I’ve had serious lower-back pain lately and after the first night of good sleep in a week, this is my major realization regarding the treatment of this type of problem:
While the injury itself that’s behind the problem may be muscular or skeletal in nature, the systems affected are inter-related and one issue cannot be fixed without correcting the other.
Even if you sit properly in your chair, you’re still sitting in a chair all day if you have a desk job and as Greg says, “our bodies aren’t designed to hold that position for an extended period of time.”
Greg and Michael are the same two guys that fixed my rotator cuff injury back in the Spring. I’ve done three acupuncture and chiropractic treatments for this problem this past week with only mild relief each time, however as I’ve now learned, we weren’t addressing the muscular side of the equation. Yesterday we added therapeutic massage to the regimen and not even 24 hours later I feel 95% improved. Apparently there are two sets of opposing muscle groups that battle over the lower spine and both were having spasms playing tug of war with my sacrum. Moving the bones back into place provided temporary relief but the muscles were undoing the work. By alleviating the muscle strain, the back adjustment seems to have held and my situation is much improved. And yes, that’s me posing in the diagram ;-)
I cannot recommend the services of these two individuals highly enough. When your daily existence becomes eclipsed by a health problem, there is simply no price that can be assigned to the prospect of becoming free of the pain. For me the back problem this past week had become more than an uncomfortable nuisance and was starting to seriously damage my productivity and morale at the office (my co-workers would tell you that I’ve been hobbling around like an old man and I’ve been irritable and unable to deeply concentrate). Thanks to Michael and Greg I should be back in the saddle now.
The question I have is “from where do these problems originate?” I had a major car accident in ’93 that left me with a crushed L5 vertebrae so that’s probably the ultimate culprit but still there is no single event recently that should have triggered the resurgence of problems. My back has been mostly fine ever since the accident with the occasional intermittent, dull pain from long road trips and uncomfortable seating. Being acutely aware of my risk for back issues, I make sure to sit properly in the most ergonomic chair you can buy. The massage guy told me that apparently that’s not enough though, and that sitting uninterrupted for long periods without taking the occasional break to get up and stretch will cause the muscles to strain, which in turn pull the bones out of alignment, which means you don’t sleep well, which thwarts the healing process and creates more muscle strain, etc. Good sleep is so essential to the recovery that once the negative spiral is initiated, it needs an intervention to stop it. The spiral can be avoided entirely by drinking a lot of water and stretching throughout the day.
If you are experiencing prohibitive pain from repetitive strain injury or another work-related stress and are in the Phoenix area, I highly recommend the services of the guys from the CFAM as a measure of intervention. And for that matter, whatever ails you I recommend you contact the CFAM – here’s a testimonial from a good friend I sent there for her long-term sinus problem and she’s finally found relief. Heck, if you’re outside of Phoenix and your problem is troublesome enough, I recommend you fly here and meet with them. Phoenix is beautiful in the winter!
*One disclaimer here- it should be noted that I did do their web site. I believe the service they do is extremely valuable but I derive no direct monetary benefit from referrals generated via the advice here.
If you find yourself driving alone with fast food that has spill-able contents like soups or primarily-liquid dishes in boxes, here’s a neat trick you can use to avoid from spilling your food. Take the “rabbit ears” of the bag, roll down your passenger-side window slightly, poke the knotted portion of the bag out the window and close it so it pinches the bag and suspends your food. You now have your own “gyroscopic to-go food transport pendulum” (?!?) that keeps your food balanced upright as you take turns on the way home. I came up with this technique while grabbing to-go Japanese the other night.
Of course you look like an idiot driving with rabbit ears hanging out your window but hey, priorities… I had a bag that had a big container of miso soup in it and found myself holding it upright by grabbing the top with my right hand while driving home. It occurred to me that the window could achieve the same function so I tested it and was pleased with how well it worked.
I had many take-aways from this series, the first of which was that he copied my header for his cover design. I mean c’mon Roger, I’ve had the purple lightning bolt thing for years now… ;-) But seriously, it was helpful to learn the Bracketing technique, how to disarm a resort to higher authority and how the value of services diminishes rapidly once those services have been rendered and therefore why you should lock down the details up front. Also useful was the trade-off maneuver for getting instant, reciprocal goal concessions to bring negotiations to a close, the Nibbling strategy and the counter maneuvers for the good-guy/bad-guy technique.
So I think I’ve broken the code on the green tea at Starbucks. By the way I’m addicted to this drink. Every day at 3pm I jump in my car and make the pilgrimage to the closest dealer –ahem, I mean Starbucks– to get my venti unsweetened shaken green tea. This habit which costs me $2.11 each day has roughly the same financial impact as the nicotine addiction for the smoker that consumes a pack of cigarettes every day (granted it’s a little bit healthier).
