The Management Or Relief Of Back Pain – True And False
WHY BACK PAIN TREATMENTS ARE OFTEN SO INEFFECTIVE, AND HOW TO GET REAL RELIEF
Introduction
Back pain, whether lower back pain or upper back pain, is the most common of all chronic pain complaints, and yet most people discover that their pain program is next to useless.
Here in Australia failed chronic pain programs waste over $12 billion every year. It’s even worse in the USA, at more than $24 billion per annum. When you add on the costs of lost wages, and lost productivity, the total costs skyrocket into outer space! So this is an enormous burden on society, but of course these figures betray an enormity of human suffering that is truly frightening.
The experience of pain is common to almost everyone, but the thought of living in agony from day to day isn’t something most of us ever have to face. For those with back pain, or neck pain, every movement, sometimes even breathing, can bring that agony.
Current methods have failed to help back pain patients in the majority of cases and I hope that the methods described here will replace those ineffective methods. Australian research demonstrates that it’s now possible to bring immediate relief to the majority of people with back pain or neck main, with most of those achieving total elimination, regardless of how long they’ve suffered.
The data from the Australian research showed 100 per cent cessation of pain for half the group immediately (at the first treatment) and more than 50 per cent reduction in pain for another 25%. 6-month follow-up showed that results had held or increased except for one patient, who had continued to have high-velocity cervical spine manipulations from her chiropractor, even though her pain worsened with every visit.
The research is ongoing, with more information available on the web site.
Reading this report will help you to:
** Appreciate how the myths of chronic pain have led to serious mistakes in treatment programs, even by the most highly-trained health professionals.
** Finally discover a treatment method for back pain that is based on sound evidence, and which has a high probability of helping you.
If you do decide you’d like to try the chronic pain program outlined here, it’s crucial that you first have a diagnosis of chronic pain from your doctor, so that we can ensure there isn’t any treatable underlying medical condition. With accurate diagnosis, we can then be more assured of getting the result you want.
So we stress that you should never self-diagnose, and any pain should be properly investigated by a licensed medical doctor. We also stress the importance of keeping your doctor informed of your progress.
HOW WE GOT IT SO WRONG WHEN IT CAME TO CHRONIC PAIN
In times past we used to have beliefs and ideas about pain that in the light of current knowledge seem ignorant or even bizarre. Even now, with the benefit of a more evidence-based approach to the development and provision of interventions for pain, and even though we have made enormous progress in the treatment of acute pain (in most cases), conventional treatments for chronic physical pain still seem woefully inadequate in terms of satisfactory outcomes for patients.
It can be hard to understand this disparity in the research sector when we already have such good proof that chronic pain and acute pain are so different in their nature that they actually use 2 completely different nerve paths.
It is only very recently that this was clearly understood and better interventions have begun to be developed. (For a better understanding of the benefits and shortcomings of the variety of current chronic pain treatments, please download the more comprehensive report on the web site.)
The reason why chronic pain treatments have been so worthless is that they failed to take into account that the patient’s nervous system is sub-consciously affected by non-physical issues in their environment, issues that the patient often had no control over.
As you will read in the next section, the experience of chronic pain is absolutely dependent upon these things, not because chronic pain is “all in the head”, not at all! Rather these factors are absolutely complicit in the body’s pain response.
Through not understanding these factors, treatment was directed at the patient’s physical activity only, and the patient was (and often still is) told to “push through the pain” to complete excruciating exercise regimes, often causing the patient enormous physical and emotional distress.
Another very important mistake that therapists have made is where they’ve blamed the patient for creating his own pain. They haven’t been able to help the patient using the methods they believe should work, and therefore it is now conveniently the patient’s fault, and the patient must be taught to think “correctly”. This is what CBT does, and is why CBT usually fails.
Yes, thoughts and attitudes (and beliefs) do help create pain. However thoughts, attitudes and beliefs are not under the patient’s control, and any therapist who tries to force the patient to change these using sheer willpower or self discipline is inflicting an ignorant and cruel treatment.
There is a far more intelligent, humane, and effective approach, and that is to address the emotional factors which underly the thoughts, attitudes and beliefs that are linked to pain production, and to eliminate those using modern de-conditioning techniques. Only King Canute would be silly enough to try to do that by willpower!
The third area where we didn’t so much “get it wrong” as much as just didn’t know, because the scientific tools to demonstrate this weren’t yet developed, was how the brain actually processes chronic pain. Brain imaging techniques have clearly demonstrated that the brain activity that typifies chronic pain signalling is almost identical to that created by emotional pain such as fear, anger or other emotional distress.
To us it’s rather incredible that no-one else seems to have identified the relationship to learning theory and memory studies. If only they had, we would get other researchers joining us instead of wasting time on red herrings! If only they would realise that the same brain processes that give rise to conditioned responses and memory also give rise to chronic pain.
Sadly, the outcome of our past and current misunderstanding of the nature of chronic pain has lead to a proliferation of programs which have the intention of “helping the patient to live with his pain”, rather than the reduction or even elimination of that pain altogether.
It’s no wonder that treatment with strong pain killers, surgery to cut nerve branches, cognitive behaviour therapy, hydrotherapy, chiropractic therapy, acupuncture and osteopathy have all proven to be woefully inadequate to help people in any permanent way with back pain.
A SENSIBLE, PROVEN APPROACH TO BACK PAIN
Now that we no longer misunderstand the nature of chronic back pain we can stop blaming the patient, and stop treating back pain as if it were an entirely physical problem. We can instead eliminate the actual cause of your unrelenting back pain, which is the conditioned activity of your central nervous system.
Unlike almost every other program, this program has the full intention of dramatically reducing or eliminating your chronic pain, by working with the actual mechanisms which produce the pain signals in the first place, literally “switching off” your chronic pain, permanently.
This proven program is known as BMSA, or Brief, Multi-Sensory Activation therapy, and it has achieved outstanding results, even where back pain sufferers have had serious pain for many years, and even where the patient has tried and failed many other pain programs. Most people can learn to self treat very quickly and easily, and most people achieve some result from the very first treatment.
According to Australian clinical research, carried out over the last 6 years, approximately 95 per cent of patients with chronic back pain will successfully eliminate or dramatically reduce their pain.
More information on this approach to treating chronic back pain is available from the web site, including some interesting case studies.