Why Stretch The Psoas Muscle For Back Pain Relief

Postural Correction Made Simple In 3 Steps!

One of the more daunting tasks in muscle imbalance correction and reducing lower back stress lies in postural correction. I think its fairly obvious why its important, but just to re-cap:

Posture closely inter-twines with back pain. Why? Well, your body is equipped naturally to be able to deal with that ever inescapable force called gravity. I heard recently that it weighs down on our bodies at approximately 33.5 pounds per square inch! Whether or not that is exact, who cares, but the point remains that we are meant to deal with this force by the way our bodies are designed.

The forces of gravity should be distributed nicely throughout specific joints, bones, muscles, etc. When posture is distorted, through repetitive tasks, muscle imbalances, and even psychological issues, such as depression, the weight of gravity starts to exert its straining effects on our bodies in a way that causes increased joint stress, overworked stabilizer muscles, thus leading to chronic overuse, joint degeneration, and of course, pain.

Now, that you get WHY back pain sufferers should have good posture, why don’t you DO it?

The reason why most people don’t work on posture is truly because its a pain in the ass. It requires paying attention to it continuously, and its hard work at first. However, just like any other discipline, the rewards will pay off IMMENSELY.

Here are a few ways to get your posture corrected PROPERLY:

1. Identify the type of pelvic tilt you have (read other sections of this blog about this). Once you know, you will always focus on finding a “neutral” pelvic tilt when standing, unless the specific type of back problem you have prevents you from doing this in a pain-free way. You will most likely need to just slightly bend your knees too, in order to make the pelvic tilt happen easily.

2. Imagine you have 2 balloons attached to the upper part of your chest muscles, and they are lifting them up to the sky. That should immediately improve your forward head posture too! Gently RETRACT your chin, so your neck elongates slightly.

3. Lastly, pull your shoulder blades back toward your spine, and DOWN toward the middle of your back. The reason why you do this is because if you JUST pull your shoulders back, then you will most likely engage your upper trapezius muscles, which elevate the shoulders. The problem with this is that 99% of people are tight and overworked in this muscles, and they are “stress” holders. So, we don’t want to make them any tighter. Pull the shoulder blades BACK and DOWN.

–Sam Visnic

Free Audio: The REAL Truth Behind Your Back Pain…And How To Heal It Once And For All!

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www.thebackpainsolution.com

Just Released! New Back Pain Relief Interview!

I have to say, the guy who interviewed me did a great job! He pulled some excellent info out of me!

Go here to get the audio:

http://www.thebackpainsolution.com

Can Chronic Back Pain Ever Be “Cured”?

This is a very frequent question I am asked.  The question comes up, “Once I have been diagnosed with chronic lower back pain, can I ever live a pain free life?”

This is simply a problem with believing that a diagnosis means anything other than a current state of affairs.  Just because you have pain now, or have had it for a while, doesn’t mean much more than the fact that you have not found what needs to be done in your situation in order to eliminate it.

Over the years, I have helped people with back pain overcome it, and even more people MANAGE it.  You see, I don’t think it is realistic to think that you should NEVER have back pains once in a while, just the same with all other joints, muscles, etc.

You will have these things from time to time, this is simply part of life.  When you over-use a muscle, its gonna get sore, when you move your refrigerator, your back may ache the next day.  The key is to be able to realize that if you just relax and take care of your body, its gonna go away pretty quickly.

When I work with back pain sufferers, the first thing I tell them is…”You’re gonna be okay. Once I teach you the movements, exercises, and stretches, and you continue to get good at them, and practice, your pain is going to go down FOR SURE.  Then, if sometime in the future your back starts bothering you for some reason, that should just be a signal to make sure you get back to doing the things I showed you.”

I don’t believe the anxiety and fear about back pain is that it may come and go, but instead, that you may not be able to “control” it, or that the pain will be “as bad”.  Once you learn how to control your pain, through movement, nutrition, and stress relief techniques, then that fear goes away.

THAT release of fear and anxiety is the outcome, and what we need to strive for.  Breaking free of the chains that we put on ourselves.

–Sam Visnic

Back Surgery…A Valid Treatment?

Here are some interesting nuggets of info you may not have known about back surgery…

• TV news magazines 20/20 and 60 Minutes ran specials on the number of medical errors in the U.S. The report included doctors who operated on the wrong side, prompting patients to use markers to let the doctor know where to do their job

• Doctors have had to research a new disorder called FBSS, “Failed Back Surgery Syndrome”

• “Imaging studies (MRI, CT, CAT Scan, etc.) overestimate the problem, resulting in an increased number of unnecessary surgeries, yet thousands of M.D.s and D.O.s don’t know this. Surgery is the last result.”
  Dr. Kuritzky, MD, Physicians and Sports Medicine, 1997.
• “90 percent of MRI’s read as abnormal”
  Patient Care, April 1997
• “Surgery is helpful in only 1 out of 100 low back pain cases.”
  Bigos, MD, American Health Care Policy Research Guidelines
• “Early and frequent use of imaging is discouraged because disc abnormalities are common and often resorb within 6 months (especially with proper spinal care). Use of such tests leads to over-diagnosis, dependence on medical care, and further unnecessary testing.”
  New England Journal of Medicine, 2001
• “67% low back surgeries worse after surgery, 2/3 of patients in more pain.”
  Spine headline, 1994

Scary.

Sam Visnic–

How Your Abs Affect Lower Back Stability

You hear it time and time again….

“You have to strengthen your abs to get rid of pain in your back.”

I think thats pretty good advice…BUT…NO ONE tells you exactly how to do that!  I’m going to let you in on a little secret:

DOING CRUNCHES WILL NOT HELP YOU OVERCOME BACK PAIN!

Yep.  Thats right.  Why?  Simple.

How do most people, including those with back pain, stand?  You guessing it, with pretty crappy posture. The chest is sunken, complete with forward head posture, and a pelvis that has a massive anterior pelvic tilt.

When the chest drops, and the shoulders round, commonly called a “upper cross syndrome”, then the upper portion of the abs are shortened, and usually tight.  The lower portion of the abs, are usually weakened.  (Yes, you do have lower abs, but not how you think, the muscle is separated NEUROLOGICALLY).  The external and internal oblique muscles are usually the ones taking a nap.  These muscles are responsible for the posterior tilt of the pelvis, which goes hand and hand with flattening the curve of the lower back.

If you look at the position you are in during a crunch, and and stand up from there, what do you get? Exactly…shitty posture.  Sunken chest, etc.  What I am saying is that performing crunches for the majority of the back pain suffering population will make MANY people much worse off.

What you NEED to focus on is strengthening the abdominal muscles which are primarily responsible for posteriorly tilting the pelvis, which are the obliques.

So…you may be wondering, “how the heck do I do that?”

Learning pelvic tilting, of course!

I’m going to shoot a few short clips with my cool little Flip video recorder this weekend, and I’ll post them up in a few days.

–Sam Visnic

Mind-Body Pain Relief

The mental-emotional aspect of health is for sure the most controversial topic. I have to say, it absolutely boggles me how one can not see how this critical area is so VITAL to the health and well-being of every single human being on this planet.

It is also EXTREMELY correlated to chronic pain and through its elimination.

Here is a short list of some of the common mental-emotional stressors:

Job: Love vs. Hate relationship

Job: TOO much love! (yeah, I”m talking to you work-aholics!)

Generally feeling bored or stagnate with life

Lack of passion

Feeling stuck or frustrated in certain areas of life

Relationship stress: Abusive relationships, lack of connection, relationship has long been over, but hasn”t been ended!

Social stress: Perception of self in the context of your own social group, Caring too much about how others perceive you

Imbalanced or limiting spiritual beliefs: No connection with something greater than self, Limiting beliefs about own capabilities or what life holds for you. Believing in hell vs. heaven and questioning which one you’re gonna go to! (more on this very touchy topic later!)

Now, can you start to understand, after reading this list and paying attention to what goes off in your head as you do so, how these areas can create emotions and feelings (which ARE things) that can affect you on many levels?

Here’s just a sample:

An interesting case includes a woman who came to see me who had structural scoliosis for her whole life. She had been in pain for a long time. Unfortunately, after a mis-diagnosis, she had a piece of her intestines surgically removed.

After interviewing her, I found that she had been experiencing many digestive problems, along with her chronic back pain. On a 1 to 10 scale, her pain was at about an 8. She was about to go on vacation for a few weeks right after I saw her, so I decided to start her on some nutritional principles that really help reduce inflammation in the body.

A Little Experiment…Assess Your Pelvic Tilt…

Let’s try a little exercise here. If you are in a place where you can stand up, then do so, if not, then try this exercise later.

First of all, take a few steps in place, then stop. This will set you in a natural standing posture for you. Keep your arms down to your sides. I want you to begin to notice where your weight is on your feet.

Is it on the front of your feet, or more toward your heels, or is it balanced?

Do you have more weight on the inside of your feet, or the outside, or is it balanced?

Do you have more weight on your left foot, or your right foot, or is it balanced?

Interesting, isn’t it? At any given time, you can notice what your unconscious postural tendencies are.

Now, make sure your feet are straight ahead, and without doing anything else, I want you to begin slowly contracting your butt muscles by squeezing them together. As you do this, notice what happens to your feet.

Did you notice what happens?  We’re going to do it again, but this time, I want you to put your hands on the center of your thighs. Now, squeeze your butt muscles again, and watch and feel what happens to your hands.

Now, if you did this as instructed, you will have noticed that your hands move away from your mid-line as your thigh bone rotates outward. That is called external rotation of the thigh bone.

So, you are probably wondering what the heck that has to do with anything. What you just did was move your pelvis by activating your butt muscles! If you put enough tension in them to cause your thigh bones to externally rotate, then your pelvis went into posterior tilt. When this happens, it causes your lower spine to flatten.

What is the significance of this? Stand up again. If you are currently feeling discomfort in your lower back, then this will be an interesting test. Rank your level of discomfort on a 1 to 10 scale, with a 10 being the highest level of discomfort. Now, perform the posterior pelvic tilt again by gently squeezing your butt muscles until you have about a 75% of full contraction in them. Now while holding that position, rank your lower back discomfort.

What did you notice? Has it increased, stayed the same, or decreased? In my experience this motion creates at least some degree of reduced discomfort, and in many cases, almost complete reduction.

This resulting reduction in discomfort through movement of the pelvis communicates to us that perhaps your pelvic position is not ideal. Now, the opposite motion, tipping the pelvis forward into anterior tilt, may create relief if you have the opposite pelvic position.

These types of assessments can deliver an incredible amount of valuable information on what is currently happening in your body that may be contributing to your back pain, and also, HOW to reduce or eliminate it!

Sam Visnic–

Lower Back Pain….JUST a Symptom?

Back pain can very well be caused by a myriad of contributing health problems, with the resulting pain in and around the back, being the cumulative end result we experience.

So, if back pain is the symptom and the causing factor is multi-faceted, then MUCH more of the treatment of back pain MUST involve an integrated approach! AND it must be based on each person.

To understand back pain, we need to be aware first of the various types.  Most back pain or back injuries fall into one of two categories, either Acute or Chronic.  Acute back pain is the direct result of an accident or episode.  So, for example, if you get into a car accident, and the trauma from the impact caused muscle spasm and/or resulted in slight tearing of muscle tissues, as with whiplash.  Inflammation results, just as with any other type of injury.  The good news with acute pain is that the problem is obvious, and the symptoms easy to classify, thus making it relatively easy to treat.

Feedback is immediate when any agitating movement is performed.  Recovery mostly includes resting the area, and letting the body do its job at healing.  The majority of acute back pain cases usually heal naturally within 8 weeks.  The bad news is that sometimes acute back pain can be a precursor to the more serious chronic back pain.

Chronic back pain is the other type.  It is sometimes referred to as persistent pain.  It generally applies to pain that continues to occur for more than 3-6 months, and can be on and off.  The majority of back pain cases fall into this category.

Within the category of chronic pain, we have specific and non-specific pain.  Specific pain is those attributable to a specific cause. These are treatable, but make up about 15% of all chronic back pain cases. 85% of back pain cases are non-specific, meaning that the exact reason why there is pain is essentially unknown.

Non-specific back pain can generally be categorized into 3 areas to focus on:Â

1. Musculoskeletal:  This means there is irritation, inflammation, or an injury in the muscles themselves, or by their dysfunction is causing mis-alignment in the spinal vertebrae.  These injuries respond well to non-invasive treatments such as stretching, massage, and exercise.

2. Neuropathy:  This is the result of the nerves coming out of the spine being pinched or compressed by the vertebrae.  This type of dysfunction is very treatable, but depending upon what is causing the situation.  If muscles are causing the problem, it’s simple, but if spinal degeneration is the cause, it’s a completely different animal!

3. Discogenic:  This is the result of a spinal disc being injured, herniated (often called bulging), or torn. These can heal without invasive intervention, but take time and patience to heal, and absolutely require restrictions on certain movements and specific movement therapies must be used. In bad cases, may require surgical intervention.

Chronic back pain is by nature the more difficult to treat.  In all probability, the reason why you are reading this book right now, to find a solution to it.  The question remains:  Why is it so difficult to address? Well, because there are many root causes for it.  They can easily range from one to MANY contributing factors happening at once such as:

1. Failure to fully address rehabilitation of crucial elements in the acute stage, leading to long term dysfunction of muscles, joints, etc.

2. Failure to maintain focus on the corrective measures taught during the acute stage, thus leading to regression.

3. Internal metabolic issues, causing slow healing and regeneration of damaged tissues.

4. Re-injury of dysfunctional site, due to repetitive stress to it, perhaps from lifestyle factors such as improper lifting, sitting postures, etc.

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