August 2006 newsletter

Fast Help For A Bad Back

Some days you may find yourself too busy to make it out for a back adjustment. If there were something you could do yourself, you could get out of misery and rescue the day.

It must be acknowledged first that there are certain back aches that constitute medical emergencies, and must be imaged right away, either with x-ray, CT or MRI. The following types of backache must be investigated immediately, and if you have any of these, you need to get medical attention. For example, a backache that begins for no particular reason, without trauma or strain, or one that is accompanied by either incontinence or loss of sensation anywhere in the body. Also, there are some abdominal conditions that may result in backache and need to be investigated. These include pancreatitis or gallstones, which often radiate to various parts of the back. Also, if there are metastases from cancer elsewhere in the body there may be resulting back pain.

If, however, your backache is old and familiar, or from known injury or muscle strain, then you probably have a chronic or acute musculoskeletal condition that can be helped by some of the following at-home interventions.

How to use a hot shower

Once you figure out which muscles are most sore you can contract and relax them under the warm water of the shower. Contract for a slow count of 5, and relax for a slow count of five, while staying in the same position. Repeat this at least 3 times. You can also do this out of the shower, but the heat of the shower water will give you even more effective muscle relaxation, so that your aching muscles can more easily release the spasms that are causing you pain.

How to use acupressure

For lower back pain, reach down and press the point that is in the middle of the crease in back of your knee. Press on both knees, rubbing and massaging that point, until you work out any sharp discomfort you may find there, or for a minute at least.

Here are another couple of points for low back pain: On the back of your hand, look halfway between your knuckles and your wrist crease. Along this line, press the points in between the metacarpal bones (the long straight bones that run from your wrist to your knuckles).

For shoulder and neck pain, here is a different point. Make a loose fist and look at your little finger and the side of your hand. See the crease that points to your knuckle? At the end of that crease, near the knuckle, press and knead that point.

Having acupuncture done by your acupuncturist or naturopathic doctor is more effective, because only an L.Ac or ND can give you an individual diagnosis and a needling and herb treatment that is specific for the type of back pain and general health condition that you have. Your naturopathic physician can order any imaging or blood work that may be necessary to correctly diagnose your back pain. However, in a pinch, the acupressure points mentioned above can help relieve some of the misery.

Ergonomics

Ergonomically designed furniture is not one size fits all. If your desk chair or other chair where you do most of your sedentary work is not comfortable, then it is not appropriate for you. Bring in the cushions or pillows necessary to get your back into a position of ease. Keep adjusting as needed until the ache is minimized or gone. This also encourages the release of muscle spasm.

Exercise

No article on back pain is complete without acknowledging an unavoidable truth: the nerves surrounding the bones and muscles of your back are only going to be as tolerable to you as the muscles that support that whole architecture. And the only way to keep those muscles lifting what they are supposed to lift is by strengthening them with exercise. Unlike the exercise described above for releasing a muscle spasm, the exercises below are long-term strengthening exercises, which you should incorporate into your workout. (Of course, you have a workout. All healthy people do! If you don't, okay then, you can start today. No not tomorrow. Today.)

Depending on which type of low back pain you have, one of the following exercises will be more useful to you than the other. Try both for best effect:

Lie on your back, and lift both feet a few inches up from the floor. Hold for a count of ten, then lower feet to floor. Repeat 3 times. This will also exercise your abdominal muscles as well as some back muscles.

To do the other exercise, roll onto your abdomen. Bring your head and upper body up, resting on your elbows. Tighten your back muscles for a count of ten. Relax for a few seconds. Repeat 3 times.

Pregnant women and heart disease patients should consult their physician before beginning these or other exercises. If these or other exercises are contraindicated for you, then yoga may be a more appropriate alternative.

Did you know that we have in the U.S. ...

primary care physicians who not only have the training of conventional doctors (diagnostic testing, physical examination, prescription of pharmaceuticals, minor surgery etc.)

but have also been medically trained in botanical medicine, clinical nutrition, detoxification of heavy metals and other chemicals, homeopathy and other natural healing modalities???

Look no further: American Association of Naturopathic Physicians

Mentha × piperita L. (pro sp.) Robert H. Mohlenbrock @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database / USDA NRCS. 1995. Google Mentha piperita

You may have noticed by now that our favorite subjects for herb of the month are not only timely for the season, but tend to be those that are easy to grow and easy to find growing wild. Peppermint is ubiquitous throughout the United States, even in the desert Southwest, but especially prolific in the wetter parts of the country. However, it does not like to stay in one place too long. After it has taken its favorite nutrients out of the soil in one part of your garden for about two years, pull most of it up and transplant it to a different area, where it will again flourish.

Now that it's August, a cooling herb is most welcome. The fresh leaves of peppermint make a delicious iced tea, and is especially useful before a meal or after having eaten too much or too carelessly. It helps produce bile and stimulates the flow of bile, in order to help you digest the fats in your diet. It is a carminative, which means it effectively resolves gas in the gut. It is disinfectant, having an antiseptic property against overgrowth of pathogenic gut microbes. (It also can reduce numbers of good gut flora, so be sure to have probiotics once or twice a week also). Peppermint is also anti-spasmodic, so in cases of mild food poisoning or other minor abdominal upsets, peppermint can be quite effective. It has a gentle anesthetic effect on the stomach, and counteracts nausea and vomiting.

In fact, peppermint is so effective a medicine, that Rudolf Fritz Weiss, a German MD who practiced mainly herbal medicine throughout his life, cautioned that it not be used as a daily tea or a family tea, but rather only when needed.

The Heart Attack and Human History...

The first heart attack was reported in the medical literature only in 1912, a very recent year in all of human history. Consider that 1912 was about the time that sugar had diffused out of the Caribbean and become a regular component of the western diet. However, it was many millennia after such saturated fats as lard, butter, tallow, whale blubber and other animal fat, which is available all over the world, had been used on a regular daily basis. So the next time the "experts" bring up the saturated fat boogeyman, but say nothing of the health-damaging effects of sugar, just think about why no one, nobody at all to the best of recorded history, had a heart attack before 1912. For any remaining confusion about the direct connection between sugar and heart disease, as well as 145 other diseases, see Nancy Appleton's article: "146 reasons why sugar is ruining your health."