neck) is a complex biomechanical system, so it takes iterations to enhance. I've also tried yoga (ashtanga) & exercise in the past, but my back was still messed up.

While it's healthy to be skeptical, it's also healthy to be skeptical of the skeptics.

During the turn of the 20th century, the robber barons (i.e. Rockefellers) financed a campaign to promote the nascent allopathic medicine & to discredit the traditional naturalpathic medicine. They financed universities, including politically maneuvering in allopathic faculty & ostricizing naturalpathic faculty. They also utilized the new science of propaganda (later renamed to public relations) to convince the population of their worldview.

Allopathic medicine tends to be more profitable large companies (monopolies) for a few reasons:

* it has an innate subscription model (i.e. medication)

* it can utilize patents & professional associations to control markets

* by attending to the symptoms & not the root causes, it can create long-term or even lifetime customers who become dependent

* side effects can be masked & non-obvious via bioaccumulation

* masking side effects creates new symptoms to create demand for new medicine

* having a monopoly in practitioners & capital allows companies/markets to control the funding & dissemination of research results

* since it relates to health care, populations demand government subsidies funded by taxpayers & other government funds (i.e. ObamaCare)

* since it's health care, laws can be passed to "ensure the public good". These laws are often written by the lobbyists to restrict competition. For example, in many states, it's a criminal offense to be a Naturalpathic Doctor.

* there's been a recent epidemic (~60 from 2015-2016) of Naturalpathic & well known critics of the allopathic medicine industry/science with mysterious deaths

I'm sure there are many other strategems that I'm missing; but this shows how allopathic medicine is quite a lucrative business with heavily dependent customers. It's also politically incorrect to call out the state of affairs as it's an involved & emotional topic with massively capitalized special interests who want to keep their golden goose.

Re: The $100B per year back pain industry is mostly a hoax

#40

Post by 0xbear »

nostromo wrote: post #5
theseatoms wrote: post #2

> The author is often asked for her thoughts on certain forms of exercise, such as yoga or pilates, which she also covers on her website. What she tells people, repeatedly, is that “movement is essential.” The exercise economy is the real back pain industry.

Exercise fixed all of my back pain issues. I do heavy deadlifts. I can't tell you how many people told me that it would hurt my back. But it turns out having a muscular back to support my spine was exactly what I needed.

Same here. Went from being unable to lift even 100 lbs without pain to 495lbs. I don’t recommend going quite that far to everyone, but 315lbs should not be a problem at all for men.
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