الثلاثاء، 31 مايو 2011

Back Pain

The initial surgery was SUPPOSED to be a relatively risk-free procedure…

But there were complications…

Blood wasn’t draining properly and was pooling, resulting in a hematoma…

In the middle of the night my parents and sister Fran drove me an hour from Hamilton to Toronto Sick Kids hospital for an emergency procedure.

I remember three things from this night:

   1. The green Nike baseball cap I was wearing...
   2. Throwing up while in the waiting room because of the pain…
   3. And the worried look on my parent's and sister's faces when we were waiting in the hospital.

Maybe you've seen this look on faces of your family or friends when you've thrown your back...

The treatment was a success, and I was treated to days of recovery (and weird hallucinations while on morphine) in the hospital…

Unfortunately, the second surgery was more invasive than the first, as the doctors had to cut through fascia and muscle to get to the root of the problem.

Needless to say, I was left with a few biomechanical problems that made back pain a regular occurrence – despite the fact that I got back in great shape, worked out regularly and I was doing everything 'right'...
Conventional Treatments Never Worked For Me, Either

When I first started having back pain, I visited my doctor.

3 minutes later, I walked out with a prescription for painkillers.




Sound familiar?

Luckily, even in high school, I understood that painkillers didn't do anything for the problem, they only addressed the symptoms, so I chose to put up with the pain instead of pop the pills.

I kept up with sports and started lifting weights and my condition improved, but I still had pain that I felt I shouldn't have and it made me miss out on the thing I'd loved the most - sports.
I Was Frustrated, Embarassed and Still in Pain

So I kept searching and decided to visit a chiropractor.

After the first visit, I left in more pain than I went in with, so I never went back.

Knowing what I know now, it was a good call.

I'm sure there are many good chiros out there, but this guy definitely wasn't one of them.

If you've tried chiropractic, hopefully your experiences were positve.

Then, I tried massage...

Massage felt good, well, actually, massage hurt like heck...

But I did feel looser afterwards.

I Was Never Content With Simply Improving My Back Pain

So the search continued...

back pain booksAfter attaining my Kinesiology degree, I saw this guy named Paul Chek, widely regarded as one of the top corrective exercise specialists in the world, speak at a fitness conference...

His presentation blew me away, so much so that over the next 2 years I spent another $10,000 + to learn from him...

One thing I'd learned was that investing money in my education was never a bad idea...

I gained even more practical knowledge that reduced the frequency of my pain even more, but I still had to deal with the frustration of having to deal with pain, stiffness and spasms from time to time.

I was quite happy with where my back was and it wasn't until I started training high-level mixed martial arts fighters that I stumbled upon the final piece of the puzzle that has led to the last 4+ years of my life to be 100% pain-free.

So after tens of thousands of dollars, over 10 years of study,
training and observation, here's what I discovered...
There's 1 Cause For Most Cases of Back Pain

And that cause is REPETITIVE STRESS...

Your back doesn't go because of a simple action like bending over to tie your shoes or play with your kids.

It's an accumulation of stress from multiple different causes - a simple thing like bending over was just the straw that broke the donkey's back, so to speak...

The key is to address all of the causes of stress on your spine and in doing so, you'll finally be free from back pain...

Even if your back pain started from a major accident, fall, or stupid move (we've all done it at some point), to get back to 100%, you need to make sure there's no excessive stresses going through your spine.

Unfortunately, with the spine - it's not as simple as carpal tunnel in that you just take a break from typing since you use your back for everything that you do!

So let's use a car analogy to see the different ways that repetitive stress causes back pain and what we need to do to address these issues to eliminate our pain...

Your spine is like the tires on your car and how fast they wear is directly related to the amount of stress put through them...




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