I was having a great morning in practice the other day when introduced to a man that presented with lower back pain.  “Just crack it here.” he said with his finger on part of the lower back.  “I just need a crack or two and that will take care of it.”

“How long have you been experiencing this type of lower back pain?” I asked.  He said it was here for the past few weeks but he gets lower back pain all of the time and has for most of his adult life.  Now retired he found that some of the problems were lessened since he didn’t have to use it much.  How I remembered that good looking shiny Chevy at the curb that we didn’t dare start up. 

Looking one way and managing to work is one thing but when we think we look and work in a healthy manner but on examination fail miserably that doesn’t cut it.  His most recent lab work showed elevated cholesterols and triglycerides and borderline diabetes.  High blood pressure, general malaise, headaches and fatigue were all part of his recent history.  Believe me when I say that these abnormal findings are very common in our early seniors to-day.  But what really sent me reeling was our new patients comment, “Doc your fees are too expensive can you cut me a deal and give me a little break on them?” 

I gave him the most recent comeback I had learned by putting on a just-sucked-a-lemon face and asked him, “Is cheap (pause) important to you?”  I didn’t say a thing after that.  Some time passed and he finally said, “No I guess it isn’t important to me.”  And we then began to examine and teach him about his health.  And yes I did “crack” his back but not until he was able to show holding strength with all of the muscles of the trunk and legs assuring me that he had a chance at maintaining the corrected position of the adjusted lower back vertebrae.  

A few adjustments later and his lower back pain had cleared up.  His lower back pain was gone completely as were his chronic headaches and upper back and neck problems.  At the root of his problem we found he was basically “failing to thrive” and had been for a very long arduous time.  He is a bachelor and although he thinks he’s doing all right with his diet and lifestyle, under physical examination we quickly concluded that the ongoing muscle weakness of his lower back and legs were directly related to his faulting diet and internal stress.  As a wealthy man too, he can easily afford my meager fees as well as the components of an ongoing healthy and reliable diet.  He can afford the food enzymes and intestinal formulas that will help him drop the inside ongoing inflammation especially of his stomach.  And he can afford to confront his own ignorance and then get onto the bandwagon of health and become like our friend Shannon.  He must wake up though, and take immediate action, for he cannot afford to not get his health back to full potential at this age.  

How many of us are negligent in providing ongoing sources of only excellent food as well as never abusing any of the inside tissues of the body?  Remember Shannon from “Part Two” of  “You and Your 'Lower' Back Pain?”  Remember how she said the single most important thing she had ever come across that helped her health the most was not eating those things common to us that caused her to “fail to thrive.”  That by her learning how to keep her inside tissues cool and functional, by keeping herself de-stressed through her diet she got the ongoing status of health she had been looking for most of her life.  And she had managed to get rid of her chronic back pain too.  Shannon has learned to thrive better.  Shannon succeeded by conquering the ability to decrease her internal stress by simply not ever eating stressors.  Stressors are the cause of stress.  By identifying and then eliminating commonly found internal stressors we can reduce stress within and maintain more health potential.  We get healthy when enabled by our well nourished better thriving bodies.  

Let’s think a little differently about “what we are.”  Remember baby’s acupuncture meridian for the primary muscle splinting chest strength of the “lung” which in turn initiated front, side and back neck strength which then enabled him to feed well?  We do a “one-two” step of first breathing then secondly eating.  Every day, from the womb to the tomb, we breathe and eat.  Remember the ancient lung meridian terminated in the thumbs.  Baby held on and grasped to “thrive” with those same thumbs.  The thumbs evolved to help us in our need to feed.  They evolved to support the first function we do, that of breathing.  Our obese tourist (see Part Three) never learned in infancy and childhood the lessons of how to thrive by making the right “grasping choices” with her thumbs.  To support her first function of chest strength and breathing she must continually ingest and process to nurturing status within her blood the essential proteins contained in her diet.  Proteins support the body’s lung structures.  This step requires excellent choices of protein rich food as well as vigorous enzyme and other digestive reactions throughout the intestines and organs within us.  Our babies thrive only when fed the best formula and that rule applies to us throughout life too.  When taught how to choose and grasp only the best foods for our thriving in the earliest stages of infancy we do better over time at keeping obesity and internal inflammation down.  And through the practice of making only the best food choices throughout our adult life we ensure better chances at thriving and much less auto-immune illness too.  Remember that to hit a “health home run” you must be sure to touch all of the bases to score.  To get rid of your lower back pain it is essential that you learn how to thrive.  And my friends what you grasp and bring in to “sniff and lick” before making that life giving or life taking decision of whether or not to eat what you are holding matters here.  

Right beside the thumb is the forefinger that we “dip and lick” with (don’t deny it, we all use this finger to taste with) and it is the termination of the acupuncture meridian of the large intestine.  Our hands evolved to help us “hold on” with the grasping thumb to thrive and to “bring in,” with the pointing finger for the large intestine, those foods that may enable us to become healthy in our blood.  As the “lung” muscles are those of the chest, the top of the shoulder and diaphragm, also unique to its own, the “large intestine” muscles are those of the hamstrings and lateral lower back and leg.  These lower back and leg muscles push us down the trail, carrying our intestine, then covering more area in which to “dip and lick” in with our pointing finger.  Remember we are looking to primarily make enough glucose for the brain, nerves and all body cells. And along with that sugar, glucose, we also must knit from our diet a blood formula fit for an adult human with which we can constantly thrive.  Many lower back conditions occur with large intestine stress.  

The third or middle finger of our hand is the acupuncture termination for our “circulation,” the blood.  Blood and its components are the “health” that Shannon was looking to have in a reliable and constant supply.  We thrive only when we always make available to each cell and part within us a great blood formula.  We make this blood of nurturing chemicals from a great diet processed by healthy unstressed organs.  The muscles of the biceps along with the gluteals or rump muscles represent the meridian of “circulation,” our health.  We have all seen the signing of health by our children as they flex their arm for us.  They are really saying “look how good I feel, I have eaten well and have the components for energy and health available within my blood and I feel feisty!”  We also acknowledge a strong set of gluteals as an attractive marker of health and virility.  But these muscles are only healthy when they can do “continual work” for us.  Continual health can only happen through constantly providing essential nutriments for all of the body cells including the muscles.    

Evolution shows itself helping us to avoid internal stress when we pick through the little bits and pieces of potential foods that we have held-on-to with our thumbs and forefinger and brought-in-close to our face to sniff and lick helping us decide its health or blood making potential.  Our hand contributes to the will to rid our diet of stressors by the actions of flicking away with the fourth finger, the termination of the acupuncture system of the adrenals.  We “push away” decried stressors with a backhand flick of the wrist or a sideways push with the fourth finger.  Our adrenal glands “cool” us, they are designed to help reduce temporary inflammation that may come with occasional ingestion of non-nourishing stressors.  Eighty percent of our immune cells dwell in and about the large intestine (the dip and lick system).  Immune cells are quick to release noxious pro-inflammatory chemistries should they encounter any form of substance that negatively shocks or stimulates them.  Besides bacteria and virii immune cells on the intestinal wall may also become aroused when touched by many forms of obnoxious proteins, carbohydrates and fats and will cause the cells to release more pro inflammatory chemicals.  Inflammation of the gut wall is the “heat” of Chinese acupuncture and it is the adrenal glands job to help reduce it.  Some of the sensitive intestinal wall cells when stressed cause hormones to be released that force these same bowel cell walls to weaken and drift apart allowing undigested foods and contaminants directly into our blood system.  Over time the faulting of the bowel wall causes transfer of immune cytokines out of the intestine to other organs and tissues.   Chronic inflammation that we discussed in Part One as being the root of the problem of our lower back pain as well as the background source of most heart disease, diabetes, cancer, neurological sclerosing and a host of other degenerative diseases is plaguing most of us.   

It is essential for health to consciously acknowledge evolutions first lines of defense against the noxious potentially poisonous but common food like bits and pieces we continually encounter.  We are what we are. To make our choices of what we will dare eat, we must think judiciously and apply the knowledge we have learned about the senses of our eyes, the nose and the mouth along with understanding the evolution of our hands in their helping us to discern the values and qualities of potential food.  It is essential on a continual basis to get to know ourselves and understand why it is so very important to vigilantly screen our foods before we eat them.  

And finally with our hands we “back-slap” away anything that may surprise us or anger us in its sudden presentation.  We back-slap away things with our small finger which is the termination of the “small intestine” meridian as well as the “heart” meridian.  Anger and inflammation first of the stomach, then of the small intestine causes the pancreas, liver and gallbladder to stress which in turn knocks out the nutriment source of fatty acids changing our nurturing blood and causing mental frustration.  When we go without a good diet and have only a poor source of nutriments in our blood our old brain receives signals from the needy hard working tissues that say “we’re undernourished, we‘re hungry.”  Yet the old brain stem may have just seen, sniffed, licked and swallowed what it thought was the food necessary for those same tissues to do their work with.  Internal frustration ensues for we don’t get fed well.   Our choices and screening must ensure the quality of our food was excellent, as too must be its preparation.  Our foods must be prepared without “spicy” harshness like pepper, curries, hot salsas, red sauces or chilies for these are common stressors we don’t have a chance to thrive on.  

Lower back pain has a complicated presentation and I know that this is a lot of information to discuss with the written word.  That is why it is a multiple parts presentation, for the subject of lower back pain is difficult for even the best of the “experts.”  I encourage you to continue with me into Part Five and have faith that this new knowledge will provide for you the foundation necessary to give yourselves first a glimpse and then a chance of mastering what is necessary to get rid of lower back pain and avoid failure to thrive.