The Back Pain Blog

Archive for October, 2008

Now I know my intention is to keep this blog as commercial free as possible, and I have done a pretty bad job of doing this already, but I want to share with you an all-natural pain relief product that we have been selling that has been getting rave reviews.

Personally I am yet to try Heal N Soothe however after taking a good look at the pain medication that I have been ingesting over the last three years prompted me to place an order real quick! The photo below shows what my doctor has prescribed every month since December of 2005.

We have three weeks supply of Prodeine (Panadeine) Forte (I refuse to take it for the complete month and go with the Panadeine Extra for a week to my body a break), we have Madopar that I have to take to stop ‘restless legs’ so I can get a couple of hours sleep a night and we have Metamucil for the obvious plumbing issues that the Panadeine causes.

Now I don’t know how you’re pain is kept under control but when I look at this I feel awfully uneasy about what damage is being done to my body and it’s no wonder I can’t hold a conversation for 99% of the day! So when my Heal N Soothe arrives I am going to give these lot the flick and see if I can survive without them.

Heal N Soothe is a product from The Healthy Back Institute and without getting too carried away with details it is a combination of enzymes and herbs that have been proven to fight inflammation and reduce pain without any of the nasty side effects that come with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

In addition to the anti-inflammatory and pain-relief properties, the enzymes in the product also break down scar tissue and fibrosis, cleanse the blood, maintain a healthy immune system and fight and kill viruses.

I could go on forever about what the product contains but if you are anything like me you would just rather know if it is going to work or not and judging by the feedback we’ve had and the amount of repeat customers I believe that it must do it’s job and do it well.

I will be doing a follow-up post once my ’supply’ arrives and I’ve had a chance to put it through it’s paces and in the meantime you can check out Heal N Soothe for yourself HERE.

NOTE: The people at The Healthy Back Institute are at present offering a FREE TRIAL of Heal N Soothe, for more information CLICK HERE.

Yours in pain! (Hopefully not for too much longer!)

Craig

If your job or your hobbies for that matter require you to sit for any length of time and this aggravates your back pain you might want to take a look at a kneeling chair.

After searching high and low for a supplier in our area we finally found one last week and I can tell you that the difference in comfort levels compared to a normal chair is like night and day.

Call me slow but what I didn’t realize was that these chairs are readily available on the net and even with the cost of shipping I could have had one for a lot less than what I ended up paying from a local supplier! One slightly expensive lesson learnt.

When I first spied the chair in the shop I thought that there is no way that thing could be comfortable! The angles look all wrong and as for the back support, I thought there would be no way that I could spend five minutes in it let alone a few hours.

But I’m happy to report that I couldn’t have been further from the truth. After the hour long drive to get to the store my back was already sore and sitting in, or on depending on which way you look at it, the kneeling chair gave almost instant relief to the bottom half of my spine that was feeling the pressure of the drive.

When sitting up nice and high in the chair you can feel that the spine and surrounding muscles are relieved of the majority of weight that they are carrying and in my case at least I can feel that my stomach muscles are getting a bit of a workout holding my upper body up straight, instead of my back muscles which of course get very sore after doing this for even a short period of time. I have also found that by removing the back support section my stomach muscles get more of a workout which is good for me as the back muscles have been doing all the work for a long time.

There is one downfall that I have noticed over the last week with this particular chair, it isn’t fitted with castors and only has wheels that allow forwards and backwards movement which can be a bit of a pain when your desk is more than six feet long and you usually end up with stuff from one end to the other!

Of course the majority of the cheaper and more readily available kneeling chairs on the net are fitted with multi-directional castors…. strike two for not using my brain.

Also something that should be noted, the muscles in your legs provide a lot of the upper body support when using these chairs and they do get a bit of a workout. For the first few days I found that after long periods on the chair my back pain was okay but my legs felt like I’d just done a few laps around the block! Not a bad thing considering my lack of activity over the last three years and after a few days I did get used to it.

So that basically sums up my experiences with kneeling chairs so far. Although there is a short period of getting used to them the relief they provide to your back is simply sensational. I don’t understand why more offices and the like don’t encourage people to use them, I am sure this would cut down on people suffering from back aches and pains.

From what I have seen  the majority of the chairs available over the internet don’t have the back support piece included and to be honest I don’t see this as a necessity. I have removed mine as I am keen on further strengthening my stomach muscles and have not noticed any ill effects.

More information on the popular ‘Jobri’ kneeling chair and how to order one can be found HERE

Craig

Something to ponder – According to the statistics there are more than 200 million people that suffer back pain in the good ol’ US of A alone. Medical costs and loss in productivity costs the economy an estimated 60 billion dollars every year!

These figures, in my mind at least, lead to a couple of questions.

1. Is there enough known about the causes of these injuries so that the best form of therapy or intervention is being recommended?
2. Is our lifestyle a contributing factor in the number of people suffering back pain?

In my opinion the answer to the first question is No. I’m sure not everyone will agree with me on this but from my experiences with searching for a solution to my back problems I have felt like I was alone. Sure, our family doctor immediately sent me off to a Physiotherapist and filled out a prescription for a months supply of Panadeine Forte which got me through the worst of it but when the pain persisted I found it very hard to get any answers.

I find the lack of ‘concrete’ information and answers puzzling. Going from one ’specialist’ to the next has only drained our back account by many thousands of dollars and left us with more questions than answers. It seems that everyone has a different perspective on the problem and a different idea of how it should be treated.

I may be being a bit harsh here and I do understand that the human body is a very complicated piece of work but I just get the feeling that a lot of what we read and are told about back pain is more an opinion than cold, hard fact.

I mean everything is ok for me at the moment, I have my supply of pain killers and luckily enough I am not forced by circumstances to be out working but I feel for the people that do have to be out there and trying to find a solution to their back problems. It must be a very hard road to travel.

Moving on before I get too worked up! You don’t have to be Einstein to realize that the world we are living in is moving at a frantic pace and I for one believe that our lifestyles play a very big part in the numbers of back pain sufferers.

I know how I came about to suffer the injuries that I did. I was a self employed motor mechanic and I can tell you that when you have the pressures of turning a dollar the last thing you are thinking about is preserving your body! Many times I caught myself doing things that I should not have been doing, plus the fact that working more than eight hours a day was necessary if you really wanted to get ahead.

So I guess the answer is to slow down and look after your body. Eat well, get eight hours of sleep a night every night and exercise daily. Who does this?? I’m pretty sure that Bill Gates could take time out of his day to fit all of those things in but what about us people that are pushing to make ends meet and have families to take care of?

If you ask me the pressures of modern day life and the fact that people are working longer and harder than ever before has a huge impact on the number of people not only with back complaints but other equally as problematic medical conditions as well. The question is where will it stop?

Craig