So last time I posted I talked about my back injury. I have to say that the more I learn about the body, the more empowered I feel regarding my own health. I have always been the typical guy in the regard that I figure if I ignore health problems, they'll go away. I was always mystified by the complexity of health, and figured that it was really out of my hands. While it is true that there are aspects of our health I feel are out of our control, there is a surprising amount we do have influence over. Let's take my back problem, as an example. I could simply mourn over my ailment, and hope for as little pain as possible, and avoid all the activities I love that I fear would make it worse. Or I could research ways to minimize the pain and damage that occur. There are a ton of things that I can do to have a healthier back. A lot of them are conventiona wisdom, but not things you would necessarilly relate to back pain.

Drink more water.

Sure, we all know to get at least 8 glasses of water a day, but do we really know why? Doctor's orders, right? Well, besides being the vehicle for which all nutrients get to all cells in your body, and being an integral aspect of waste management, getting toxins out of the body, it's also a shock absorber. It plays a crucial role in cushioning in our spine. Our intervertebral discs have a substance in them that makes them highly attractive to water, kind of like those dessicant pouches that come in new clothing to keep them dry, you know the ones that say DO NOT EAT all over them. This substance in the discs attract the water into them and hold it there, making the discs thicker and better shock absorbers. throughout the day the pressure on our discs squeezes the water out, and we actually get shorter due to this throughout the day. when we lay down and take the load off our discs, they imbibe the water back in, so we start each day with refreshed discs. Well if we're not getting enough water in our diet, this water that gets squeezed out might not be available to get attracted back into the discs. This could set us up for injury. Just another reason to get plenty of water.

Making sure your body's core muscles are strong is also vitally important. these muscles support the back, and safely move the spine through it's normal ranges of motion in all of our activities. But we have to careful what exercises we do. Before going to Palmer, I did all kinds of exercises that are horrible for the back, while thinking I was helping it. Sit-ups, for example.When we do a sit-up, we are putting tons of stress into our spine, and our discs, that our bodies were never designed to handle. It's one of the worst exercises you could ever do! Another I always did was the roman chair, while holding a 45 pound plate to my chest, throwing rotation at the lumbar spine in for good messure. I was asking for a blown disc! There's plenty of exercises that are safe for your back that are just as good at strengthening your core, but for some reason they're not the ones taught in health clubs...

Proper posture is paramount as well. You're Mom always said not to slouch. You always figured it was because it looked bad. Well it's also bad for your back. It forces the normal curve out of your low back, putting a lot more stress on the discs to carry the load. It accentuates the mid back curve, which subsequently makes it harder to breath deeply. Less oxygen for your tissues... It also causes your head to shift forward,placing tons of strain on your delicate neck spine and muscles. You can end up with headaches from this as well. This posture also tightens some muscles while weakening others. You end up with weak abdominal, low back, and butt muscles, and tight psoas muscles, which further comprimises your posture. Your chest muscles and neck muscles get tight, while your important upper back muscles get weak. You'll end up hunchbacked and shuffling by age 60!

I could go on and on and on...

The point I guess is...

We can empower ourselves to be healthier people. We can learn ways to make the most of the bodies we've been given. choosing a career in healthcare is an awesome decision. We are learning how to take care of ourselves, and our patients. We will be advocates for the health of the people we care for. this is profoundly important.

And back to my health problem, low back pain.

If, as a doctor, through my treatments, therapies, and advice, I accomplish nothing more than to relieve my patients' pain, I will consider myself a great success. Having lived with pain, and understanding how deeply it impacts a person's well-being and view of life, I would never dream of discounting the importance of this. I once heard a chiropractor, whom I greatly admire and respect, defensively proclaim "We're not pain doctors!" feeling, no doubt, that the larger impact that what we do has on the nervous system and subsequently general health, is much more important. It might be more important, but try telling that to someone dealing with pain. All they care about is the pain, and every thought revolves around finding a way out of it. If it's bad enough people will commit suicide over it. It may even persuade a man to go to the doctor! Pain is a serious thing, and a patient's pain should never be dismissed. I would gladly be a "pain doctor". Pain is what led me to Palmer, because chiropractic is the only treatment that addressed the cause of my pain, and resolved it. One chiropractic adjustment effectively ended pain that several days popping countless Vicadin , Ibuprofen, aspirin, (and a bottle of wine) didn't even put a dent in. If medicinal marijuana were available I would have tried that too! Acupuncture, hypnosis, sensory deprivation tank, sign me up! I would have tried anything to get out of that pain. But it was a Chiropractor who confidently delivered a precise and coordinated manual thrust into my low back and Voila! Eureka! effective? Heck yeah. Life-changing, in fact. Now, as an added benefit, chiropractic may also be keeping my blood pressure in check, and preventing some cancer from taking hold in my body, thanks to an efficiently functioning nervous system, but if it does I'll never know, right? What I do know is that with a good chiropactic adjustment, the horrible pain I was in goes away, and I'm able to enjoy my life rather than avoid my life. Isn't this noble enough? If, as a chiropractor, I could be known for anything in the community, it would be that I can help you get out of pain. In helping people with their pain, I'll be helping them with their health. I might prevent cancer, lower blood pressure, or restore vision to a blind man. Or I might not. In most cases, I feel there's no way of really knowing all the positive effects I might have on someone's health, and I don't feel the need to take credit for it, and I certainly won't advertise that I can perform these miracles. But if that person say's to me "I feel better doc, thanks!" I will consider that the greatest success, and worth all the time and effort I'm putting into this education. I can't wait to hear those words. My brother, on a Palmer mission trip to Vietnam, had an elderly lady, whom he just treated, say to him "You have God in your hands." He'll never forget that awesome compliment. I pray I hear similar praise someday from my patients!

Well its been a while I know. This tri has been a stressful one for me lately. I think it has more to do with everything I'm juggling in my life than the actual classes. Late last year I had a series of MRI's performed on my low back, as I have had recurring episodes of severe, disabling pain. They've been happening since 2003, but lately it's gotten a lot worse, well, a lot more frequent, and with less obvious causes. So I had my younger brother, who is a Palmer grad practicing in my home town of Peoria, IL, do a physical exam on me and he agreed that I needed special imaging. I learned in my NMS class that the symptoms I had suggested a space occuping lesion, or SOL, aggravating and sometimes compressing one or more nerve roots affecting my left leg. What especially concerned me was that I have a positive Valsalva, where if you cough, sneeZe, or bear down, it causes an increase in the symptoms. Well I sneezed one day while pumping gas, and my legs literally gave out from under me. This is a "red flag" deserving of MRI, because it suggests compression of the cord itself, when the symptoms are bilateral, as they were. Cord compression in the lumbar region is known as Cauda Equina Syndrome. This is a serious neurological condition that can result in loss of bowel and bladder function, which can be life threatening. Another possible result is loss of motor function to the legs, obviously something that I don't want to happen! Well the MRI confirmed our fears. I actually have four herniated discs, at L1, L2, L3, and L4. The first three are posterolateral protrusions that are encroaching into the intervertebral foramen, or IVF, lateral to the nerve root. This is actually the type of herniated disc that responds best to Chiropractic care, sometimes even immediately. This corresponds to my previous chiropractic care results, where sometimes I would come in to the Doctor in a wheelchair, and able to walk out after the appointment. I love it when that happens, but it doesn't always, unfortunately. Well the L4 disc has herniated straight posterior, meaning it is actually hitting the spinal cord. In that region the cord has already broken up into individual nerve roots, and is no longer a single cord. In dissection it looks alot like a horse's tail, hence Cauda Equina, latin for "horse's tail". With posterior protrusions care is a lot less successful, and in my case this seems to hold true. At this point, it seems that when these discs are fired up, all of my back muscles in that region, called paraspinal muscles in general, are spasming. It takes a lot of therapy to relieve the spasming, like triggerpoint therapy or an aspect of Sacral Occipital Technique, or S.O.T., called blocking, where you're placed laying with your pelvis on wedges, placed depending on the symptoms, to release the spasms. Supposedly it also restores Cerebrospinal fluid flow from the Occiput down to the Sacrum, but this is a little understood theory with far-reaching claims but little scientific data to support it. Not saying it's not true, more that science hasn't caught up with the claim. We're really just scratching the surface of our understanding of this amazing structure, the human body. I love it! Anyway back to my disc problem. Nothing can be done to reverse the damage to these discs, especially L4. So my care at this point is therapeutic at best. We've determined that a surgery, called a discectomy, will be at some point necessary. I'm debating when would be best to do this. Do I elect to do it, before absolutely needed? Or do I wait to see how long I can go before that's the case? At this point I'm leaning towards the latter, as I hate the idea of going into surgery right now in my life. But if the episodes, which render me pretty much paralyzed for up to two weeks, continue to be more and more frequent, it will really strain my ability to get through the program here at Palmer. So I guess I'm playing it by ear at this point. Well gotta go for now, time for P.T. class!