25 TIPS FOR BACK FOR LIFE
#1…..today’s tip, the first in a series of 25, is all about attitude in the realm of back pain and the treatment of it. With back pain treatment, there are as many ‘theories’ as there are ‘guaranteed ways to make it “BIG TIME” on the internet’ (IF you know what I mean!!). Back pain sufferers have been instructed & expected to do some of the ‘weirdest’, most unnatural and illogical things, in their quest to break free of their pain….today’s tip is…”if it doesn’t feel right, look right or sound right…it’s a pretty fair bet that IT ISN’T RIGHT!!”…followers of “Back for Life…how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$” constantly say “this method is so simple, makes so much sense AND IT WORKS!”
#2…..yesterday’s tip was all about attitude and common sense, so today’s tip follows on from the common sense component and goes something like this…if you repetitively use muscles that cause them to shorten and tighten in one direction, for example using your thigh muscles powerfully to straighten your leg or legs (as in lifting, cycling, running or climbing stairs and so on), how much common sense is there in reversing the effect by also stretching those muscles so that they do not remain short and tight? The thigh muscles (at the top end) attach predominantly to the pelvis and when you consider that the spine emerges from the pelvis, it’s not hard to see why short and tight thigh muscles can significantly contribute toward a sore back…you will learn how and why to correct that in “Back For Life…how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$”.
#3…today’s tip is centered around the critically important issue of symmetry…Our bodies are made with amazing symmetry…our shoulders should be level and the same size….our thighs, our biceps, our buttocks, should all be even and equal in size and shape on both sides of our body.
Standing with our body weight supported on one leg (as opposed to evenly on both legs) will lead you to a painful ‘end’… you will ‘end’ up with a sore back….it’s simply a matter of time, sooner or later…it will happen. It will happen because when you stand on one leg, your hips become unbalanced (out of level), resulting in your spine having to develop a compensatory pattern (called a scoliosis)….very, very few people in this world can live WITH a scoliosis and WITHOUT PAIN.
Most people don’t even realize they stand without symmetry…”Back For Life” will teach you to regain symmetry (unless there are extenuating circumstances such as compound leg fractures, congenital birth defects or significant skeletal injury and EVEN then, in many cases, it will enable you to dramatically reduce your back pain) and STAY THAT WAY…
Today’s tip is…. try to become aware of the way you stand and avoid standing on one leg.
#4…..today’s tip revolves around a delicate subject…MONEY….countless sufferers literally spend a fortune on treatment for a painful neck, when in many cases, their neck pain results from a loss of symmetry lower down in their body…. their neck pain can be a ‘reflection’ of another problem…..once they know how, many (no, not all) neck pain sufferers have had a ‘miraculous’ disappearance of their pain when they have rectified their loss of symmetry lower down…so ALL the treatment in the world with all the dollars that will cost, will not and can not achieve anything other than temporary relief AT BEST, if the cause is a loss of symmetry…..if a building’s foundation is out of balance, then the building, probably will be as well…..many ‘loss of symmetry’ back pain sufferers and consequently neck pain sufferers can be ‘picked out of a crowd’ by the way they stand on one leg and by the ‘tilt’ of their head…check them out next time you’re in a crowd….all this and more will be revealed…in “Back For Life…..how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$”.
#5……tip for today follows on from yesterday’s topic of money….many billions of dollars every year are spent in the often forlorn hope that “someone will fix me if I pay them enough money”….The truth is that back pain is a phenomenally lucrative business…BUT, THE BEST PERSON WHO CAN HELP YOU IS YOU!!….the thing is that very few, who know how to, will tell you if it means that you no longer NEED them and stop paying for what they might know…..you can learn how to ‘cut the dependency’ in “Back For Life…how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$”.
#6….There’s nothing quite so relaxing and soothing as a good massage….problem is, who can afford the time and the money to have a massage whenever YOU feel like one…so here’s today’s tip….get yourself a tennis ball…drop it onto the carpet and throw a medium thickness towel over it…Now, here’s what you do….lie down ON the tennis ball….simply position yourself so that the tennis ball is in just the ‘right’ position…you’ll know when it is….make sure you do not allow the pain level to get above 6 out of 10 and do not stay in any one position for any more than 60 seconds….move the tennis ball and repeat several times….the tennis ball method is a great way to remove tension from tight and tired muscles…”Back For Life” will teach you how to use the tennis ball and many, many other ways to dramatically reduce your back pain AND STAY THAT WAY.
#7…..We can learn so much from the animal kingdom…..many, many animals instinctively stretch as soon as they wake up…..AND WE SHOULD TOO!!…In fact, we should put our spines thru the THREE movements it is capable of…. and in so doing, stretch ALL the muscles that attach to and create movement of the spine. We should do this BEFORE we load our body weight onto our spine (our body weight compresses the spine) making it ALL THE MORE DIFFICULT to achieve an effective stretch….Think about it…it makes so much sense to stretch BEFORE our spine becomes compressed (particularly if we just happen to be carrying a few extra pounds)….”Back For Life” will teach you how to do this and the difference to your pain levels is phenomenal….AND IT DOESN’T TAKE VERY LONG AT ALL.
#8…..Today’s tip is to stretch effectively just before you go to sleep….many back pain sufferers compound their pain by poor sleep quality….back pain contributes to poor sleep quality and poor sleep quality contributes to back pain…..So, you can cut the ‘vicious cycle’ by effectively stretching at bed time….”Back For Life” will teach you how to do exactly that and your back pain will reduce dramatically.
#9….the tip for today is avoid doing things repetitively and favoring one side of the body, wherever you can….many back pain sufferers contribute to their own pain by ALWAYS doing the same physical activities the same way, like lifting, climbing, digging, carrying the baby on the hip, bending and straightening, sitting with legs crossed, supporting the phone on one shoulder while you are talking, driving with a huge wallet in one of your back pockets AND SO ON AND SO ON….get the picture??…wherever possible, ALTERNATE whatever activity your day requires, so that you “share the load”….”BUT I’VE ALWAYS DONE IT THAT WAY”…yeah and your back pain is the result….”Back For Life.…how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$” will help you to understand and correct the problem…. with exceptional results.
#10….Today’s tip is an awareness of something to avoid wherever possible…..hyperextension. Hyperextension of the spine is where your hips move forward of an imaginary line from your feet to your head…. IT’S BAD NEWS FOR A BAD BACK….we often hyperextend when we need to do anything overhead, like paint the ceiling or hang clothes on the line or reach for something on the top shelf….(I’m sure you get the general picture)….this creates significant compression on the ‘posterior’ or ‘back’ surface of the spine resulting in two ‘nasty’ things happening…one, there is a tendency for the lumbar (lower) vertebrae to want to move (or slip) forward and two, there is significant pressure exerted on the spinal cord which is at the posterior or back of the spinal column and the nerves that emerge from it…”Back For Life….how to dramatically reduce you back pain without pills, equipment or $money$” will help you to understand and counteract the effects of hyperextension, (in whatever ‘form’ that may take), and to substantially reduce your back pain.
#11….Today’s tip concerns an issue very close to our hearts….BED….it’s essential that we ensure we get adequate quality rest and support while we sleep. This is so, regardless of what type of bed we sleep in…Here’s a tip to know whether your bed has adequate support for your spine. Place some sort of adhesive tape along your spine from the base of your skull to the base of your spine (following your spine as closely as possible)…now lie in bed on your side and have someone check to see if the line of tape is horizontal (parallel to the floor)….if you sleep in a water bed and you sleep with a partner, then you BOTH have to be in the bed to check (as water beds work on a displacement basis, together you displace more water than you do on your own)….if the tape line isn’t straight and dips, you have INSUFFICIENT support….conversely, if it arches, then your mattress is too firm for you…mattresses should be turned over every 6 to 8 weeks and every 12 to 16 weeks they should be end-for-ended AND turned over…obviously, for a water bed, the water volume needs to be adjusted until you achieve a horizontal line with both of you in it if you share the bed…..if you notice a deviation from horizontal at the neck level, then you have a pillow problem and this should be addressed….all this is and much more is taught in “Back For Life…how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$” and is ONE SMALL PART of the road to recovery.
#12….tip for today concerns the types of activities people employ to become free of back pain….many sufferers are told to exercise, many are told to undertake a stretching regime…..rarely are people taught the essential and fundamental FACT that you have to do BOTH and almost never are people taught the reasons WHY…if you are taught “HOW”, you may do something, possibly something helpful, for a time (days, weeks or months), but after a while, it’s likely you will STOP….when you understand the “WHY”, you grasp something so powerful that it will transform your life…”Back For Life…how to dramatically reduce you back pain without pills, equipment or $money$” will equip you with the knowledge and the means to transform your life.
#13……today’s tip revolves around those of us involved in sedentary occupations… like sitting at a computer, a desk, a machine or a shop counter….in this position, it is highly likely that, over time, particularly as we become tired, our shoulders begin to sag forward….this is another one of those ‘vicious cycle’ scenarios…..the more I sit, the more my shoulders hunch forward and the more my shoulders hunch forward the harder it is to keep them back when I sit (or even stand for that matter). Here’s the tip….regularly (and by this I mean hopefully every hour) stand and reach behind you placing the inside of your wrist against an immovable vertical surface at about shoulder height. With your feet a little wider than shoulder width, turn from the hips, away from the vertical surface that’s resisting your wrist…this will, if you are doing it right, result in a tremendous stretch across the front of the shoulder and chest on that side allowing your shoulder to resume its ‘normal’ and ‘correct’ position….hold for 30 seconds, then allow the arm to gently drop and repeat on the other side….A more detailed description of how and why to do this is found in “Back For Life….how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$”.
#14….Today’s tip concerns lifting….there’s been much written and spoken of regarding the safest and most correct way to lift, so I’m not going to re-invent the wheel by telling you again. What I am going to share with you is the importance of what you should do AFTER you have lifted. Most heavy lifting results in spinal compression. Much of the pain sufferers experience can be drastically reduced if the muscle tension in the surrounding area is also reduced. It’s the ongoing excessive muscle tension that continues the spinal compression long after the lifting has finished….Today’s tip is that we can significantly remove the possibility of back pain if we stretch our spines and the surrounding muscles as soon as possible AFTER we have completed the lifting….how to do that is taught in “Back For Life….how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$”.
#15….The tip for today is that it is critically important, in fact essential, in recovering from back pain that you have specific strength to support your spine…. general strength throughout the body is not and will not ever allow you to escape from the horror of back pain…it is of no use joining a gym and doing general body strengthening exercise, or anything else for that matter, unless you know how to strengthen the muscles that support the spine….these strengthening exercises MUST BE specific for spinal support strength…..nothing else will do….you will learn HOW to gain that strength in “Back For Life….how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment of $money$”.
#16…..Today’s tip will help you to understand how a loss of symmetry in the body can be identified and a glimpse of what it means….the way to identify a loss of symmetry is to stand with your weight evenly distributed on both feet, relax and ask someone to check and see if your shoulders are even….if there’s no-one to check for you, simply stand in front of a mirror, relax and check your shoulders for level. In the vast majority of cases (unless you have had significant shoulder damage or you have had compound leg fractures), the shoulders will be level IF YOU HAVE SYMMETRY IN YOUR BODY…..generally if one shoulder is higher than the other, it is a pretty fair bet that you have a pelvic imbalance and a scoliosis of the spine.
“Back For Life…..how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$” will teach you how to correct & reverse that in the majority of cases.
#17….Today’s tip concerns carrying heavy or awkward objects….many back pain sufferers actually significantly contribute to their own back pain unknowingly by the way they carry objects….whenever we carry a heavy or awkward object with one hand, we invariably do so by forcing our opposite hip to ‘jut’ out. This is a fairly major contributor to a loss of symmetry, especially if you do it regularly…. as would a person repeatedly carrying a heavy toolbox or groceries or a vacuum cleaner and so on and so on…here’s a tip…if you can carry the object close to your body and with two hands you will avoid the loss of symmetry syndrome….if you can’t then at least alternate the hand you carry it with. Even in the unavoidable situation where there IS NO OTHER WAY, you CAN regularly regain your lost symmetry by following the “Back For Life….how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$” method.
#18…..Today’s tip revolves around that ‘near & dear to our heart’ issue of BED….many back pain sufferers collapse into a nice warm bed in a high degree of pain, believing that a good night’s rest will make a world of difference and ‘it’ll be better in the morning’……here’s a well earned tip….IT USUALLY WON’T……If you take a painful back to bed, you’ll more often than not, WAKE UP WITH IT AS WELL. So, by following the “Back For Life…how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$” method, you will avoid the pitfalls of the fallacy “a good night’s rest will fix it.”
#19…..tip for today revolves around another fallacy…..”when I have a bad back the best thing I can do is rest”….within a short period of time (in fact a few days, NOT WEEKS), inactive muscles start to waste…when they do, they shorten and narrow (this is called atrophy). This results in increased compression on joints, particularly in the spinal region… AND BACK PAIN IS USUALLY THE RESULT….You will learn what to do and what NOT to do in “Back For Life…..how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$”.
#20……today’s tip is all about pain and its different forms….we experience a whole host of different types of pain in our lifetimes. Apart from ALL the ‘other’ types of pains we might encounter as we move thru life, back pain also comes in different forms…there’s the sharp “take-your-breath-away-hey-I-can’t-even-move” type and there’s the “Oh-my-back-feels-SO-tight-I-think-its-going-to-snap” type AND then there’s the “my-back-feels-like-its-on-fire-“ type….to list but a few. Today’s tip is that you should respond differently to each type of pain and you will know HOW to by following “Back For Life…how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$”.
#21……the tip for today revolves around YET ANOTHER fallacy….”my bad back is due to my age and all I can do is learn to live with the pain”…..people of ALL ages from their teens to their eighties and beyond have been able, once they know how, to turn their ‘sinking’ ship around and head for a safe harbor…..Regardless of your age you can make significant improvements to your back pain, again when you know how….”Back For Life…how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$” will equip you with the ‘how’.
#22….the tip for today concerns a term familiar to most of us…Inflammation…think about the word…’in-flamed’….flame signifies heat, which is exactly what happens when many injuries or ‘strains’ occur…. so here’s the tip…DO NOT ADD HEAT…the area is already at raised body temperature…check for yourself with the palm of your hand, comparing the painful area with a nearby non-painful area and feel the difference in temperature…avoid things like hot water bottles, hot baths, heat producing ointments and rubs and ‘heat-wheat’ type products while there is inflammation….. if inflammation and swelling IS present you will, MAKE IT WORSE…ADD ICE…you will learn how to do that in “Back For Life…how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$”.
#23…..today’s tip concerns the short distance between our ears…..if we are sure we can not reduce our back pain, THEN WE ARE RIGHT….However, if we stop to consider the FACTS and a realization that we are not “Robinson Crusoe” in this……that others with similar, if not identical circumstances to ourselves HAVE turned things around and stayed that way, then we have just taken a monumental step in the right direction….”Back For Life…how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$” will give you keys to unlock the ‘how to’.
#24….the tip for today follows on from yesterday and it concerns attitude…..whenever ANY major advancement has been made in ANY field of endeavor, mistakes and set-backs have more often than not been integral stepping stones along the path to the ‘breakthrough’…..when you know you are on the right track, a setback or two will not phase you but will serve to enhance your already solid sense of determination, purpose and expectation….”Back For Life….how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$” will fire you up and help you achieve the quality of life you crave and deserve.
#25……today’s tip is the last in the series and before I conclude, may I say to you that it is my great hope that some or all of the previous tips have enabled you to get a grip on the fact that a bad back need not be A LIFE SENTENCE…I was told that it would be for me…”You have an incurable and an inoperable spinal condition….there is nothing that can be done, so get used to it, you will have it for the rest of your life, but it will gradually get worse with age”…I’ve been free from that fallacy for almost twenty years now, I’ve taken control of it and back pain has long since ceased to rule my life….thousands of others have followed suit…so today’s tip…SO CAN YOU….”Back For Life….how to dramatically reduce your back pain without pills, equipment or $money$” was written to equip you to do the same…GRAB IT WITH BOTH HANDS AND GO FOR IT….LIFE IS SO MUCH SWEETER WHEN YOU’VE KICKED PAIN IN THE TEETH and you can say “AND DON’T COME BACK!”