Back Pain Treatment
Article by Sensei Adam Rostocki
Back pain treatment is a huge and profitable industry within the healthcare system. Back pain is an epidemic condition which affects the lives of countless souls. Treatment for chronic back pain demonstrates some of the worst curative results in modern medicine and is also perhaps the most unenlightened and misguided of all healthcare specialties.
Back pain is traditionally treated by orthopedists and chiropractors, although many other care providers have gotten in on the action, as well. Rheumatologists, neurologists, orthopedic surgeons, neurosurgeons, massage therapists, physical therapists, reiki practitioners, Bowen therapists, Alexander therapy practitioners, herbalists, doctors of traditional Chinese medicine, osteopaths, physiatrists, acupuncturists, pain specialists, fitness trainers, psychologists, psychiatrists, nutritionists, alternative medicine providers, yoga instructors and orthotic makers are among many of the specialists who have profited greatly from the dorsopathic suffering of others.
There is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to help a person cure their pain and there is also nothing wrong with profiting from your good work. However, the back pain industry is paid far too well for a healthcare specialty which seems to rarely score a bullseye when it comes to accurate diagnosis and successful treatment. In fact, most care providers are lucky to even hit the target at all, since many therapy options are ill conceived, poorly executed and not even indicated for the diagnosis, given of course that the diagnosis is correct to begin with?
Statistics for back pain treatment are alarming. Chronic symptoms are reported in back pain patients more than any other type of health complaint. Up to 85% of adults will have moderate to severe back pain at some point in their lives. Back pain is the second most common reason for a person to visit a doctor or emergency room. Back pain is also the primary excuse given for worker absenteeism. Back pain sufferers, whose symptoms do not resolve within 6 months of treatment, have a better chance of agonizing for the rest of their lives, than they have of ever finding a permanent cure. These stats are simply unacceptable, considering the vast amount of care providers and resources available to back pain patients. So what is wrong with the system and more importantly, how can it be fixed?
Back pain is typically viewed as being sourced from a defect, deficiency or injury to the spine or one of its supportive tissues. This is typically called structural or mechanical pain, meaning there is a physical reason for the symptoms relating to an anatomical condition. The Cartesian philosophy embraced by most modern medical providers is the single more damaging influence on back pain treatment statistics. It has been well established by an ever growing number of respected medical research projects, clinical studies and therapy programs, that back pain, or any chronic pain, is far more often the direct result of the complex interactions between the emotional mind and the body. Being that most back pain care givers do not address this basic fact explains why so many treatment options fail miserably. After all, these treatments are trying to cure a physical structural condition, while all along, the pain is either completely psychogenic or psychosomatically worsened or perpetuated.
In order to fix this great injustice and end the seemingly endless suffering of back pain patients the world over, a paradigm shift in care must occur. Doctors must stop blaming purely coincidental and generally asymptomatic structural concerns and start acknowledging the common link between ongoing pain and the emotional mind. In essence, doctors must stop treating the human body like it was some sort of complicated machine and start treating human beings for what they truly are?People who live with the constant and ever-present interactions between body and mind, creating all conditions of health and disease.
About the Author
Sensei Adam Rostocki suffered from chronic back pain for 18 years and has devoted his life to helping patients who can not cure their pain. Sensei Adam Rostocki is the author of “Cure Back Pain Forever” as well as the interactive website, Cure-Back-Pain.Org, part of the Cure Back Pain Network of websites. The site contains a large and informative section detailing back pain treatments.