Newsletter #3

Taking Action On Sciatica and Back Pain

Hi,

I recently came across a pair of moving and inspiring videos on YouTube. They were particularly significant to me because I ride a motorbike and one of the featured patients had badly injured his spine in a motorbike accident.

The videos show several people who had suffered severe spinal injury and the rehabilitation process they went through. You can find the videos here.

Anyway, what's the relevance of these to "routine" sciatica and back pain treatment?

Well as the line from Joni Mitchell's old song goes "You don't know what you've got till it's gone".

That certainly applies to your health and wellbeing and with your back's wellbeing in particular.

Unfortunately, we all tend to get busy or preoccupied and it's easy to neglect your body and back until something serious happens and then Kapow! (thanks Batman) life gets hard.

So I just want to get the message across that it doesn't take a whole lot of care, effort or time to maintain your back (and body) in good condition and it's a whole lot easier to do the right things before anything goes wrong, rather than having to fix yourself up once it has gone wrong.

A lot of the time the main challenge is just taking yourself on to make simple changes in your routine, to find the time, to persist with exercise when you don't feel like it. Here's 5 reasons to exercise

Take action if you haven't already.

Here are 3 simple steps to give your body and back what it needs to function and heal itself properly:

1.  If you've got back pain or sciatica right now, review your routine and patterns of movement to see where you're (inadvertently) doing things that are bad for your back e.g. typing away hunched over a PC, or driving for hours on end without a stretch break.

2.  Start a set of exercises designed for your back or buy the Better Back Book.

3.  Develop good eating habits. Food is the fuel, lubrication and building material of your body. Guess what - feed it rubbish and it ain't gonna work very well!

"Good eating habits" means fresh natural foods and not processed junk, fast foods, beer and sodas, Krispy Kremes etc etc i.e. whatever Homer Simpson eats you shouldn't! 

The new version of the Back Health & Exercise course starts here.

best wishes,

Chris

Video - Spinal Injury Rehabilitation (part 1)

Video - Spinal Injury Rehabilitation (part 2)