GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEAD, YOUR BACK PAIN IS NOT COMING FROM YOUR SPINE!

Posted on 05/09/2012 by mitchellyass

One of my patients tells me about a segment on the CBS Sunday Morning Show about a physician who has the answer to resolving back pain. He has come up with a method of injecting a liquid substance into the intervertebral disc which eventually thickens to plug up any holes or cracks in the disc and allows the disc to maintain its original size. The thought being that a herniated disc is the cause of pain and reversing the herniation will resolve the back pain. He notes that this is such a great idea because it will replace the fusion which has been shown to fail (noted in the segment) in resolving back pain and this process is much cheaper.

I have a simple question for this physician and every other medical practitioner who continues to propagate the notion that a herniated disc is the main cause of back pain, why do roughly 70% of the population have herniated discs and have no back pain? Why do innumerable people with horrific back pain have no herniated discs? The answer is that back pain in the vast majority of cases has nothing to do with the spine.

The American College of Physicians in 2010 recommended that MRIs no longer be used to identify the cause of lower back pain because there is little correlation between positive MRI findings such as herniated discs or stenosis and pain. They determined that in only 3% of patients coming to primary care for back pain their pain could be attributed to a herniated disc and in only 4% the pain could be attributed to stenosis. What percentage of people who have back pain and get an MRI with a positive finding of a herniated disc or stenosis have these findings considered as the diagnosis of their back pain; that would be somewhere around 100%. Understand the chasm between the findings of the medical body responsible for setting policy for physicians and the actual practical application of said physicians. The American College of Physicians actually determined that in 85% of cases lower back pain could not be attributed to a spinal abnormality or disease. I think 85% is bigger than 3%.

Then there is that little percentage of those who have surgery for back pain and the patient ends up with the same if not greater pain. The failure rate for back surgery is somewhere between 50 and 70%. This is not a percentage that should give you great confidence that the structure having surgery performed on it is the one creating the pain being experienced. I have been informed that physicians now tell patients that there is no guarantee that the surgery will change the pain or maybe it will make it better or maybe it will make it worse.

Then there is the theoretical basis for this statement that herniated discs are the primary cause of back. I want any physician who promotes this thought to explain to me how they know that the disc is the tissue emitting the pain signal. The evidence is overwhelming that a positive MRI finding means nothing. So taking away the MRI, I want one clinical indication that the tissue emitting the back pain signal is the intervertebral disc. THERE IS NO CLINICAL INDICATION OF THIS.

What have I proved is the cause of back pain in 90 to 95% of the patients I have treated over 19 years? Most back pain is the result of a muscle weakness or imbalance. The tissue emitting the pain at the back is muscle. It can be proven simply by utilizing palpation. Touch the location where you are having back pain. If the spot you press on increases the level of pain you are experiencing, then the tissue you pressed on is the tissue emitting the pain signal. I can assure you that almost every body who does this will find that they are pressing on a lower back muscle. Even for the rare group that is pressing on the region of the spine, you are most likely pressing on the attachment of the hip flexors to the lumbar spine. Another clinical indicator; look at functional limitations. For a large percentage of my patients, they note that their back pain increases if they sit for a while and then try to stand up. If this is you, then you just confirmed that the cause of your pain is muscular. When you sit, your hip flexors can shorten severely if they are not balanced by the glute (butt) muscles. When you try to stand up, they do not want to lengthen and they pull on the lumbar spine where they attach. This creates pain at this region and also makes it difficult to stand erect again. This has nothing to do with your spine.

I don’t care how many times medical practitioners try to sell people on the idea that the cause of back pain in most cases is the herniated disc. They are trying to follow the premise that if you say a lie enough times it will become the truth. Don’t get caught in this lie. Everyday, I prove to patients that the cause of their back and neck pain is muscle weakness or imbalance and everyday they ask me why nobody else knows this to be the truth. The answer is I was given the gift of logical thought. I never accept anything because it is spoken or written no matter how people profess it. It is either logical or it is crap. My friends, you are looking at a whole lot of crap. Follow logic to resolve your pain, not a cult-like prophesy that has been proven to be false.

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Stenosis as a general rule does not cause Pain!

Posted on 04/11/2012 by mitchellyass

How many people are going to be misdiagnosed with stenosis as the cause of their neck or back pain. Stenosis simply means shrinkage and relates to the decreased size of the opening that a nerve root can pass through. This type of degenerative process takes years to occur. As a general rule, the change in the size of the opening does not play a role in nerve function. It is only if the compression… is so severe that it diminishes nerve impulses passing through the opening. This would cause a severe symptom like extreme atrophy of a muscle.

Pain as a general rule is not caused by stenosis. As a general rule pain is caused by a muscle strain or spasm. The pain is being emitted from the pain receptors found in the connective tissue surrounding every muscle cell. The only reason the stenosis is identified is because an MRI is taken in the area where the pain is being experienced and the stenosis is seen and falsely identified by medical practitioner as the cause of the pain. There is no attempt to determine which tissue is emitting the pain signal; simply identifying stenosis and calling it the cause of pain.

A way to look at this false method of diagnosing pain is to understand this metaphor. Every morning i get up just around sunrise. I turn my car on just as the sun rise. Therefore a case can be made that I make the sun rise by turing on my car. I turn the car on and the sun rises. Now nobody would believe that turning the car on makes the sun rise but the same assumption is being made when an MRI finding such as stenosis is found in the area of pain. The sad reality is that studies have shown that almost the same number of people with no pain in almost the same percentages as those with pain can be found to have stenosis, arthritis and other degernerative conditions of the spine.

Please don’t be fooled by any medical practitioner trying to sell you on a treatment like surgery or drugs simply bagsed on an MRI finding. Trust me; turning on your car will not cause the sun to rise.

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The Healthcare Crisis in a Nutshell.

Posted on 03/19/2012 by mitchellyass

The issue most effecting the economy is the meteoric rise in healthcare costs. It is forcing insurance companies including Medicare to raise premiums and cut services. The profound question that is yet to be asked is what is fueling this rise in unprecedented costs. The answer is simply chronic pain. 116 million adult Americans suffer from chronic pain. This is more people than are suffering from cancer, heart disease and diabetes combined. It costs the country 650 billion dollars a year. To put this into perspective, understand this. The US economy is 14 trillion dollars. Healthcare represents 16% of the economy or 2.2 trillion dollars. Since chronic pain costs 650 billion dollars this means that more than 1 out of every 4 dollars being spent in healthcare is going toward the treatment of chronic pain. Chronic pain is the 800 lb gorilla in the room.

Now that you can see that the key issue affecting the healthcare industry is chronic pain, let’s look at how the cause of chronic pain is diagnosed and treated. Is it possible that a substantial of these tests and treatments are invalid meaning that they will never lead to the resolution of the cause of pain. And if they are invalid, should these costs be paid at all. The primary mechanism for diagnosing the cause of chronic pain is the MRI. The problem with this scenario is that the MRI has been proven to be invalid as a method of diagnosing the cause of pain. The American College of Physicians has determined that in 85% of cases of lower back pain the cause of the pain could not be attributed to a spinal abnormality like a herniated disc or stenosis. In the real world however, almost every patient who is found to have a herniated disc or stenosis is treated for that as the cause of their pain. The ACP estimated that only 3 to 4% of patients suffering from lower back pain have the pain due to a herniated disc or stenosis. That means that roughly 96 to 97% of those suffering from lower back pain who are diagnosed with the cause of the pain as coming from a herniated disc or stenosis has been misdiagnosed.

Then there are the studies showing a severe failure rate for surgeries performed on structural abnormalities such as arthritis, mensical tears and spinal abnormalities. If these causes were diagnosed correctly, why do surgeries on these stuctures achieve no better success than a placebo affect.

The reality is that in the majority of cases of people suffering from chronic pain they are suffering from chronic pain because they have been misdiagnosed. I would guess that roughly 90% of all patients have been diagnosed incorrectly. This means that roughly 90% of all costs are invalid. This means this money that was paid for by insurance companies was spent with no chance of pain being resolved.

Just remember, it doesn’t matter if you are accumulating claims or somebody else is in your insurance plan, all the claims are paid for by all the premiums collected from all the insured. So if you are not in pain but others in your plan are spending money on tests and treatments that are invalid and won’t resolve their pain, YOU ARE PAYING FOR IT! YOU ALONE CAN STOP HEALTHCARE PREMIUMS FROM RISING. END OF USE OF DIAGNOSTIC TESTS AS THE METHOD FOR ESTABLISHING THE CAUSE OF CHRONIC PAIN.

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