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What are the important differences between old and new methods used to correct low back pain?
This article explains the basic difference between prevalent treatments for back pain and a new alternative that is less costly, faster, less invasive, more comfortable, and overall more effective than prevalent therapies or surgery, for most cases of back pain -- including lifting injuries, disc bulges, spasms, and sciatica.
You may end up being intrigued by this new approach, perhaps intrigued enough to take a new direction in your care of your own back. It involves an entirely new category of back exercises for low back pain that works more directly than stretching or strengthening exercises.
"Left untreated, the damage could get worse." ~ Nexxium commercial
[ commentary ]
... the bottom line on taking pain meds without handling the cause.
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You may have tried the standard medical solutions -- strengthening, stretching, pillows, braces, a special bed, pain relievers, muscle relaxants, massage, high-tech surgery, or other approaches -- acupuncture, biofeedback, relaxation techniques, bodywork.
From your own experience, you have some idea of their effectiveness.
What you may not know is that a key difference exists among all these approaches and a newer method that frees back muscles by improving muscular control: clinical somatic education, or "somatics". Most back pain sufferers who come to somatics get full recovery in hours, days or in the most difficult cases, a few visits over a few weeks. This article draws the distinctions so you can see them clearly.
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New Basics of Back Pain
Somatic education is not education of
the thinking mind,
but of the brain
as master control center for the muscular system.
The techniques of Somatics rapidly improve muscular control and freedom of movement through a mind-brain-movement training process. It affects the brain the way biofeedback does, but with two important differences, one being speed of results and the other being the longevity of the improvement. Improvements are usually definitive and need no further professional help.
Somatic educators are likely tell you something unusual: your back muscles are not weak, but musclebound -- tight by habit, not by disease; that you can free yourself from back spasms by improving your muscular control of your back; that you can have your back muscles stay relaxed, even with heavy use, with a few minutes of certain exercises, each day, or even from time to time -- and we mean these statements to apply as much to people with degenerative disc disease and herniated discs to those who have only a twinge, now and then. The underlying cause is the same: muscle tension.
"If that's true," you may ask, "Why doesn't my doctor (or therapist) know about it?"
The answer is that, until recently, no method existed that could rapidly improve muscular control rapidly enough to be clinically practical -- and word takes time to spread.
You may think, "Back spasms are too painful, too serious to be dismissed that quickly, or that easily."
Well, we do dispel back spasms that quickly, and most of the time, fairly easily, by ordinary standards. Clinical somatic education recovers fitness for the activities of daily living.
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Conventional Therapeutics and Back Muscle Spasms
Conventional treatment methods consist of strengthening, stretches, spinal adjustments, muscle relaxant drugs, traction (spinal inversion, mechanical disc decompression), pain medications, and in more extreme cases, surgery.
STRENGTHENING When we consider weak muscles as the cause of back pain, there is some truth to the idea -- muscles in constant contraction get tired and feel weak. However, the problem of weakness gets solved as soon as muscles resume their resting state. So the problem isn't weakness; it's muscle fatigue. Your back isn't weak; it's tired from overexertion of its muscles.
STRETCHING When we consider stretching tight muscles as a solution to back pain, there is some validity to that idea -- muscles in constant contraction are short, self-shortening. However, the problem of muscle tightness and shortness gets resolved as soon as muscles resume their resting state. So the problem isn't that muscles need stretching; it's that they are constantly shortening due to conditioned reflexes of the nervous system.
SPINAL ALIGNMENT ADJUSTMENTS When we consider spinal alignment as a solution to back pain, there is some validity to that approach -- muscles in constant contraction pull on the spine and distort its alignment. However, the problem of spinal alignment isn't a problem of the vertebrae. Bones go where muscles pull them, the control center for the muscular system is the brain (not the doctor or therapist).
DRUGS -- MUSCLE RELAXANTS and PAIN MEDS When we consider relaxing habitually tight muscles with drugs, we can understand the rationale for the approach. However, drugs do nothing to the patterns of movement and tension controlled by the brain; they only dull the system and the muscular tension patterns remain.
Likewise, pain medications. They dull the pain while the muscular tension patterns remain. Degenerative damage continues unabated.
SURGERY Most surgery deals with the consequences of either violent injury or congenital defect (necessary) or of long-term muscular tension patterns. Of course, no surgical procedure can change the brain's programmed control of muscular tension and movement; you can't change programming by cutting.
Now you can understand the track record of conventional therapeutic approaches to back spasms.
If these approaches don't address the brain's control of habitual muscle tension, what does?
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Taming Muscular Tension Habits
Habits, including muscular tension habits, exist as patterns of brain programming. They're learned or acquired through consistent use patterns, prolonged stress or injury. Tension habits can be unlearned, and actually, relearning muscular control is what has actually happened when a person has achieved long term relief of back pain, whatever method has been employed. The reflexes that underlie back pain ease up and the patient has recovered control of his or her back muscles sufficiently that they relax.
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Problems arising from muscle tension cannot be "cured" by manipulation because muscle tension is not a disease or biomechanical condition, but an automatic, reflexive action pattern -- a habitual muscular behavior -- controlled by the brain. Lasting relief from muscle tension is occurs when the brain relearns free control of movement.
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To repeat, the idea behind the "strengthening and stretching" regimen for back spasms is usually based on a misunderstanding; it's a misunderstanding because the muscles involved are almost never weak, but tired; it's a misunderstanding because the muscles involved are not "short" and in need of stretching, but "in contraction and shortening" and in need of relaxation. Sore muscles don't need strengthening; they need rest and refreshment. They don't need stretching; they need to relax and lengthen -- and that lengthening takes pressure off of joints, nerves, spinal discs, and bursae ("bursitis").
You need to regain your full range of muscular control, from full strength to full relaxation, something you can't regain by being manipulated by someone else; you regain it by a form of learning, albeit a specialized one for which you will probably need training.
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EXPLANATIONS OF
BACK PAIN TERMS
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Back Muscle Spasms May be Painful, but Not Indicate an Injury
One of the automatic reactions of the body to injury is to tighten up. That's part of the pain of most injuries, particularly of musculo-skeletal injuries. It's a reaction that protects the body from further injury. There are cases where the tightening up of back muscles is such a protective reaction, and a necessary one -- where actual damage has occurred, such as a ruptured disc or a violent accident. In such situations, surgery may be necessary and somatic education will either not help or produce only temporary relief, at least until after surgery, unhappy news for some, but realistic.
If you've seen a doctor for your back spasms, he or she has either discovered that you need surgery or that you don't. Surgery is a last, desperate resort and most doctors are reluctant to recommend it. If you have been sent for therapy or given drugs, yours is not a surgical situation, meaning that your spasms are not a protective reaction against injury, but a reflex-conditioning problem.
In the majority of back spasms, there is no injury. The back spasms are just a movement malfunction -- a tension habit formed under stress. It's the "tension" part of "nervous tension."
So, why do back spasms occur? You now have part of the answer. Let's look a little more closely.
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Your muscles obey your brain. Except for momentary reflexes controlled in the spinal cord (tested by your doctor's hammer tap), that's the whole story. So, if you have tight, spastic muscles, they're caused by your brain.
This answer is a "good news/bad news" type of answer. The bad news is that your muscles are out of control, and it's your brain's fault! Your brain isn't broken, just trapped by the memory of stress or injury in your history. The good news is that your brain can be relearn to relax those muscles.
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Why do Back Muscle Spasms Happen?
One thing you will almost always notice about people with back spasms, if you have observed, is their high shoulders and swayback. Touch the muscles of their lower back, and you will find the same thing: hard, contracted muscles, not soft, weak, flabby muscles.
The major source of back spasms is the lifestyle of being "on the go" -- driven, driving, productive, on time, and responsive to every situation. This is a new idea for most people, so here's the explanation.
Our post-modern lifestyle triggers an ancient neuromuscular (bodily) response (known to developmental physiologists as the Landau Reaction); this reaction involves a tightening of the muscles of the spine in preparation for arising from rest (sitting or lying down) into activity (sitting, standing, walking, running). The Landau Reaction consists of the muscular responses involved in coming to a heightened state of alertness in preparation for moving into action; triggered incessantly for years, it becomes a tension habit -- one that often outlasts the moment (or stage of life) when it was necessary.
(The general viewpoint taught in physical therapy, it should be noted, is that the Landau Reaction is a temporary developmental response seen in infants, that does not persist into maturity. However, the muscular action pattern seen in mature adults under stressful conditions is identical to that seen in infants experiencing Landau Reaction -- shoulders, back, and hamstrings go into action (get tight).
Many Back Pain Issues Come from the Same Cause
Many medical conditions regarded as separate disease entities -- degenerating discs, facet joint irritation, pinched nerves, sciatica, headaches -- stem from a single condition: contracted back muscles. This is not an oversimplification; its an exact statement of fact: These medical conditions arise from excessive tension, compression, and strain on body tissues -- muscle, cartilage, nerve and bone. They cannot be "cured" by manipulation because the body is "doing it to itself" and does not stop doing it to itself until The Landau Reaction is brought to a condition of quietude and free movement is restored.
Somatic educators usually find, upon examination of a person's musculature, that their pain comes not from an injury, but from overworked muscles; is not a medical problem or an injury, but a conditioning problem that often causes diagnosable medical problems. Their clients have back muscles conditioned into a painfully high state of tension. Most of the time, people can be brought to relax back spasms through brain-muscle training, and when they do, the pain and the problem disappear.
Though injuries from traffic accidents, falls, etc., also trigger muscular reactions that can become habitual, the Landau Reaction is behind most of the back-spasm epidemic in our society. It's a consequence of accumulated stress.
While you can't avoid the Landau Reaction (it's a necessary and appropriate part of life), you can avoid getting stuck in it. If your lifestyle puts you habitually in a state of reaction, you have to "de-habituate" yourself from it, so that your rise in tension occurs only as a momentary response to situations and does not become your chronic state.
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