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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

#211

Post by tudorw »

tmbsundar wrote: post #188
_delirium wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You need to read the book and his work to understand that bit. It's not just reading the book. "Reading the book" makes you understand the way the brain works and can induce and "help" sustain "real pain" in places you think it to be. He also makes it clear that the advice "it's all in your mind" is just not going to help and only an insult to the sufferer. If I understand correctly, he does not exclude physical exam…

Here's some words on Neuropathic pain, as opposed to nociceptive pain which is what you would feel if someone stuck a fork in your leg, the next day, when I remind you of the fork incident, and you wince, that's an example of neuropathic pain, the same area of the brain lights up either way.

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1806...

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

#212

Post by tudorw »

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…

Most pain treatment in the hands of professionals would seek to establish there is no mechanical aspect to the pain, go and see a doctor first, then read books.

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

#213

Post by pif »

nradov wrote: post #210
pif wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed all animals' life is a constant battle against hunger. No brain evolved to accept hunger, but to recognize it and fight it as the no. 1 priority.

No, you're describing the intense hunger associated with starvation, not the mild hunger associated with gradual weight loss. If you're doing other stuff then mild hunger is easy to ignore. It's an alert, not a command.

Mine is a honest question, no rudeness intended: do you know what you're talking about? Have you experienced it first person?

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

#214

Post by CogitoCogito »

pif wrote: post #203
CogitoCogito wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is no known way to keep your weight stable with an acceptable life quality. Firstly, why does your weight need to be stable? Personally I tend to go on yearly (maybe biennially) cycles with shifts between 170 and 195 pounds. Basically I force myself to get down in the weight (my weight-loss method is to restrict calories pretty dramatically). After that I will have eating habits that tend to keep me low for a…

I'd like to clarify: I think that big sacrifices are easily acceptable while you're losing weight. What can make life miserable is the perspective that sacrifices will always be necessary, just to maintain the status quo. Your method is indeed interesting, as you basically found a way to concentrate "suffering" in few months per year, still it is another example of a cure that lacks an important bullet point: it neve…

Yes I guess using your terminology, my method is basically to solve the hunger "problem", by redefining it as not being a problem (and obviously changing my mentality to allow this). So for me hunger isn't really a problem it just becomes a state of being for a while.

But yeah I think the most realistic way to solve the hunger problem en masse* is gastric bypass. It's surgery so it shouldn't be taken lightly, but not weight-loss method even appears to come close when compared to it.

*As I said in another thread in this post, I don't think it's a good idea to focus on finding the best weight-loss plan for everyone, since it's a very personal issue, but everyone has to recognize that if there is such a general solution, it certainly is gastric bypass.

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

#215

Post by nradov »

pif wrote: post #213
nradov wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're describing the intense hunger associated with starvation, not the mild hunger associated with gradual weight loss. If you're doing other stuff then mild hunger is easy to ignore. It's an alert, not a command.

Mine is a honest question, no rudeness intended: do you know what you're talking about? Have you experienced it first person?

Yes of course I've experienced it. Being a little hungry is just like being a little too cold or feeling minor pain. Put it aside and get on with life.

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

#216

Post by pif »

nradov wrote: post #215
pif wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine is a honest question, no rudeness intended: do you know what you're talking about? Have you experienced it first person?

Yes of course I've experienced it. Being a little hungry is just like being a little too cold or feeling minor pain. Put it aside and get on with life.

Thanks for replying. Now it's clear that you don't know what you are talking about.

Rudeness intended :-)

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

#217

Post by dkersten »

taneq wrote: post #144
bigiain wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll vouch for the effectiveness of losing 30+kg (65+lb). Which only reduces the back pain problem for overweight people to a known-intractable weight loss problem... :-/

Weight loss isn't "known intractable". Physically it's very simple, if an overweight person is physically prevented from eating too much, they'll lose weight, just like physically it's very simple to quit addictive drugs. And the drug analogy is a good one, because just like quitting drugs, you can't quit overeating (barring the aforementioned option of someone physically preventing you from doing so - which is liter…

"physically it's very simple to quit addictive drugs"

Quitting some drugs cold turkey can be dangerous, so "simple" isn't quite correct.

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

#218

Post by nradov »

pif wrote: post #216
nradov wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes of course I've experienced it. Being a little hungry is just like being a little too cold or feeling minor pain. Put it aside and get on with life.

Thanks for replying. Now it's clear that you don't know what you are talking about. Rudeness intended :-)

Apparently you don't know what you're talking about, and just want to whine and complain. Too bad.

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

#219

Post by thenomad »

joelrunyon wrote: post #55
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…

The problem with doing exercises is it's not as simple as a pill or a surgery - it's a lifestyle change. Don't want to spam HN with this as I mentioned it earlier, but this is one of the issues we're trying to address with http://MoveWellApp.com - which is basically a personal mobility coach.

Quick note here: an Android app would go a long way to encouraging takeup in the HN crowd, I suspect.

I'm already a big fan of mobilisation exercises, so my thought process went "sounds great - where do I download?"..."iPhone only. Meh. Oh well."

I know you're working on it, just wanted to give you some feedback to help prioritise.

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

#220

Post by thenomad »

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,…

One thing I've definitely learned about musculoskeletal problems is that you shouldn't discount apparently unscientific treatments if they seem to work. There's a lot we don't know about how that particular system functions, and things like acupuncture seem to fit into that. That's not to say the explanations they give for why things work are accurate, but the treatment itself seems to work sometimes.

I'm not advocating homeopathy here, but acupuncture, shiatzu, anything involving the phrase "trigger point" - worth a look. Apart from anything else, they're comparatively inexpensive and non-invasive so the cost of testing them is low.

Trigger point therapy gets a particular shoutout here for being one of those things that resolves 10+ year problems in about 15 excruciatingly painful minutes, sometimes. See http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/137795.The_Trigger_Point_...

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