Getting serious about eliminating back pain & sciatica

I’ve had fairly severe back pain going on for about 5 years now. Some days are worse than others but lately it’s been getting worse. Over the last six months it has developed into sciatica and severe pain nearly every day. I know it’s developed into sciatica because I’ve started getting tingling and numbness down my right leg when I am sitting or standing in certain positions. I’ve even been hobbling around a bit for the last few weeks, almost limping due to the pain. It’s especially painful when I sit down or stand up. When I lay down to go to bed I have a hard time falling asleep lately because of the pain. I simply can’t be comfortable for more than a few minutes before I have to roll over or change positions.

At the beginning of 2010 I decided one of my goals for this year was to eliminate my back pain and live pain free. Of all my goals for 2010, this is the only one I have yet to complete, so it’s time to get serious about back pain.

When I first injured my back in 2005 I started seeing a chiropractor. I had daily appointments with him for 2 weeks and then weekly appointments for about 6 months after that, but it didn’t fix my pain. In fact, I think it did more harm than good because the treatment was non specific and wasn’t combined with any sort of stretching or muscle balancing. I’d just go in, he’d crack my back, and I’d go back to work. It felt okay immediately following a back cracking, but it would be bothering me again by the next day.

Eventually the chiropractor started telling me I was at 80% recovery, and then 90%, and then I was good to go and should only come back if it bothered me. The truth was that it bothered me every day still and he was trying to plant the idea in my mind that I had been healed, which I was not. That much was painfully obvious to me.

After I’d given up on chiropractic, I re-injured myself at work. It wasn’t really a re-injury because it had never even gone away, but a large stack of cardboard had fallen and I tried to catch it, resulting in some severe pain in my lower back. I left work that day and went to the doctor. The doctor referred me to a physical therapist that was highly recommended by her, so I decided to give physio a try, hoping it would solve my problem for good.

I spent about 4 months going to physio therapy. The therapist I was seeing was a nice guy who was able to get me motivated to fix the back pain, but the problem was that he didn’t know how to fix it. I hadn’t been diagnosed with anything specific, only lower back pain due to a work related injury. The best explanation I got was that I had restricted movement in my lower vertebrae which was causing me pain. There was no mention of how or why the movement was restricted, no mention of inflammation, and no mention of muscle imbalances.

Physio consisted of a lot of massages and heat. I was also directed to do some exercises like squats, chair-sits, and what they call the ‘cobra’ pose in yoga. Doing this didn’t seem to make my back feel much better. The cobra pose seemed to help a bit, but other than that I didn’t get much relief from the exercises or massage. I had to quit physio because I was supposed to move out of province, but that fell through. I never went back to physio therapy and I kind of lost hope. After going so long with different treatments with no real relief and hearing everyone say “back pain is something you deal with for the rest of your life” I started to believe it.

Muscle Imbalances & Muscle Balance Therapy

A few months ago when I started getting tingling and numbness in my leg and the pain started getting worse, I decided it’s time to fix it for real this time. I started doing some of my own research on back pain online and I’ve since learned quite a bit about the underlying causes of back pain. It all comes down to muscle imbalances which cause the hips to be pulled out of alignment which in turn causes pain in the form of bulging or herniated discs and sciatica.

Since I found this information I’ve become quite confident that back pain, sciatica, and disc problems are actually very fixable. There’s no need to live my whole life suffering from pain. I bought a Nubax Trio a few months ago and have been using it on and off. It’s a spinal decompression unit and an alternative to inversion therapy. The Nubax helps and it does what it’s supposed to do for sure, but I think I would go with an inversion table if I had the space for one. The Nubax won’t decompress past your shoulders, it’s effective for what I need it for but inversion would be better for the upper back and neck decompression. The Nubax Trio gives a good decompression for the lower and middle back but it doesn’t cure back pain all by itself, though it does give some relief.

I recently got my copy of the Lose The Back Pain system produced by Jesse Cannone and Steve Hefferon of the Healthy Back Institute. I am going to begin to use the system this weekend, I’m just waiting on someone to help take the photographs required to begin the self-assessment as directed in the LTBP system. Once I have completed the complete self-assessment I can move on to the 3rd step in the program which is correcting the root problems with muscle balance therapy combined with spinal decompression.

I’m kind of annoyed that I went and bought the Nubax Trio and the Lose The Back Pain System separately because I just found out that Jesse and Steve are now doing something I never thought I’d see them do… They’re giving their system away for free when you buy an inversion table. They’re also offering $100 off of their inversion tables right now, so I could have saved myself almost $200 if I were able to take advantage of this deal a few months ago. But alas, I could not because they weren’t offering this deal at the time and they’re only offering it for a limited time now, so if you’re thinking about it, stop thinking and go take advantage of this offer right now before you miss out. They even offer a payment plan so you can split your bill into 3 payments so you don’t have to break the bank because you broke your back… Okay, that was lame. I know.

I’ve already learned a lot from the first portion of the system, I now know that my hips are definitely out of alignment and I know this is causing my pain. My right side hip is 1-2 inches higher than the left side! No wonder I have so much back pain! I can’t wait to get into the self-treatment part of the program. I hope it’s as effective as the hundreds of reviews and testimonials say it is.

Jesse Cannone, Steve Hefferon, and the Healthy Back Institute have now sold over 57,000 copies of this system and I haven’t read very many complaints about it. Mostly all I can find are really good reviews of the program. I also find it promising that my most trusted health resource, Dr. Mercola, is a supporter of Jesse and Steve’s Lose The Back Pain system. I trust Dr. Mercola a lot, so if he’s backing this system I know it’s going to be effective.

Basically my plan is to start out with a 30 day trial of the system to get myself into the groove and get a good start on re-aligning my hips and taking the pressure off of my sciatic nerve. After 30 days I expect that I will at least see some improvement. I hope that after 30 days of working with this system I will have no more pain but only time will tell. I know that it took several years to get my back messed up so reversing it could take a long time too.

Over the next 30 days I will also be seeing an acupuncturist to help reduce the pain while I use the LTBP system to begin correcting the underlying causes. I will also be using the Nubax Trio for spinal decompression every day as directed in the LTBP system, and I think I might go to a chiropractor a few times as well to add a little force to the whole deal and pop my back into better alignment while using muscle balance therapy to strengthen the weak muscles and stretch the tight ones so that my muscles will begin to hold my hips in better alignment naturally.

I think this approach will be a good one, taking advantage of several treatment options in the right combination should effectively eliminate my back pain and keep it away within a month to 6 months… Just on time to achieve my goal before the end of the year.

I’ll post updates as I progress through the system, and probably write a few more articles going into some of the things I learn about back pain and its causes as I go.