[.ca] Back Sense: A Revolutionary Approach to Halting the ... (ISBN 0767905814)

From Amazon.com:
About 50 million Americans suffer back pain every year, and chronic back pain disables 1 in 40 adults. Back Sense takes a different approach, contending that most chronic back pain is caused not by a damaged spine, but by stress, muscle tension, and inactivity. The aim is to help you reclaim your life and decrease your pain. The spine might be damaged initially, but it usually heals on its own, the authors assert. After that, stress causes muscle tightness, which results in continued pain. Traditional treatments don't work because they treat the spine, not the stress. The solution: understand your own symptoms and pain, learn to resume full activity, and work with your negative emotions to prevent them from derailing your recuperation. Part 1 of Back Sense helps you evaluate your own case and determine whether you have warning signs of a serious injury or disease (in which case you must get medical attention), understand the mind-body connection, and examine how stress may be causing your chronic pain. Part 2 teaches you how to bring full physical activity back into your life and manage your negative emotions. The authors--two of whom relieved chronic back pain with this very program--do not want you to baby your body or limit your life to protect your back. Rather, they contend that "being careful actually appears to be harmful." They explain that "as long as you are trying to get rid of pain, you stay preoccupied with it," creating more tension, and by avoiding "risky" movements, you lose muscle conditioning, making you vulnerable to additional injury. The book takes you through a process of gradually incorporating more exercise and tracking your reactions. The style is simple and friendly, and the book has many plan charts, logs, and other helpful tools. --Joan Price

This book gave me "my life" back again!:
After a fall, I suffered from chronic leg pain for a period of 20 months before finding this book. For 20 months I spent countless hours seeing doctors, physical therapists, chiropractors, message therapists, and other health practitioners, including acupuncture. I was desperate to get well. I had made progress, but I still felt it very difficult to walk or move normally--I was still in essence "crippled," and I feared my life might never been normal again. Then I found this remarkable book. In the period of time it took me to read the first few chapters, I knew what the authors were suggesting would work for me. I was able to immediately implement the principles. I got up from where I was reading and began to walk completely normally for the first time in over a year and a half. Soon thereafter, I found myself bounding up stairs and skipping with joy. Three months later, I'm still doing great. I'm so happy to be "Free At Last!" If you suffer from chronic back, neck, or leg pain, I urge you to read this book. It may not have the same effect on you, but you have nothing to lose but your pain!

I urge you to read this book:
I was a skeptic. After many years of spending thousands of dollars and countless hours with medical doctors and chiropractors, I could not believe that changing the way I thought about my pain could help me conquer the crippling spasms that had wracked my life for nearly 20 years. I had tried special exercises, surgical consults, CAT scans, and powerful medications- nothing could take away those episodes that left me in agony, tilting to one side as if severely wounded. These spasms attacked me repeatedly, leaving me incapacitated for weeks and months. What I discovered through the Back Sense approach, was that the cure lay in three areas: The first, and most important, is the awareness that I should not fear the pain as something that was about to cripple me as it had done in the past. Nor should I react by favoring my back or avoiding normal activities that I worried might have strained it in the past. Finally, root causes of the pain invariably were in how I managed my own feelings, especially stress, worry, and sometimes anger. I am now free of spasms, and no longer worry about my back. I urge you to read this book.

This is the answer to years of stress related problems:
I recently had to cut short a business trip due to extreme leg pain that lasted day and night. I went through the usual period of treatment by my GP with medications and rest before seeing a Surgeon. He recommended steroid shots and Chiropractric treatments. I found Back Sense and read it just after the shots. It confirmed what I had suspected for years. That my leg pain is directly related to stress. After reading and following the book I have had very good results. I recommend this book for anyone who has ever suffered from neck or back related pain.

This book makes Sense of the pain. Try it!:
I have had mild to moderate, with occasional severe, back pain for many years. Generally, the pain started when I was in graduate school. I thought that the long hours of sitting in class, reading and studying was damaging my "weak" back. After reading this book, I started to realize how much stress was a major factor in my back pain. Just before I read the book I was visiting my chiropractor every week and getting a massage a couple times a month. I loved the treatments, but I was getting increasingly concerned that I had a serious problem with my back that was going to disable me, sooner, rather than later. After finishing Backsense, I have stopped stressing about every twinge, tight muscle or pain in my back---and the pain has been much less and less frequent! I now enjoy my gym activities and play time with my children, knowing that my back is strong and healthy. Backsense gave me a better understanding and confidence in the strength and durability of my back. It was easy to read and understand. Anyone searching for relief from back pain should read this book.

Suffering is optional:
Unlike most of what we are told by friends, family, and doctors, our back pain is not what we think. Ronald Siegel, Psy.D. et al. offers a new approach to our pain through research and his own personal experience. The book describes the way in which we have been taught about back pain and I was surprised at how often I felt as though he were writing exactly what I had experienced. The book looks at research done on sufferers of back pain and by the end of it you have a whole new outlook on what has been causing your pain and, most importantly, a new way to work with that pain. If you suffer from back issues, I hope you buy this book. Be ready for a new way to approach your back pain but I believe, through my own experience, you will be pleasantly surprised. Good luck!