At a cocktail party the other evening I had a conversation with an apparently healthy, aesthetic and mature-in-years man who’s job it was to run a local dive experience.  This is a daily tourist-oriented adventure out onto the reefs here around our island.  As the chat got going it became apparent that his experiences with people was extensive and he quickly brought up the subject of obesity in Americans. 

He especially bemoaned the large size and poor state of the health of so many of his country’s “tourists.”  Apparently their jumbo size demanded from him and his staff extra work and considerations to get them outfitted and in and out of the boats when on the reef.  He then proceeded to tell the story of one woman recently getting her hugely obese knee caught between the rungs of the boat ladder and then complained that there should be a lift available, or at least a ramp off of the stern, to allow her to enjoy the use of the facilities like anyone else.  And also, she complained that she needed assistance because she has “chronic lower back pain!”  

From my chat with him it made me think of how we all get back pain at some time or another and that conventional wisdom seems to look at most lower back pain as simply local and mechanical in nature.  Many think that obese people get back pain from the extra weight burden on their muscles and bones. 

Nothing could be more removed from the truth.  Lower back pain apparently begins rather early in life as a “back condition” not a “back problem.”  We create the problem in the lower back after we mechanically overload an unhealthy or weakened area, then the symptoms and often too the problem of sprain and damage to tissue locally in the lower back area occurs.  Now we have a “back problem.” 

It is at this point, when we have damaged the local lower back parts, that it becomes a two, three or multi-tiered problem of such complexity that no “specialist” is quite well rounded in his education and thinking to judiciously tease apart the convolutions of the original cause of the situation.  So with an eye of concern the physician will zoom in on his area of “expertise” and try to solve the problem of your lower back pain.  Usually the initial focus will be on the pain itself and the then again usual drugs and adjunctive “therapies” will be prescribed in an attempt to still our concern and give a little time for the acute stage of the local injury to quiet down.  And often it soon will quiet down and that will be enough to support many physician’s erroneous assumption that he has indeed intervened and created the grounds for achieving the healing.   

Backs don’t heal like that, and left unattended they always have residual compromise at the site of injury.  And what about the big idea of health?  What about thinking and correcting the “cause” of the original back failure, not the pain?  For something to be healthy all of the parts have to “work” all of the time.  Obviously when we mechanically loaded the lower back on attempting to do some work it couldn’t do it, then it’s parts strained.  If we were in a very compromised condition at the time and the lower back muscles weren’t able to pull and hold the boney structures in synchrony, then when we loaded this unhealthy back to the point of sprain, the parts broke and created local complications. These new injuries which have created back paining parts are the result of and the aftermath of the original poorly working back condition.   

I manually muscle test bodies including their lower backs every day and have for nearly forty years.  While lying on your back we test the left and then the right side of the lower trunk muscles, we test flexors and extensors in many of their needed positions.  We test front sides and back sides as well as the oblique muscles.  Comparison of the function of the two sides should show both to be strong and equal in a healthy body.  Well my friends, all of us fail to pass manual muscle tests which reveal strengths and weaknesses with the lower back muscular components even when asymptomatic.  All of us fail to be perfectly functioning in our back muscles even if we don’t have any back pain yet.  None of us are truly “healthy.”  The breaking of our lower back part is always the result of a preceding original unhealthy nerve and muscle response by our potentially perfect body.  The breaking and injury of our lower back part is not originally the source of the problem but is the reflection of the real causative problem which is usually dwelling quite far away in its anatomical position within our body.  

It’s time to get our thinking straight about what our bodies are and how they got here. Think like this with me now for this is how things seem to occur within us that preclude and then necessitate the faulting of the holding structures of the lower back.  The early faulting of our muscles lead to straining, spraining, pain and disabilities.  I continually find these “goings on” in our failing-to-thrive bodies I examine and all the faults must be corrected and eliminated in a very precise order to quickly take the stress off of the injured lower back structures allowing them to recover best.   But before we become experts and share the new findings of the cause of our muscles failure to do work and subsequently our getting lower back pain, first let me tell you a much needed informative little story.  

Remember the Romans?  History records that the might of the Roman armies was such that upon conquering a country they took the citizens and lined them up along the land where they wished to build their great Roman roads.  And indeed they successfully did build the great roads that still stand and are well used to-day.   During that time of forced conditions in order to get the road built the conquered citizens stood side by side and were made to carry and pass from one to another the stones, bricks and mortars that were essential in building the road.  If one of the citizens refused to pass the materials construction would falter.  In order to continually keep the road open and the work under way any citizen that chose to interfere by not contributing was severely beaten.  If that same or any other citizen attempted to quit and run for his freedom he was beaten to death as an example to the others.  While building the main road for the swift passage of soldiers and goods the Romans further forged local roads into the towns and villages nearby to get to the granaries and farms to take the food and other ongoing necessities to keep the army constantly supplied.   

It was very important to the Romans that everyone contributed in the successful building of the road on time.  It was especially important to be timely to those in charge of its construction, for they in turn would have to answer to Caesar if they failed.  Now think like this with me, those Roman roads and their procedures of movement and design are modeled after your human body and its needs to function too.  Indeed we and our body also have a Caesar to answer to and that is gravity.   

How does it work?  Straight through the middle of our body is our Roman road that we name the central nervous system (CNS), and it runs from the brain stem (see Part two of You and Your Lower Back Pain) down the entire length of the spine.  We also have spur roads that help us reach the granaries of our Garden of Eden and those are the nerves stretching from the spine and brain stem to the hands and the feet. So important is our main soft nerve road, the CNS and its essential continual movement of signals through it that it is lined with citizens that house and protect it, their job is to make sure it is unmolested.  We call these citizens “spinal vertebrae” and if any one of them crowds or embarrasses the CNS roadway which is contained within their centers, then the nerve signals at that level onward stop what they were doing and change their current carrying conditions.  Resistance, like from subluxation, anywhere along the course of the pathway of any nerve’s signal is intolerable by us.  When nerves are resisted we give in and adapt in stress.  Without the completeness of the potential communication along the CNS road which hard wires the brain to and from every part of us, then our might diminishes.  The higher up on the neck spine and closer to the skull the boney misalignment or subluxation occurs the more it embarrasses the brain stem within.  The more subluxated and compromised the upper regions of the neck become the greater the loss of strength of the muscles distally around the trunk and lower back, including the legs.  

Our CNS road is not rigid like that of the Romans and the vertebrae have to be able to continually freely move in a segmental, snake like manner while at the same time protecting but not encroaching upon their fragile CNS content.  And to still push the efficiency of the brain and nervous systems further we also choose to work our muscles to adopt an ongoing automatic economical energy reducing upright posture with which to function, thereby directly challenging gravity, our Caesar.  

Since we are what we are and evolved to be a constant coordinated whole being of many parts we do well if left alone, if undisturbed.  For short bursts of time while here on earth provided we have learned our lessons of thriving well during our infancy and youth, then we have a chance for a moment or two among the stars.  Vigor, vitality and virility ensue for those that thrive and we get to reproduce our offspring.  We get to live again through our children.  To ensure the continuation of the legacy through having children all we have to do is provide health from nutritional foods only and ensure a non-stressed internal environment that then nurtures us by being able to keep our body in condition to thrive.  

Taking for granted that we are within the perfect form and functioning body isn’t truly “what we are” for most of us.  Our obese woman’s body that got her knee stuck in the ladder is an example of run away human negligence.  Her Roman road must be encroached upon and in ill repair, the resurrection of her potential to regain health, that of “all of the parts working all of the time” is unrealistic at best.  Her fat cells constantly secrete inflammatory cytokines which not only swell joints but also interfere with nerves and reduce brain functions.  Without guidance and support she likely doesn’t have the capacity to clearly think her way out of illness.  Her lower back pain is an example of continual inability to “do work” with her parts, especially those of the large trunk muscles.  The ongoing challenges of attempting movement and upright posture stress and subluxate the human frame more easily in one that cannot get to a thriving condition.  Thriving is a condition of both an excellent ongoing supply of nutriments and not ever abusing the tissues throughout the internal body.