Is There Anyone With Back or Neck Pain Who Needs a Hand ?

[dave1234]

Hello

Are there any people out there with back or neck pain who would like a helping hand ?
Three years ago, whilst being treated for a severely herniated disk, a chiropractor left me completely crippled for six months. He twisted my spine and trapped a large number of nerves in my lower back. He also dislocated my sacro-iliac joint and trapped a number of nerves between two pieces of bone. My right leg was completely useless. None of the doctors could figure out what was wrong with me and I was told that I would eventually become paralyzed. During this time, I lay in bed curled up in a ball, as this was the only position that gave me any comfort. I would lay like that for eighteen hours a day and had to crawl on all fours to get to the toilet. I refused to accept that I would not walk again, and had my wife buy me medical books to study anatomy. I came to the conclusion that my sacro-iliac joint had been dislocated, but none of the doctors would believe me. After four months the pain became so bad that I arranged with a surgeon to have my right leg amputated. He told me that I needed three doctors to sign off on this. One of the doctors put me in touch with an amazing guy called Al Meilus . Al agreed with my diagnosis and I devised a test using x-rays taken at a 30 degree angle to prove that the joint was out of place. Once it was put back in place, I had to learn how to walk again. The next problem was that due to the fact that I had lain curled up in a ball for a long time, every muscle in my body had contracted. Al uses a robotic device to stretch muscles and I am now about 90% fixed. I have spent the last 3 years studying back pain and have been able to help a lot of people by having them first understand how their backs work, then using a variety of self-use techniques to get them back to normal. I don’t charge anything for this. If people are interested, I have written a series of articles called “How Your Back Works” to better understand what goes on in the body. I work with a lot of American Veterans in the States and would like to help anyone with back pain , especially in Airborne Forces.

Please let me know if anyone is interested. I had a 14mm disk herniation, dislocated sacro-iliac joint and a degenerative disk disease and have conquered all of them without drugs or surgery.

Dave

Ex 15 – PARA [ 1975-1979 ]

[Scouse_liam]

hello mate. That is an amazing storey that!! In my lower back i have a little niggle on my left side! There is no pain at all, but its annoying. I think it just needs stretching, but dont know how to. I have tried all diffirent stretch positions. Do you have any ideas about that??

[dave1234]

Hello Scouse

There are a couple of things that could be causing it.

Take a look at these pictures:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl= ... 9%26sa%3DN

There is a very important muscle that runs from the top of your hip bone to the bottom area of your rib cage. It is called the Quadratus Lumborum [ or Ql for short ].I’ll be covering this in full in a later posting, but one of the things that it can do [ when it is too tight ] is to pull your hip upwards. This then causes your leg bone [ the femur ] to rotate backwards in its socket. Doctors and chiropractors then examine people and say “Oh, you have one leg shorter than the other”, and tell them to wear shoe inserts. This will make a bad situation 100% worse. What they should be doing is to correct what is causing the hip to be high in the first place. Some people are born with one leg truly shorter than the other, but they are very, very rare. Another muscle called the Iliacus can also make one hip appear higher than the other. I’ll cover that in another posting. That muscle is responsible for 90% of all back pain, and most doctors have never heard of it.

The first thing we need to do is to establish if the QL is causing your problems. Treat every bit of tightness as important as it can cause many problems further down the road if ignored. I learned this the hard way.

Here are a couple of good stretches. Let me know how they do. If they don’t work, we will then move onto another muscle.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU4caYDO ... re=related

http://www.floota.com/QuadratusLumborumStretch1.html

Before you stretch, take a warm shower first. Most stretching training programs have many things wrong with them. Less than one pound of force should be used. No grunting and red faces [ as I used to do ]. I’ll cover more on how muscles work later, but stretching too hard can cause micro-tears in the muscle and restrict range of motion later on. You should concentrate on breathing slowly and moving slowly. Close your eyes whilst you do it. All sounds a bit “new agey” but it works.

When I was doing my recruit cadre and pre-para in 1976 we never stretched even once. Not good. Just DMS and puttees on and off you go. No warm up or anything.

I’m going to put a posting on called ‘How a robot got me walking again”. Fox TV did a documentary on my case and I’ve included a clip from it. In the main program I talked about how ignoring an ankle injury caused me lots of problems later on.

Cheers

Dave

[Scouse_liam]

Dave thanks alot for your time and effort!! i have looked through the streches and will deffo give them a try. I wil let you know how i go on. Thanks alot mate

[dave1234]

Hi Scouse

You're welcome. I see you're off to the depot soon. I'll work with Al on your case to try and ensure you're 100% before you go down there.

Sometimes resolving back pain and tight muscles is a process of elimination. Al has never had a case of back pain that he has not been able to resolve. The only people whom he cannot help are those whose spinal bones have fused together.

Over the next few postings, I'm going to cover what REALLY causes back pain, then I'll explain all the methods I've found to get rid of it.

Altough I'm in the States, I work with a lot of people in the UK via a good website www.losethebackpain.com [ discussion forum ].

As a result I've built up a list of some good practioners and some good books and self help programs for people in the UK.

I'll let you know about them later.

I'll cover why life as an Airborne Soldier can take a big toll on the back and neck.

Please read through the other postings I've put on called "How the back works".

Dave