The day my brain forgot where my back was
lucys-backbreak.blogspot.com
The day my brain forgot where my back was
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Re: The day my brain forgot where my back was
#2my tl;dr summary - After seeing several doctors and chiropractors for her excruciating back pain, Lucy found that exercise and [re-]building core strength was the answer. The problem was her muscles, not her bones.
Re: The day my brain forgot where my back was
#3responding to csarva(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1271567)(I can't seem to reply to individual messages anymore):
>[re-]building core strength
That's [re-]building strength in core muscles (the ones that hold your skeleton together)... as opposed to motor muscles(those who move your limbs)... that is the crux of the whole article, and I think it makes a lot of difference. The way you put it leads to think to core moral strength.
Edit: The excruciating pain is also not core to the article. In her case, damaged nerves lead to muscle fatigue being manifested in lack of power and quite pointedly lack of pain in certain circumstances when pain was to be expected (though she also describes experiencing said excruciating pain).
Edit2: Actually, although the article is interspersed with passages of personal drama (it /is/ a blog post, on /her/ blog) it is also filled with too much information to be easily tl;dr'ed... Also, the post itself is a postmortem style post in which what happened over a long period of time is condensed. Further compression runs high risks of being lossy I think.
Re: The day my brain forgot where my back was
#4Taking a bigger picture:
Muscle atrophy is one of the biggest causes of reduced quality of life in the elderly (and also the not so elderly). Women in particular are susceptible to this due to their smaller amount of muscle mass to begin with and the general cultural aversion to women undertaking resistance exercise. My own experience (as a man and admitted gym rat) is that resistance training sorts out my back problem (and generally improves my life in other ways).
So, who's for deadlifts? :)
Re: The day my brain forgot where my back was
#5The treatment she got from the government doctors was horrible.
This bit gives me chills: "We were told that we would wait at least four months for an NHS appointmen"
Uggh.
I'm glad that we still have free market doctors here in the US.
Well, at least for the next four years.
Re: The day my brain forgot where my back was
#6Does anyone have a link to further information on the muscle repair stuff she cited? The part about how after 25, your brain might just give muscles up for lost?
Re: The day my brain forgot where my back was
#7The treatment she got from the government doctors was horrible. This bit gives me chills: "We were told that we would wait at least four months for an NHS appointmen" Uggh. I'm glad that we still have free market doctors here in the US. Well, at least for the next four years.
There are free market doctors in the UK, I shouldn't worry that all yours will vanish.
Re: The day my brain forgot where my back was
#8The treatment she got from the government doctors was horrible. This bit gives me chills: "We were told that we would wait at least four months for an NHS appointmen" Uggh. I'm glad that we still have free market doctors here in the US. Well, at least for the next four years.
This does not seem unusually high for me. I live in the U.S, in a city with some of the best hospitals in the country, and it looks about median.
Re: The day my brain forgot where my back was
#9Taking a bigger picture: Muscle atrophy is one of the biggest causes of reduced quality of life in the elderly (and also the not so elderly). Women in particular are susceptible to this due to their smaller amount of muscle mass to begin with and the general cultural aversion to women undertaking resistance exercise. My own experience (as a man and admitted gym rat) is that resistance training sorts out my back probl…
I've (male) been going to they gym almost a year, after 30 years of sloth, it's made a huge difference.
I've heard some concern from women who don't want to work out too hard because they don't want to bulk up. I'm no expert, the responses I've heard have generally been something like most women aren't genetically prone to bulking, you're just going to get more fit, stronger and toned.
In case there are any women here who have had similar concerns. IMO you're much better off being strong and fit. Working out is not (necessarily) about body building, it's about health, ability and quality of life.
Re: The day my brain forgot where my back was
#10The treatment she got from the government doctors was horrible. This bit gives me chills: "We were told that we would wait at least four months for an NHS appointmen" Uggh. I'm glad that we still have free market doctors here in the US. Well, at least for the next four years.
This does not seem unusually high for me. I live in the U.S, in a city with some of the best hospitals in the country, and it looks about median.
Agree. I live in a mid-size city with a couple of world-class medical facilities. The waits for specialists are about 3 months.