Getting Better as a Process
MAKING YOUR BAD BACK BETTER is, among other
things, an ongoing continual process of altering your activities
of daily living in a non-inconveniencing manner. Take heart,
though, any inconvenience can be seen to be vastly overshadowed
by the benefit. The process begins by accepting that your
painful back is "bad," imperfect,
damaged, broken, and/or impaired. The permanent nature of
a disc problem is revealed in the studies showing that 40%
to 85% of back pain patients will have
recurrences within a year after their initial episode.(34),(35)
The underlying problem doesn't go away. I contend this statistic
need not be the fate of a person who accepts that their
back has a problem and actively uses The O'Connor Technique
(tm) to prevent a future occurrence.
Like any person who has encountered a disability
on the long road of life, in order to overcome it, it is
necessary to accept it as a disability (just ask any alcoholic
who has been through Alcoholics Anonymous) because it is
impossible to accommodate to something that you do not accept
as real. Therefore, I would ask the reader, herewith, if
you have back pain significant enough to have altered your
lifestyle (even for a short period of time), that you accept
the fact that your back is "broken" and that you
technically have a permanent underlying disability. If you
recognize this early on and you re-arrange your lifestyle
to accommodate to the disability, then you will have less
probability of injuring your back in the future to the extent
that you are in perpetual pain or require an operation to
come anywhere close to being normal again. I am certain
that, had I known the onset of my back pain meant that I
had actually torn the back's non-healing structural elements,
and that, if I were to sustain another flexion injury, it
could mean a lifetime of pain, I would have been less likely
to have participated, later, in those activities that put
my back at additional, unnecessary risk.
Part of the reason I am producing this website
is not only to relate how a person can get out of pain by
a never-before-elaborated method but to communicate the
type of information people require to prevent a similar
tragedy as my own from occurring in their lives.
Had I known that my discs were weakened as
a eighth grader from hauling two five gallon pails of water
through Ohio farm snow drifts twice a day to bring water
to our cow I would have been less likely to have launched
an ultimately insignificant career in high school wrestling.
During wrestling, had I known that the reason why it was
necessary during warm-ups to have my back "cracked"
to increase my flexibility and decrease my discomfort was
because I unknowingly was getting relief by undergoing a
traction/extension maneuver to centralize my own discs,
I most probably would not have gone out on a mat to again
lift another squirming human being over my head from a seated
position. I had no idea, then, why my back hurt; and I made
no effort to alter my activities even though I had found
it necessary to avail myself of the services of a chiropractor
at the young age of 17 years.
I had no knowledge as I aged that the small
injuries I sustained as a youth were permanent and my back
was a flexion accident just waiting to happen. I had no
clue then as to the significance of my first flexion-type
back injuries while in the military. I had not the knowledge
I have now. Had I had it when I was preparing to jump off
the diving board, as high into the air as I could, to do
a cannon ball and land with my back in maximum flexion,
I know I wouldn't have done it. Off hand, I would categorize
the avoidance of cannon-balling as a non-inconveniencing
life-style change. Incidentally, that was the first incident
in my life where the back pain was so intense that I was
unable to get out of a swimming pool.
If someone had explained the mechanisms of
disc damage to me before I bounced down a mountain in a
ski racer's tuck, I wouldn't have spent the next several
weeks in agony. This was the second incident of excruciating
back pain I could recall. Had I the knowledge contained
in this writing, I would have deferred the wrestling, the
cannonballs, and the downhill ski racer image of myself.
That is not to say that I still don't wrestle around for
fun, dive, or downhill ski. I, and almost anyone with a
bad back armed with the knowledge in this website, can do
just about whatever they want to, within reason; but, if
they do it with the fore-knowledge that their backs must
be guarded from flexion, kept in extension, and with particular
purposed avoidance of weight-bearing flexion, they can accomplish
these activities with relative confidence and safety.
The presence of extreme pain cannot be the
only motivating factor because, by then, it may be too late
to prevent extensive damage. If you wait till you have pain
to allow it to protect your back, the opportunity to prevent
the damage is passed. After incorporating this methododology
into your lifestyle armamentarium, you can let your newly
acquired intellect decide what constitutes a wise move.
If you are capable of assimilating the knowledge and experience
of others and not the type of person who requires actually
experiencing a negative event from which to learn, you will
do well with your back.
If this website does significantly help you
and you are convinced that the source of your pain is indeed
a displaced disc, please don't adopt a maladaptive attitude
towards yourself. If I may be given the latitude to wax
philosophical, one must not look upon any constraints on
your behavior as punishment, as a shackle or enforced prison.
Not as a disgruntled malcontent should you look at your
body. Regardless of its failings and imperfections, it is
still the temple of your soul. It's the only housing your
being has for the present. It is what it is for whatever
reason. You would do well to accept this "disability"
as though you are a child issued your first set of prescription
lenses, or as an elder your first prescription medicine
which will be taken for the rest of your life. You must
understand that Fate is an inscrutable mistress. She may
dictate through your back that your chances of sustaining
a flexion injury are enough to encourage you to walk away
from a boisterous argument that years prior you would have
confronted and otherwise put your life at risk. Believe
it or not, as a teenager, I distinctly recall recognizing
that my back pain would preclude my relying upon a career
involving physical labor. That realization led me to invest
more in my mind and, rather, cultivate my intellectual capacity.
I'm not advocating adopting a "Pollyanna"
perspective, I'm just exposing you to the reality that you
will never know (until perhaps the last second of your life)
if your back pain was ultimately a beneficial happening.
From all immediate perspectives it appears singularly disastrous;
however, you never know, it may save your life someday.
Funny thing is about Fate, you may never even know how or
if your back saved your life. I know that my other disability,
my glasses, saved my life. In an impulsive teenage heroic
mentality, I had applied for the Warrant Officer Flight
program in 1969 so that I could be a helicopter pilot in
Vietnam. The prescription lenses that I cursed every day
of my life excluded me from "going out in a blaze of
glory" at the ripe old age of twenty years.
Certainly it is depressing to realize that
your body is disabled to the extent which accommodations
must be made for the rest of your life. Just talk to someone
with an amputation or a stroke survivor, you will find that
the successful ones simply accepted their "disability"
and went on with the rest of their lives by making the necessary
modifications to their lifestyle. However, there is good
reason to expect that your back will eventually get and
stay better especially if The O'Connor Technique (tm) is
adhered to. The reader can breeze forward to the section
on "HOPE" to reassure themselves that there is
some light at the end of the back pain tunnel so long as
you can bring your spinal education level up to the point
where you can understand the terminology and practice the
methods designed to accomplish the few principles enumerated
in this website.
Applying The O'Connor Technique (tm) supplies
a means whereby a person who is predisposed to back pain
by genetics, comes to it by occupation, prior accidental
trauma, or pregnancy, or has had a previous event of back
pain (and wishes to prevent future ones) can alter their
behavior with a process designed to protect their spine
before the onset, during the period of pain, and subsequent
to it. In this manner, The O'Connor Technique (tm) can be
said to be able to prevent back pain and change the Fate
of one who practices it.
The principles are especially relevant to
those who are wise enough to foresee the probability of
acquiring back pain, decide not to expose themselves to
that risk, and are willing to change their mechanical behavior
to accommodate this desire. It requires wisdom to prevent
future pain because rarely is it possible to convince someone,
even with the best of proof, that an untoward event would
have happened if it didn't or never does happen. That is
what makes preventive medicine so difficult for some to
accept as valuable. After all, they contend, one could theoretically
be expending a great deal of extra effort trying to prevent
an event that may never take place; however, when the reader
gets pain relief using a maneuver in this website, it is
easily seen how the maneuver is based upon spinal mechanical
principles that make the maneuver successful. It is from
consistently applying this same mechanical logic that the
process of preventing future pain is designed. The more
effort generated towards obeying and applying the principles,
the less probability one has of committing the mechanical
errors that lead to back pain and disability.
The permutations and levels upon which this
preventive strategy operate are farther reaching than just
immediate pain. For instance, knowledgeable of spinal realities,
new mothers can use this process to insure that motherhood
doesn't turn into an experience that taints the life long
relationship with their new child. To estimate the value
of that benefit, imagine a scientific experiment wherein
every time one study group of new mothers bent over to pick
up their baby they get a jolt of pain stabbing them in the
back. It takes little imagination to predict how such a
scenario could potentially breed a subtle psychological
form of resentment directed at the child and dis-flavor
the relationship as the mother subconsciously associates
the infant as the origin and source of the pain. Applying
the principles of The O'Connor Technique (tm) serves to
prevent this potentially devastating ramification of pain.
I am firmly convinced that, had someone communicated
the wisdom contained in this website to me as a juvenile
when tossing hay bales to the point of exhaustion, as an
adolescent while slouching for hours in my school chair,
or as an adult trying to squat like an Asian while in Vietnam
(mistakenly thinking it to be a natural and therefore biomechanically
advantageous position), I would have understood how and
why these activities were making and made my back worse;
and I would not have persisted in them. In that sense, had
I the wisdom to apply this intellect, my Fate would have
been irrevocably altered by simple preventive medicine.
Armed with and applying this wisdom now, as
a physician, when patients walk into my office in pain,
I determine through a brief history and specific physical
examination whether a disc is acting as a source of the
pain, apply my technique in a manipulative manner, and they
walk away with immediate relief after the application of
gentle movements which could only result in a disc's re-centralization.
In all those persons who obtain relief, the specificity
of the therapy's efficacy proves the diagnosis. The objective
evidence is that, after the application of The O'Connor
Technique (tm) the patient can again move without the stabbing
wedge-like pain in their spine with which they entered my
office. With that experience, they are much more motivated
to accept and apply the preventive philosophy I then impart
to them. It has proven to be an intensely gratifying experience
to know unequivocally you have taken a person out of pain,
unequivocally given them a means of preventing its return,
and changed their Fate, forever. The reader of this website
can expect to do the same for him or herself.
I have no illusions that this self-applied
"physical therapy" process will help everyone.
However, I am so convinced of its efficacy, that those that
it doesn't help have reasonable cause to assume that they
have some other condition like those listed above or the
disc is in such a difficult position that it cannot be self-manipulated
back into place .
Fortunately for most physicians but unfortunately
for their patients, they don't have personal experience
with a disc problem upon which to base their belief systems.
That, in the presence of never before being exposed to this
technique nor the mechanical theory of disc movement upon
which The O'Connor Technique (tm) is based, leaves them
with little to rely upon except the customary, random, back
mobilization exercises which, by the laws of random activity,
do eventually help a percentage of people. Because some
studies indicate that 95% of acute back pain resolves in
2 months no matter what modality of therapy is utilized,
many practitioners simply give analgesics (pain medicines),
anti-inflammatory medicines, some bed rest instructions,
an admonition not to lift, some largely worthless exercises,
and rely upon time and the law of averages to do the real
work. The O'Connor Technique (tm) is refreshing in that
it removes randomness from the process by selecting out
those who most probably have a disc herniation as the source
of their pain and mechanically re-positions the disc material
so as to immediately resolve the originating component of
the pain and teaches the process of keeping it in.
Article Contents:
You are not alone
The Pain
Contemporary
Perspective on Back Pain
Historical
Perspective of Back Pain
Science and Art
Alternative
Therapeutic Modalities
Back Surgery
Comparative Programs
Not an Excercise
Program
Dismissing
the "Psychological" Contribution To Spinal Pain
Getting Better
as a Process
Become your own
Chiropractor
Hope
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