Hope for Back Pain
At times, it may seem to the back
pain sufferer that there is little or no hope for
ever being "normal" again. Some readers may say
to themselves, "If I have to go through all this every
day of my life, I might just as well have the whole thing
fused surgically and live with a stiff low back."
I would strongly argue that this is the wrong
attitude. Surgery should only be viewed as the very last
resort for unremittant, debilitating, pain or vertebral
instability when neurological function is compromised or
at risk of being lost. Later in the website, you will learn
that, even for people who undergo a fusion surgery or discectomy,
the predisposition for additional degenerative disc disease
still exists at other (especially adjacent) levels of the
spine. Without intentional intervention, the damaging forces
acting upon the discs will still be present and capable
of inducing further future disability and pain. Quite often,
the surgery is only a partial discectomy and the same disc
continues to degenerate. Just because you have one disc
repaired, doesn't mean that your problems with your spine
are solved. Quite the contrary, if you don't alter the mechanics,
there is every reason to believe that other discs will fall
prey to the same forces that damaged the original one.
In fact, my observation has been that an inordinately
large percentage of persons with Lumbar disc disease eventually
present with similar Cervical or Thoracic disc problems
and visa versa. This leads me to conclude that there must
be certain genetic predispositions to faulty disc mechanics
and that the ramifications of some inherent structural protein
difference results in a weakness of ligamentous capacity
that is reflected in one person's ability to sustain the
same amount of force without damage to the disc whereas
another person under identical circumstances ends up with
a damaged disc. I suspect it has something to do with the
tensile strength and elasticity of their collagen fibers
(the proteins that compose ligaments and cartilage) and
that there are certain genetic subsets of persons who are
destined, by virtue of their hyper-elastic collagen, to
have an increased probability of disc disease regardless
of whether or not they sustain major, forceful injuries.
This trait may make them evolutionarily more likely to survive
by giving them the "wirey" capacity to wriggle
free of their enemies; but the gains they achieve in elasticity
leave them deficient in tensile strength. If this is true,
these people (of which I think persons with hyper-flexible
joints and/or scoliosis may be an extremely affected subset)
may be prevented from what otherwise appears to be an inevitable
fate. However, it is too early for me to make that speculation
formally; and this website is not the appropriate forum.
Suffice it to say, I have enough information to advance
the suspicion and hypothesis because I have observed scoliosis
induced solely by disc disease. Time and wide-spread use
of The O'Connor Technique (tm) will determine whether this
suspicion is correct. Until then, persons with early scoliosis
are free to make and act upon the assumption that the origin
of their disease process rests in hyper-migratory disc material
and use The O'Connor Technique (tm) to try to prevent disfiguration.
They certainly are unlikely to come to any additional harm
by practicing these techniques; and I would enjoy learning
if they appear to be successful, so that a comprehensive,
scientific study could be rapidly assembled to test that
hypothesis. The number of scoliosis patients I currently,
or ever, will see in my practice is so small as to be negligible--someone
else will have to study that question.
Contrary to political rhetoric, all men are
not created equal. However, that is not to say a person
with a predisposition for a bad back is
inferior to someone with an intact spine because having
extra-flexible collagen may impart some other selection
advantage and survival value. Judging from the multitudes
with bad backs alive today, it seemingly doesn't carry any
Darwinian selection disadvantages. Perhaps the increased
flexibility carries with it an, as yet unrecognized, selection
advantage, the usefulness of which becomes less significant
after offspring are successfully reared.
However, it does not follow that simply because
one has a bad back that it is the result of an inexorable
genetic failing. One needn't adopt the fatalistic attitude
that their Fate is immutable or that they are pre-destined
to suffer or I would not have written this treatise.
Hope does exist in the peculiar capacity the
human organism has for accommodation on an intellectual
and structural level. Understand that acting upon knowledge
can favorably change fate, and the body is not a static
entity. It is constantly being broken down and rebuilt on
a microscopic level. Although, to the unenlightened, when
viewing a skeleton it seems to exist as a hard, rigid, structural
frame that is unchanging in life as much as it is in death.
Quite the contrary, even this rigid bony structure is constantly
being broken down and reformed at the cellular level. This
rebuilding can be modified depending upon the stresses applied.
Obviously, there are certain structures that, once broken,
cannot be rebuilt to their original functional capacity.
There are certain conditional restrictions upon the ability
of the human organism to repair damage. Yet, over time,
the pre-programmed capacity of the body to modify its structure
can be capitalized upon to expect eventual healing and return
to a near-normal functional activity level.
A major constituent of The O'Connor Technique
(tm) is a fundamental methodology that optimizes the capacity
of the human body to intellectually and physically adapt
to spinal damage as well as maximize effective repair. These
components are referred to as FLEXION AVOIDANCE, MAINTENANCE
OF EXTENSION, DYNAMIC POSITIONING, and PREFERENTIAL STRENGTHENING/SELECTIVE
HYPERTROPHY. With these and other innovations in back pain
management, The O'Connor Technique (tm) has taken a great
step forward in reducing the healing time, decreasing the
duration of back pain events, and preventing or reducing
the frequency of future episodes. Separate sections in the
website specifically address these components and throughout
the website wherever pertinent, they are reiterated in contexts
where appropriate. The reader who understands and practices
them can expect to have true hope for a largely pain-free
future.
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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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