My Tests of the
Back Pain Relief Guide

I don't just recommend anything. I'm a Christian, and I know that I can't serve mammon (money). I have to serve Christ. You can see what I believe and how I've chosen to live at my church, at my blog, and throughout the rest of this site, Christian History for Everyman.

I've been interested in the human body and how it works since the first time I got a Bullworker^™ (an exercise gadget) pamphlet when I was in Jr. High School. I'm an avid reader, and I've maintained that interest for 35 years now. When I turned 40, I went back to running, and I was forced to learn physical therapy in order to keep my knees healthy enough to keep jogging (which has resulted in a web page called Fitness for Fat Guys over 40.)

My father, mother, and wife have all had back operations; my mom multiple times. I listened to her describe her exercises and stretches the whole time I was growing up. Muscles, bones, and joints are a central interest of mine.

Since I learned to treat myself, I have had numerous opportunities to practice on others. I live in a Christian community of some 250 people, and for a few years we had dance troupe with more than 50 members. Shin splints, sprained ankles, sore knees; I've seen them all, and our village nurse sends all joint injuries to me.

So I'm not a chiropractor, but I do have some knowledge in these areas. I'm a lifetime subscriber to Peak Performance, a magazine with scientific articles put out mostly by soccer coaches in England.

My wife and I found LoseTheBackPain.com while she was going through a 2-year battle with sciatica. It not only tested all my knowledge, but all the knowledge of two chiropractors and two trigger point therapists as well. We had some success, one time for nearly six months, but the sciatica always came back.

As it turned out, my wife had a ruptured disk from a fall years earlier, that her eventual surgeon, Kevin Foley M.D. (whom you can google), said was one of the worst he'd ever seen. No exercise, massage, trigger point therapy, or traction was going to cure it.

Yes, I'm trying to sell you on my honesty and experience. Lots of people want to treat your back pain. LoseTheBackPain.com does it right.

Focusing on the Right Problems

Iliopsoas

One of the most important back issues is a muscle called the iliopsoas; it's also called your hip flexor. It runs from the front of your femur, along the inside of your pelvis, and up to the bottom five vertebrae in your back.

Obviously, a muscle that hooks to your five bottom vertebrae can give you fits if it is too tight.

The problem is that in modern society, many of us sit all day long. In a sitting position, your iliopsoas is at its shortest. You leave it that way for hours, then you stand up, stretching it to its normal length.

Try that with one of your other muscles. Sit with your leg bent for a couple hours, and see how your hamstring feels when you stretch your leg back out. Then imagine what it would be like if you did that 8 hours or more per day, every day. Ouch!

With your hamstring, that's only so much of a problem. Mostly, you only hurt your hamstring, though it could affect your knee or throw your pelvis out of alignment.

Your iliopsoas is much worse.

You iliopsoas will compress your bottom vertebrae, impinging nerves, affecting your posture, and causing problems in a place you don't want problems: your lower back.

A friend of mine who is a contractor had such a problem last year. He was doing a lot of work in Greenwood, MS, about 3 hours drive from Selmer, where we are. After a while, he began to find that when he got to Greenwood, he'd walk around on the job only a couple minutes before his back would hurt him so bad that he had to sit down.

The problem was obvious: iliopsoas.

I taught him the stretch you see me preparing for to the right, and his problem was gone in two days.

Now if you mimic that stretch, which is a good thing to do, YOU HAVE TO DO IT RIGHT!!! In the picture, I am not leaning on that counter. I am only touching it lightly with my rear end. The counter is only to let me know I'm standing up straight. I DO NOT LEAN ON IT WHEN I BEND BACKWARDS!

ALSO, I do this stretch only 2-3 seconds at a time. DON'T MISS THAT!!!

The reason that's important is because you are stretching both iliopsoas muscles at the same time. This WILL compress your vertebrae. If you do it 2-3 seconds at a time, it won't matter. Just do the stretch repeatedly, about 10 times, for just those 2-3 seconds, and the muscle will get a stretch while your vertebrae aren't harmed.

Finally, all you do is stand up as tall and straight as you can, then lean your upper body back, WITHOUT RESTING YOUR BUTTOCKS ON THE COUNTER. That will help the stretch when you lean back. You don't have to go far to help your iliopsoas.

I got that stretch from a certified muscle therapist. If you already have a bad back, check with a chiropractor before you do it. I'm sure you can get an initial consultation for around $100.

If the chiropractor doesn't know about the stretch, he'll thank you. Make sure to tell him about the counter, which trains you to stand up straight while you're doing it.

Is the iliopsoas your problem? Chances are you don't know. LoseTheBackPain.com helps you determine that. The book says:

Stretching just for the sake of stretching is dangerous when you don't what your muscle imbalances are. That's a perfect example of the "medicine" being worse than the "disease."

That's the reason I told you that you should see a chiropractor before doing the iliopsoas stretch above if your back is already sore.

Piriformis

I had pain at the bottom of my right buttock for six years in my late 30's. I thought I had a pulled muscle that hurt quite often, pretty much daily. I couldn't reach it with any stretch or massage, and I couldn't figure out what the problem was.

As you can imagine, it was a real pain in the … , well, you know.

When I took up running again, I read about the piriformis muscle. Amazingly, your sciatic nerve runs either under or through the piriformis! (It varies from person to person, another piece of evidence for evolution.)

When your piriformis muscle gets spasms in it, it gets shortened and presses on the sciatic nerve, causing various sorts of pain throughout your leg.

When I read about it, I wondered if the pain I was having was in my piriformis muscle. I found out about a stretch for the piriformis(which LoseTheBackPain.com models for you here—2nd video on page), and I tried it.

Oh, the relief! Six years of pain, and suddenly I was reaching it for the first time!

It was like scratching a six-year-old itch. Mmm, mmm, mmm!

As it turned out, the reason I couldn't massage the pain was because the pain was a ghost pain. It was caused by the piriformis higher up in my rear end, but it led to pain at the bottom of right buttock. When I stretched the piriformis, the pain increased during the stretch because of increased pressure on the sciatic nerve, but it relieved immediately afterward as the piriformis lengthened for the first time in my life.

Lots of people have piriformis syndrome. If you have sciatica, every chiropractor or muscle therapist will give you a piriformis stretch. The one modeled in the Lose The Back Pain Institute video I linked is the easiest one to do.

Inversion Therapy

There are lots of inversion therapy tables you can get. I bought this one from Lose The Back Pain, and it's nice. After about 15 minutes of setup (after I put it together), I can now get in it and be upside down in less than 20 seconds, knowing it will be easy to get right side up.

I asked Dr. Foley about inversion therapy. He answered, "I have one I use every day, what does that tell you."

He's a really good doctor, with a patent on the back surgery method he used on my wife, so I'm sure he's used to the scientific method. Maybe there's no papers written on inversion therapy. He added:

"The fact is, it just works!"

Sold me. I use mine almost every day. Don't stay in it too long. I limit myself to 5 minutes at a time. It helps my hips noticeably.

Pain Relief

On pain relief, they got on something I didn't know anything about. They have a pain reliever based on enzymes that they said works better than an NSAID (a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory, like ibuprofen). I thought, "Enzymes? Yeah, right."

I didn't try it because I wasn't in pain. Instead, I do what I always do when I hear herbalist claims. I went to the National Institutes of Health web site. I trust them. I've used them regularly, and they seem honest to me.

Note, the NIH web site is a government site. It's at www.nih.gov. If it's going to be biased, it's going to biased against herbal remedies. For example, they consider colloidal silver dangerous and useless.

At the NIH web site, I found this on the enzymes in their pain reliever. This was not a comment by the NIH. This is a peer-reviewed, published result in the pubmed database:

The study of painful vertebral syndromes again resulted in equivalence of the treatment with NSAIDs compared to therapy with enzymes.

I cut and pasted that quote from the page linked above. I can't offer a better testimony than that. They were right. Their enzyme therapy with "proteolytic" enzymes works as well as NSAIDs.

So why not use NSAIDs? Well, because NSAIDs are a known cause of gastrointestinal bleeding. They thin your blood. With prolonged use, they're dangerous. One of our members at Rose Creek Village is an emergency room RN. He says that about half of the GI-bleeding cases he sees are caused by ibuprofen.

So I'm Sold … Literally

We purchased Lose The Back Pain's "system." We didn't get to use it long because we saw Dr. Foley shortly after getting it, and after seeing the MRI, he scheduled surgery in 2 days while muttering, "That's a BIG disc."

I, however, have been using their advice and their inversion table.

Besides the free book, which you can simply download by clicking the link below, I'll give you this piece of free advice if you don't have a bad back. In fact, two pieces:

1. Bend your knees when you lift!
2. The best preventative of back pain is exercise, especially core (hip, waist, stomach, back) exercises

Okay, here's the book. You can just download it, no gimmicks. Just open it in your browser, then save, or right click here and choose "save link as … " or "save target as … "

You do need a .pdf reader like Acrobat Reader (free), of course.