Seems fairly rare to hear of someone having a knee, etc that bothers them for years provided it’s been properly treated. But hear about “bad backs” that people fight for decades.
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Lots of people ELI25 instead of 5. So here is my very basic understanding from my spinal doc, when he explained it to me like I was five.
Your back has a ton of bones, nerves, etc. That are super important to how you function. Because there is so many of them so close together. Problems can often be hard to track down, and even after you find out what the problem could be – treatment can be long and painful at best, or dangerous at worst.
TL;DR – Lots of bones that are super important super close together makes it a minefield.
**Some forms of back and neck pain are self treatable**.
I completely fixed my chronic neck and back problems using two books – “Treat your own Back” and “Treat your own Neck” by Robin McKenzie. I have bought many copies of these books for friends. Each costs less than a single physio appointment. I could not recommend them more highly.
https://www.mckenziemethod.com/products/pain-relief-self-treatment-books/mckenzie-method-treat-your-own-back-book/
The back is a Jenga stack of small bones that all have fragile protrusions, and your central nervous system runs through it.
While controversial, John Sarno’s MindBody Syndrome theory was true for me. Treating a mind problem by doing surgery isn’t very effective. I’m not sure why there is so much resistance to this theory. I’m an engineer, and it makes perfect sense to me. I had debilitating back problems and now I have none. Now about once a year my back will start to “go out”, but I can usually stop it quickly and even play golf.
It’s SOOOO bad, right? The whole premise of ID I’d laughable!
Spine is very mobile, take lots of load and so is fragile.
I might add that my father has knees issues caus’ of too much running. His cartilage in the articulation went bye-bye so it hurts as bone moves against bone. Knees injury are as grave as back injury i think. But it’s a stronger articulation so it more durable.
I see a whole lotta ELIHave a college degree up in here…. Here’s the explanation for an actual 5 year old, you know how dinosaurs are big? Think of a stegosaurus, it has a back shaped like an arch bridge, because bridges are strong and it has to hold up all the weight of his muscles and his guts underneath it. That part, underneath, is important. So that’s why our backs are curved, it holds things well when you are always positioned horizontally. But what if you started walking upright, vertically? Evolution tried to curve our backs once again in the other direction to maintain balance, which made a S curve which actually kinda sucks for support, that’s why you never see S shaped buildings (which must support their weight vertically) and that’s why it hurts.
>”Seems fairly rare to hear of someone having a knee”
What???? Back, Knee, and Shoulder problems are issues I heard about all the time.
Backs are complex and there are a lot of components that can get fucked up.
Because the human spine is a Jenga tower made of stone and already at maximum height, wrapped in a bunch of cheap steaks as supports, and we’ve filled this precarious monster with pretty much every connection possible between the bowl of salty Jell-o that does all the thinking and everything other part of our bodies! Anything goes wrong and it’s like trying to put eggs back in the shell or take paint back off a wall.
Far from an expert whatsoever, just my experience…dealt with general severity back-pain on and off until my early 30s, it was only when I started doing 3 things that it went away 1) began weight-lifting; our bodies are not designed perfectly, we skew our weight-loads overtime, by engaging in an intense and progressive weight-training regime I was able to balance how my body carried stress 2) targeted therapy; towards my feet and legs. Doing long steady measured calf-stretches and ham-string stretches and massaging the arches of my feet significantly reduced hip and back-pain 3) regular meditation; by practicing tuning into my own body and also relaxing my muscles/joints I let go of a lot of unnecessary baggage I was carrying. Meditation also helped me to breathe through the trauma when new stress arose.
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