Man, it sure is hard to make decisions in this world, isn't it?
I've helped several friends and family fix their chronic back pain through deadlifts and similar. Chiropractors didn't help. They didn't believe in or couldn't afford specialists. I'm not even a trainer, just a software developer.
From what I've seen, chronic back pain is way more down to back weakness, and easily and safely fixable by training the back with any of many standard exercise. Your body was meant to do these things!
So, then, how many success stories overweigh a horror story? When should people choose to take matters into their own hands when the world's supply of expertise is limited or giving mixed messages...
...or only unsuccessful. I mean, who doesn't know people that got back surgery and they still have back pain? Want to bet that many of those people should have strengthened their backs instead?
Of course, some people, like my brother-in-law, refuse to exercise, so surgery is the only option.
But I bet a lot of those who got surgery never got a compelling pitch making it clear that exercise usually works. The incentives for those handing out surgeries are too perverse.
Not that you mentioned it, but what scares me is all the surgeries. My coworker's programmer husband got back surgery, picked up an infection in the spinal cord, and now he's permanently paralyzed on disability.
True story. Back in the Clinton days, there was a committee created to evaluate medical treatments and make official recommendations on which were cost effective and which were not.
Their first recommendation was that back surgery was not called for until the possibility of all other treatments had been ruled out. The data for this back in the 1990s was very strong and based on the facts, it should have been non-controversial. The data showed a fairly low success rate, and even for the short-term successes, a 10 year prognosis that was worse for equivalent patients than any alternative treatment. (Including "do nothing".)
The data notwithstanding, back surgeons as a group are very well off and tend to donate to politicians. Furthermore hospital administrators make more money off of back surgery than the others. En masse they began calling their local congress critter to say that something had to be done about this committee report. The result was that Congress got together and the committee report quickly got buried, and the committee's remit was changed so that it no longer could issue such recommendations.
As long as you can approach back problems with exercise, do so.
For my wife's problem? What worked was Valium to solve the back spasms, the disk slipped back in and luckily the nerves had not been killed while it was out, and then a slow exercise regime to stabilize her back. However until her spine was well and truly better and she had better stabilization, NOTHING to cause compression of the spine. (Which deadlifts do.)
Thats a scary story, glad your wife was ok eventually. I don’t know much about anatomy and heavy deadlifts always make me a little nervous. Isn’t stabilization the issue though? I always thought the whole core was supposed to be supporting the spine so how could a vertebra pop out unless something went really went wrong?
Deadlifts don't need to be heavy. In fact, if it is muscle weakness in the posterior chain that is causing back pain, more reps at lighter weight is a better way to develop them.
Anecdata, and unrelated to the back: With 100% correlation, anytime I start getting RSI symptoms, I can reference my training log and it turns out I haven't been diligent with the holy combination of face pulls and raw deadlifts. Data points of approx N=8, patient count only N=1.
No ergonomic chair, keyboard, mouse, etc required; just strength. And not a single orthopedist will discuss face pulls as a solution to RSI.
I've helped several friends and family fix their chronic back pain through deadlifts and similar. Chiropractors didn't help. They didn't believe in or couldn't afford specialists. I'm not even a trainer, just a software developer.
From what I've seen, chronic back pain is way more down to back weakness, and easily and safely fixable by training the back with any of many standard exercise. Your body was meant to do these things!
So, then, how many success stories overweigh a horror story? When should people choose to take matters into their own hands when the world's supply of expertise is limited or giving mixed messages...
...or only unsuccessful. I mean, who doesn't know people that got back surgery and they still have back pain? Want to bet that many of those people should have strengthened their backs instead?
Of course, some people, like my brother-in-law, refuse to exercise, so surgery is the only option.
But I bet a lot of those who got surgery never got a compelling pitch making it clear that exercise usually works. The incentives for those handing out surgeries are too perverse.
Not that you mentioned it, but what scares me is all the surgeries. My coworker's programmer husband got back surgery, picked up an infection in the spinal cord, and now he's permanently paralyzed on disability.