Considering that I had to leave work early today because of some of the worst back pain I’ve had since injuring my back over 5 years ago, I guess it makes it a good day to do an update on my efforts to live free of back pain and sciatica.

I started a 30 day trial of the Lose The Back Pain system from the Healthy Back Institute on June 24th of this year — that’s over 30 days ago, so one might assume that the 30 day trial is now over… but it isn’t.

I had to abort my 30 day trial of the Lose The Back Pain System a couple weeks ago when my grandfather passed away and I had family from out of town staying in the spare room, which happens to be the only place that I have enough room to do the stretches and exercises required by the program.

I was able to start doing the exercises and stretches again starting last night, but I will soon be interrupted again when I go to the Shambhala Music Festival in a little over a week. I will continue doing the stretches until that time, and if possible, I will continue doing whatever stretches and exercises I can while at the festival, but I doubt I will get around to doing much for stretching once I’m actually at the festival.

Completing the 30 day trial isn’t absolutely necessary though, because I plan to continue using the system until it works, even if it takes 6 months, or a year.

The first 2 weeks of ‘Lose The Back Pain’

During the first two weeks that I did the Lose The Back Pain corrective exercises, I had fairly positive results over all. Most of those days went by with less pain than normal, and my back would only get sore after doing something to set it off — something like carrying heavy objects, lifting things, pushing heavy objects, bending over for extended periods of time, or sitting on bad chairs/couches. For the most part the pain was minimal until something aggravated it.

Almost every day I would still have a pretty sore back by the end of the day, especially after 12 hour shifts at work, but the pain was less intense and didn’t last as long as before I had started doing the exercises.

There were a couple of days where the pain was stronger than usual, though. I’m not sure exactly why, but there were 2 days that I can remember specifically that I thought I felt worse than I did before starting the exercises. On those days I went a bit easier when doing the corrective stretches and exercises for that day. It seemed to help, because the next day would be much better.

Stopping the corrective exercises

As I mentioned above, my grandfather passed away and I had some family from out of town come to stay in the spare bedroom that I do my stretches in. This caused me to stop doing the corrective exercises for a while.

At first it didn’t seem to make much of a difference, my back felt about the same as usual, but this last week has been horrific. The last 5 days have been some of the worst days for back pain that I can remember in the whole 5 years I have been struggling with it. The first of the last 5 days was a 12 hour shift at work doing some pretty heavy lifting all night long for 12 hours — by the end of the shift my back hurt quite a bit, but I expected that since I had been doing so much work.

The next day I woke up and I was quite stiff and my back was sore. I don’t usually wake up with too much back pain, it usually gets worse as the day goes on and is worst at the end of the day. I knew I was off to a bad start for that day, but I went in to work anyway and worked my shift. The entire day I was really sore, I had lots of sciatic pain and also general lower back pain/ache.

I had the next 2 days off, those two days were not as bad as the first two, but they were also quite painful. I did very little to aggravate it during these two days, because I knew how sore it had been during the previous two and I didn’t want to have to repeat it.

Yesterday I had to work again and it was one of the most painful days I’ve had in a long time. I was incredibly sore after work. I am now able to do the corrective exercises again, because the guests have now gone home, so I did them lightly last night. Surprisingly, doing the stretches didn’t seem to make it hurt any more at all, it actually hurt less to do the stretches last night than it did when I first started doing them back in June! My back was still very sore, but doing the stretches didn’t seem to aggravate it at all. I found that really weird — I was expecting that doing the stretches would be extremely painful.

When I went to bed, my back was really sore and when I woke up this morning it was still really sore. The last 2 days have not been the usual sciatic type of pain though, it’s been more of an ache in my lower back and right leg and not the tingly and ‘pinching’ feeling that I usually get. Maybe that’s why it seems to hurt more than usual, because it hurts in a different way than I’ve gotten used to.

When I got up to go to work this morning, I took 600mg of Ibuprofen, which I don’t normally do. I almost always avoid pharmaceuticals, especially stuff like Ibuprofen and Tylenol. They’re unhealthy and they don’t usually do very much for me, but I was in pretty bad pain so I decided to give them a try. By noon today I was too sore to stay for the rest of the shift — I told my supervisor I had to go see a chiropractor or someone to help with the pain, and I clocked out early.

Making appointments

On my way out of work one of my co-workers recommended a good massage therapist to me. I’ve only been to a massage therapist once, and it wasn’t that great of an experience, but the therapist I saw actually shared an office with the chiropractor I was seeing at the time who was also not very good.

Because of my experience with that particular chiropractor I said I would never go to another chiropractor again because I’m sure he actually made my back weaker instead of helping to fix the problems.

The massage therapist that my coworker recommended sounds pretty good so I went ahead and booked a 90 minute session with her for this coming Friday, I’m looking forward to that for sure!

I also was going to try and see a chiropractor today for a quick fix of the pain, but I was unable to find one that had any open bookings for today. I did come across something kind of synchronistic while looking for a new chiropractor though — over the last few days I’ve been looking into Qigong (chi kung, chi gong), and I found an 8 week course coming up in September that I am planning to register for. It’s being taught by a Dr. Orchard. While looking through the chiropractor section of the phone book I found ‘Dr. Orchard’s Holistic Health and Chiropractic’. When I looked at the address I recognized it as a clinic that had been recommended to me several years ago when I first injured my back and was seeing the ‘not so good’ chiropractor.

I did a little internet searching and found out that the Dr. Orchard that teaches Qigong and the Dr. Orchard who owns the clinic are the same guy. I decided that since I can’t get in anywhere to see a chiropractor today, I might as well go see Dr. Orchard whenever I can get in. I made a first time appointment with Dr. Orchard in August after I get back from the Shambhala Music Festival. Yeah, it’s a ways away still but I think the synchronicity was there to point me in the right direction, so I’m looking forward to meeting Dr. Orchard and seeing what he can do for me. It will also give me a bit of a chance to ask him a few things about his upcoming Qigong classes.

Proteolytic Enzymes

I also decided to take up the Healthy Back Institute on their offer of a free bottle of Heal-n-Soothe proteolytic enzyme formula for pain relief. I’ve read a lot of good things about enzyme treatments for pain and inflammation and since I’ve been in so much pain over the last few days, I decided it’s time to give Heal-n-Soothe a try.

I also was convinced to add a Freedom Back to my order, the freedom back is a ‘back orthodic’ that helps you keep a good posture when sitting in any chair. It was $49, so I thought I’d give it a try… what the hell, why not?

I’m really looking forward to the package arriving so I can start taking the enzyme formula, I think it will help me a lot more than the Ibuprofen I took today, that’s for sure!

I also stopped in at the health food store today to see if they had anything other than MSM and glucosomine to offer me for pain relief. As soon as I walked in there was a big stand of some ‘natural’ pain relief mixture. It’s called ‘Curamin’ and it was on sale for $35 a bottle. When I checked the ingredients list I right away put the bottle back on the shelf when I read that the first ingredient was “DLPA (dl Phenylalanine)” . Phenylalanine is pretty bad stuff and it’s what makes the artificial sweetener aspartame so bad for you. The other ingredients are Boswellia Extract, Curcumin Extract, and Nattokinase.

I ended up buying a bottle of Curamin, despite the fact that it has phenylalanine in it. I figured that I’m not going to be taking it regularly and that if it helped beat the pain even just for today that it was probably worth the $35, so I bought it. I took one capsule so far — I can’t tell if it did anything or not because I also took MSM, Ibuprofen, and a magnesium supplement today.

The girl at the health store recommended that I try a magnesium/malic acid solution that they sold. She said that a lot of people use it to help with nerve and muscle pain, so I bought a bottle of that while I was there as well. I sure hope that at least one of these things works! I don’t want to be in pain anymore!

Continuing the Lose The Back Pain system

As soon as I am finished writing this post, I am going to do the corrective exercises again and hope that tomorrow I feel better than I do today. I will be taking the magnesium solution as well as MSM each day, and when the Heal-n-Soothe arrives I will start taking that as recommended. I will try not to take too much of the Curamin stuff because I don’t like ingesting phenylalanine, but if it hurts as much as it did today I will probably try taking more of that. The bottle does say ‘Stop Pain Now! – Guaranteed. Experience relief like never before”.

I will continue to do the Lose The Back Pain corrective stretches and exercises and use the Nubax Trio for spinal decompression whenever I can. I’ll do periodic progress reports as I go, and if I come across any miracle cures or new discoveries I’ll be sure to write about them.

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For more information on the Lose The Back Pain system, the Freedom Back, or Heal-n-Soothe, you can visit the healthy back institute which is where I got those three products. The Healthy Back Institute is the overall best back pain and sciatica information resource that I’ve found to date. Click here to visit the Healthy Back Institute.

I recently stirred up a bit of controversy on facebook when I set the title of this post as my status.

You can witness the controversy here for yourself:
My Facebook Profile
Why not add me to twitter while you’re at it?

Since the status caused such a reaction without much prodding on my part (other than setting my status I didn’t do much to provoke the reaction), I decided that it called for an entire blog post about the risks versus the benefits of sun exposure, since it seems so many people have fallen for the ‘anti-exposure’ propaganda.

The truth about sun exposure that most people suffer deficiencies and simply spending more time in the sun with exposed skin will greatly reduce the chance of many different diseases, including cancer.

‘WHAT!??
But the sun CAUSES cancer! Don’t you listen to the scientists and the doctors!?
What about Melanoma!? The sun causes that, doesn’t it?’

Don’t be stupid

The sun is required for all life on this planet as far as we can tell. Pretty much all of our energy comes from the sun, when you follow the energy trail back to it’s origin — plants basically take the suns energy and turn it into trees through many complex processes, they form branches, leaves, and flowers, pretty much ‘out of thin air’, so to speak.

Even the worlds oil addiction is really fueled by the sun. Crude oil was made over millions of years by tiny plants and animals called plankton, so even oil comes from the sun.

Without the sun, we would not exist here on planet earth. The sun is the giver of life, not the great cancer that we are told it is by the media and the companies that want to sell sun-block, tanning solutions, medications,  and other ‘sun protection’ products.

Melanoma

According to the world’s most trusted natural health expert, Dr. Mercola, there is little to no evidence that the sun causes melanoma without sunburn. Put quite simply, if you avoid getting sunburns you don’t have to worry about melanoma.

Click here to read Dr. Mercola’s report on the benefits of sun exposure.

Our bodies let us know when we should get out of the sun. If you’re in the sun for too long you begin to feel sick and you start to overheat. Your skin starts to burn if it’s overexposed to the UV rays that the sun puts out. When you reach the point of feeling sick, overheating, or getting a sunburn, it’s obviously time to cover up or get out of the sun.

If you don’t listen to your body when it tells you to get out of the sun, then yes, you might end up with heat stroke or melanoma, but that’s not the sun’s fault — it’s your fault for not listening to your body!

Vitamin D

Vitamin D is not actually a vitamin, it’s a hormone that is created in the body when the skin is exposed to direct sunlight, and it plays a critical role in maintaining vibrant health.

Vitamin D plays an important role in so many instances that it’s probably the single most important ‘health hack’ that can make the biggest improvement in the way you feel.

Here is only a brief list of things that Vitamin D is known to protect against:

• many types of cancer
• depression
• arthritis
• multiple sclerosis
• every single auto immune disease
• all forms of the flu
• asthma
• crohn’s disease
• diabetes
• inflammation
• hypertension
• heart disease
• schizophrenia
• myopathy
• rickets
• psoriasis
• osteoperosis
• bacterial infection
• and many more…

Due to the astonishing number of benefits, Vitamin D is the most bang for your buck when it comes to nutrients and it’s absolutely critical that you get enough Vitamin D if you want to be super-healthy and have a strong immune system.

For in depth details on how optimizing your Vitamin D will drastically improve your health, check out the massive amount of information available at Dr. Mercola’s website. He is such a big advocate of Vitamin D optimization that he has dedicated an entire website to it, click here to check out Dr. Mercola’s Vitamin D website.

How much sun?

Although the world is slowly starting to realize the importance of Vitamin D, most people are actually experiencing a Vitamin D deficiency.

Most white skinned people require about 10-20 minutes of direct sunlight per day, and not just on the face and arms either. As much of the body as possible should be in direct sunlight for that 10-20 minutes. The skin should never be allowed to burn, though. Once the skin turns the lightest shade of pink it has produced as much Vitamin D as possible for that day, and it should then be covered. Dark pigmented skin takes 3-6 times longer to produce the maximum amount of Vitamin D.

It’s interesting to note that the more antioxidants you have in your body, the more you are protected from sunburns, so make sure you are getting lots of antioxidants in your diet so that you can produce enough Vitamin D without getting sunburns! If you have ‘sensitive skin’ you might want to start getting out in the early morning or late evening when the sun isn’t as strong, that way you can avoid sunburns.

A person should have between 50 ng/ml and 70 ng/ml of vitamin D, and the only way to know how much vitamin D is needed is to test the blood. Any doctor should be able to do a simple blood test to determine your vitamin D levels.

Vitamin D supplements

Vitamin D supplements are commonly found next to the generic multi-vitamins and other supplements at drug stores, grocery stores, and health food stores, but many of these Vitamin D supplements have little to no effect because they can’t be absorbed properly by the body.

Finding a good Vitamin D supplement means finding a supplement that has a high quality source of vitamin D3 that has been formulated for optimum absorption by the body. Once again, the best source that I have found for quality Vitamin D is Dr. Mercola. Dr. Mercola has found a quality source of Vitamin D that comes in a spritz bottle for easy administration. The sprays are 1000 IU per spritz and the Vitamin D molecule has been shrunk using nanotechnology so that it is more readily absorbed into the bloodstream.

Click here to learn more about supplementing Vitamin D.

Indoor tanning

Another option for Vitamin D is indoor tanning with the use of a safe tanning bed or UVB tanning light. I’ve never used this method for getting Vitamin D, but I am thinking of getting one of these handy indoor stand up tanning lights from … you guessed it.. Dr. Mercola.

Cancer is caused by stupidity

Before you get upset about this statement let me say that I am not saying that people who get cancer are stupid. Modern stupidity is the cause of most cancer in our world today.

Filling our bodies with chemicals and toxins is a leading cause of most cancer, and filling our bodies with chemicals and toxins is also stupid. Most people don’t know just how toxic nearly every mainstream household item is.

Here’s just a short list of things that are full of nasty chemicals that you probably have around the house:

• Processed foods
• Mattresses
• Pharmaceutical drugs & prescriptions
• Most Shampoos & Conditioners
• Many health & beauty products (creams, lotions, makeup)
• Tap water (chlorine, fluoride)
• Most deodorant & cologne
• Ink (computers, newspapers, magazines, fliers)
• Cleaning supplies
• Chemical fertilizers (used on most commercial produce)
• Cigarettes
• Pesticides & herbicides (found on non organic foods)
• Hair dye
• Oil products
• Most plastics
• Carpets, lino, paints & other building supplies
• Fluorescent light bulbs (energy efficient bulbs)

These are only a few things that are full of cancer causing chemicals. All of the above things are also ‘stupid’ and have natural alternatives, it’s just that our ‘modern’ society is so hooked on some of these products that it’s become nearly impossible to avoid some of these products.

Choosing unnatural, non organic, or GMO products when there are natural, organic, or whole food options available is stupid — and it causes cancer! (not to mention a whole bunch of other disease). So it seems stupidity causes cancer, not the sun!

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Check out Dr. Mercola’s newest book, The Total Health Breakthrough by clicking here. I bought a copy a while ago and have almost finished reading the entire eBook and all 5 reports. It’s worth all the pennies.