Lower Backache

We’re in the 21st century – and even so, nearly 80% of all adults will suffer with lower backache or back pain at some point in their lives. With all of the advances we’ve made in science and medicine, how can that be? What are the doctors all missing?

Well, one well-known back pain expert says that the answer is right in front of them – in fact, it’s in the first paragraph of this story. “We’re in the 21st Century” – that’s the key.

Life has changed drastically over the last 100 years. The stress and pressures of current-day life, coupled with the fact that we live our lives so differently, mean that we have lost what author and educator Roy Palmer calls the “art of natural movement.”

Think about what life was like 100 years ago. People didn’t drive cars – they walked. People didn’t work in front of a computer – they didn’t spend their spare time online or watching TV – they did manual labor and exercise.

But today, we drive, walk, surf the web, hang on the couch, sit and play video games. So it shouldn’t be surprising that when we live our lives differently, we move our bodies differently (when we move them at all). Specifically, we move our backs differently – or even worse, we often hardly move them at all.

That is why your doctors may be telling you that your lower backaches or back pain is “all in your mind.” They’re not considering the stress you’re under or the type of movement your back is subjected to every day. They’re just relying on scans and x-rays to see if there’s something visibly wrong with your bones or discs.

And when their expensive tests can’t find an obvious medical reason for the pain and aches, they really believe that there’s nothing wrong with you – that you’re either making it up or imagining it. Nothing could be further than the truth. But when they can’t see a problem on the scan, they tell you “you need to exercise” and send you home.

You probably do need to exercise – it’s certainly better for your back than just lying in bed with pills and a heating pad. But exercising the wrong way can be as bad – or worse – than doing nothing.

That’s where most doctors and exercise therapists go wrong a second time. If your lower backache and pain is being caused by bad posture and hurting your body by moving incorrectly, what’s going to happen if you start exercising vigorously while you’re still moving and using your body the wrong way? Exactly. Things will get even worse.

So, what’s the answer to lower backaches? According to movement educator Roy Palmer, it starts with re-educating your muscles and learning the proper way to sit and stand, the proper way to walk and run – the way your body was built to operate in the first place. That will relieve the unnecessary strain and stress you’re regularly and unconsciously putting on your lower back. Then you can move on to a proper exercise program – and move on with your life, finally pain free.

It doesn’t have to take forever – and it doesn’t have to be time consuming or difficult. Over the last 12 years, Roy has used his movement re-education program to teach hundreds of athletes, performers, and everyday people like us how to ease the tension and stress they place on their backs – and live their lives free of lower back aches and pain.

Believe it or not, the first step in Roy’s program to relieve the pain takes only seven seconds – learn more about his program by clicking here.

Roy Palmer is the author of books on injury prevention, rehab for athletes and performance enhancement; his latest work, is “7 Seconds to Pain Relief” – more information is available by clicking here.

The human body is a work of art. Its bone structure is extremely complicated and constantly takes on enormous loads and suffers under tremendous pressure, in order to keep us up and running. It’s easy to understand that our bodies can, and probably will, suffer aches and pains (if not worse) from time to time.

Lower backache is one of the most frustrating of those aches and pains. There are so many possible causes for back pain that many sufferers go through a seemingly never-ending parade of visits to doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists, pain specialists, even surgeons. And those consultations often make perfect sense.

However, those visits often lead to frustration; more often than not, no one can figure out what’s actually causing a lower back ache. If you’re a back pain sufferer, you probably know how helpless the process can make you feel. Maybe the medication or manipulation you received on your first few visits helped you walk again; after that, though, things probably didn’t get any better, or even got worse

In fact, a British hospital just conducted a major study, finding that patients who attended just one session where they received advice on handling their back pain, had the same overall results as other patients who went to physiotherapy for six weeks.

Roy Palmer is an expert on the subject of body movement and pain, and he says that if there’s not a diagnosable medical condition leading to your back pain, usually the problem is “misuse” of your body. More specifically, we have learned over time to use the wrong muscles in our body to move, sit, even stand. We’re built to support ourselves and move with a minimum of muscular effort; but we’ve usually trained ourselves to work way too hard to do the simple things like walking.

For example, many people will try to stand up or sit up straighter, by tightening their lower back muscles. That’s not what those muscles are for – you should be using muscles higher up on your back to properly balance your body on your spine. Using the wrong muscles leads to muscle strain and stress – and THAT leads to lower backache.

It’s not your fault, of course – the body is born knowing how to properly balance and move by using the proper muscles, but over the years we “unlearn” those behaviors. And if this is what’s causing your persistent lower back pain, conventional treatment certainly isn’t going to help. Roy Palmer, however, is. After working with pro athletes and artistic performers for more than a decade, he has developed a program to help re-educate your muscles, teaching them once again how to support your body with minimum stress and strain – and end your lower backache for good. Learn more about his program here.

You may have noticed some people tend to arch and hunch while walking or standing. This is because those people’s bodies have gotten so accustomed to being arched, they will never stand straight again without some help. The problem isn’t simply a matter of improper posture; it’s because our modern life leads us to ride instead of walk, sit instead of stand, lie in front of the TV instead of being active. This can cause a number of back problems. Apart from “just plain” lower back pain, it can lead to spondylitis, arthiritis, thyroid issues, and the list goes on. Some of these disorders can be permanent if immediate caution is not taken.

But a leading expert on the subject of body pain says that you can be on your way to improving your posture – and getting rid of that persistent lower backache – in just seven minutes.

Your first reaction might be to work out, either at home or at a gym. And your second reaction might be to try to force yourself to sit up straight while you’re walking around your house. Unfortunately, that probably isn’t going to solve your posture issues. Author and educator Roy Palmer, who’s perfected a program to ease and eradicate lower back pain, says that using the wrong muscles (through exercise) or tensing your muscles (through “standing up straight”) will actually make things worse.

That’s because the real culprit here is stress and strain. You were born with reflexes to let your body balance and move properly. However, over the years most people allow stress to tense and tighten their lower back, shoulders and neck. That ends up overriding your body’s natural mechanics for movement and balance – causing your lower backache. And if you try to “fix it” with exercise or unnatural posture corrections, that added and unnatural strain on your muscles and joints will only make your posture and pain worse. The more you do the wrong things, the worse you’ll feel.

So what’s the answer? Quite simply, it’s allowing yourself to relax; letting the ground or chair beneath you support you naturally. With the tension removed from your body, you’re in what Roy Palmer calls a “poised” state and can move and act naturally. And when you’re moving naturally, the lower back pain just melts away.

Can you visualize Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods or Tom Brady walking around with a book on top of their head, trying to “improve their posture?” Of course not. Naturally, all great athletes work out, and you certainly should as well. But don’t do it to “fix” any pains you may have. Strive for poise: allow yourself to move and act naturally, the way nature intended you to. And lower backache will be a thing of the past.

Educator and author Roy Palmer teaches performers and athletes how to enhance their performance naturally. His latest work is  “7 Seconds to Pain Relief.”