Steve Lockhart

Chronic Back Pain – A Typical Scenario

The brain orchestrates, the nerve's fire and the muscles perform. The skeletal structure simply supports that performance and therefore any treatment to correct a back problem, regardless of how much the spine, discs and nerves are involved, should start with correcting the imbalances and functional problems in the muscles.

The current medical model does not recognise this and so the sufferer does not get the fast, long lasting fix for their pain that they should, in fact they are often told this is not possible, which in most cases is irresponsible and inaccurate.

Allow me to give you what I think is a typical example of the inadequacy of treatment that has occurred here in Australia. I treated a patient, a 13 year old girl, who when six years old fell down some stairs and hurt her back. After the fall a doctor checked her out and determined she had no breaks or structural damage, only muscle pain, which eventually went away so “she was fine”. As a result her parents were led to believe that she needed no further treatment. Now at 13 yrs, after the injured muscles were left untreated in her body for seven growing years, there are major imbalances.

The muscles in her shoulder and hip on the right side were so bound up they were pulling the whole architecture of her body out of alignment. When she came to me her right leg looked 4cm or nearly 2 inches shorter than her left, not because the bone was shorter but because the muscles, traumatised by her fall, were still contracted and had tilted her pelvis by that much.

Can you imagine that? If you were to put a shoe on your left foot only and try and walk or run around you will get an idea of how she felt all the time.

In the early stages of treatment when I temporarily put a heel lift in her shoe she was amazed at how much better she felt, instantly.

As a result of her not being treated properly after her fall, she developed a scoliosis or curve in her spine. Although she wasn't in any great pain when she saw me, she had started getting very tight in her lower back and neck. She was also suffering from constant tiredness and muscle fatigue even after a small amount of exercise. She could have been a potential world champion athlete but would never get the chance to find out.

Now another four years on as I am doing this rewrite she has her first child. I wonder if that would have happened had she still been left twisted up and in pain. I know of plenty of women who mysteriously cannot or are not game to fall pregnant after suffering from chronic back problems for years.

My experience has shown that if an injury of this kind is left untreated, depending on emotional levels, diet and lifestyle in the years ahead, the person would be likely to develop any number of symptoms; including chronic tiredness, chronic back pain, headaches, digestive or stomach problems, even problems with other joints in the body such as in the hips, knees, shoulders or neck.

In time, she could well join a long list of people who are tired and depressed most of the time, find it hard to cope with a full time job and are sick of being a financial burden to their family and the rest of the nation. Instead of feeling great and enjoying life. These people spend too much of their time visiting doctors and other therapists searching for a solution to their problems and putting up with people thinking they are hypochondriacs or malingerers.

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