Participants: Nick Evenson (Host), Dr. James Marcum
Series Code: UP
Program Code: UP000081A
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00:01 The following program presents principles
00:02 designed to promote good health 00:04 and is not intended to take the place of personalized 00:06 professional care. 00:08 The opinions and ideas 00:09 expressed are those of the speaker. 00:10 Viewers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions 00:13 about the information presented. 00:16 Have you ever lifted something in the wrong way, 00:19 or may be overworked your body 00:20 and woke up next morning unable to sit up? 00:23 Back pain could be crippling. 00:25 But there are some treatments that can help. 00:26 Stay with us to learn more. 00:29 I'm Dr. James Marcum. 00:31 Are you interested in discovering 00:33 the reason why? 00:34 You want solutions to your healthcare problem. 00:37 Are you tired of taking medications? 00:40 Well, you're about to be given the Ultimate Prescription. 00:46 It was around 9:00 pm on a Friday evening 00:48 when I realized that I made a mistake. 00:51 My back had been aching all week, 00:53 and I hadn't done anything about it. 00:55 And by Friday evening I realized, 00:57 you know, this is the problem 00:58 that's not going away on its own. 01:00 Dr. Marcum, have you ever had 01:01 something like that happen to you? 01:03 Yeah, I've had back pains, and you know, 01:05 we're in a series talking about pain 01:08 on different parts of the body. 01:10 And on today's program 01:11 we're gonna talk about back pain. 01:13 Yeah. 01:14 And it's one of the most common causes of pain. 01:18 And it's something that affects almost every one 01:20 in the course of the lifetime. 01:22 And we're gonna talk about that, what causes it, 01:24 some simple things that we can do. 01:26 So what did you do with your back pain, Nick? 01:28 Well, you know, I had an accident 01:31 where I fell on my hip 01:32 and I don't know if that caused it or not, 01:34 but there is just a lot of pain in my lower back. 01:37 And you know, I'm young, I thought it will be fine, 01:39 it will go away on its own. 01:41 But then I waited till the weekend 01:42 whenever everyone closed and the help wasn't available. 01:46 And then I finally decided, you know, 01:48 I need to see someone. 01:49 But fortunately a good friend of mine is a physiotherapist. 01:50 There you go. 01:52 And so I went and saw him at his convenience, 01:54 and he was able to help fix my problem. 01:57 Well, that's a good thing. 01:58 And, you know, we're gonna talk about 02:00 back pain, the basics, 02:01 and unfortunately a lot of people 02:03 suffer from back pain, 02:04 and it's not treated correctly 02:06 and it becomes a chronic problem. 02:09 And then it grows and it gets bigger and bigger 02:11 and sometimes it leads to operations. 02:14 Lot of people don't realize that 02:15 operations aren't successful every time on the back. 02:18 In fact I read a statistic 02:19 that said operations are only effective 02:21 50 percent of the time. 02:23 Yeah, wow. 02:24 Now if we remember, you know, what's in our back is, 02:27 you know, that we have a spinal cord 02:29 that go through our back 02:30 and that's how we sense the world through that cord. 02:33 And that cord has spaces where the nerves come out of it 02:36 and goes throughout the body. 02:38 So there is a lot of nerves going on. 02:40 We talked earlier about pain in nerves 02:42 and pain from damage to nerves. 02:43 Yeah. 02:45 And unfortunately 02:46 if you think about it this way is that's 02:48 where a lot of nerve activities happening in our back. 02:51 So if we don't treat our back correctly, 02:53 it causes trauma to these nerves. 02:56 Now just think about it for a second, 02:58 one of the biggest traumas that we have on our back, 03:01 okay, is sitting. 03:03 Yeah, right. 03:05 And we weren't really made to sit 03:06 for prolong periods of time. 03:08 And how many people sit all day long, 03:10 they work at computer desks, and they don't move around. 03:13 And when you don't move around, guess what? 03:15 It can put the back in bad positions, 03:18 it can put muscles that squish on nerves 03:20 and it does that chronically, it can cause damage. 03:23 Right, right, yeah. 03:25 Now if that's not bad, what about cars? 03:26 You know, I see lots of truck drivers 03:28 with back pain, it's just from the posture. 03:30 Yeah. 03:32 They don't get up and move and exercise. 03:33 So the back is also made to move 03:35 and stretch and exercise. 03:37 When we don't do those things, 03:39 we get lagged into certain positions 03:41 and sometimes the nerves are compromised. 03:43 Okay. Okay. 03:45 Another thing that that I see is 03:46 people lift the weights inappropriately. 03:49 You know, they're trying to lift weights 03:50 and they're really not warmed up, 03:52 they hurt their back 03:53 when they're just trying to lift the weights. 03:54 They bend in certain ways and it's that, 03:56 and then they have pain. 03:58 And then a lot of the back pain, 04:00 Nick, it would get better if we would just rest, 04:04 and let it heal. 04:05 Yeah, right. 04:06 And unfortunately when a person has a back pain, 04:08 oh, we're in a fast going society, 04:10 we cannot rest, okay. 04:12 Where we cannot take the time off to get it better, 04:15 so we might take some pills, 04:16 we might take some anti-inflammatories 04:18 we keep going, and then all of a sudden 04:20 the muscles pulls on a nerve, 04:21 it gets worse and worse and worse, 04:23 and before a long it becomes chronic pain 04:25 and we make the problem much worst. 04:27 Now you respond, you saw physical therapist, 04:29 what did he do for you? 04:30 Well, my hips hadn't been aligned properly 04:33 after whatever caused that, whether it was a fall 04:36 or whatever else. 04:37 And so he was able to do a manipulation 04:39 that helped readjust my hips. 04:41 And I guess that had caused 04:42 the muscles in my lower back to be stretched. 04:46 And at first you know, I thought it was gonna away 04:48 but then after a while, the pain got worse and worse. 04:51 And almost instantly 04:52 after he did the manipulation to get my hips back in line, 04:55 I almost instantly I felt better. 04:56 Yeah. 04:58 Although there was some residual soreness 04:59 that lasted for couple of days. 05:01 Now that's great, 05:02 'cause that's a great way for people that have back pain 05:04 if it doesn't heal, 05:05 a physical therapist is the good place to go. 05:07 Yeah. 05:08 They also might want to see their doctor 05:09 to make sure it's nothing more serious 05:11 like a slipped disk. 05:13 Usually those type of people with back pain 05:16 has a pain that radiates into the legs. 05:18 Yeah. 05:20 And it usually doesn't go away 05:21 with rest and conservative measures, 05:22 and we can do some tests, you know, 05:24 MRIs and CAT scans 05:26 which can look to see if a disk is slipped. 05:28 We also have fancy test to look to see 05:30 if the spinal column is infiltrated 05:32 or things of that nature. 05:34 But most of back pain is caused by what we call is 05:38 we don't use our back correctly. 05:39 Right. 05:40 Now another big cause of back pain nowadays is 05:44 because the blood vessels to the back are compromised. 05:48 And what causes that? 05:49 Yeah, well, think about it. 05:51 We've talked in previous programs 05:53 about the heart. 05:54 Too much fat clogs up the arteries of the heart. 05:56 Right. 05:58 Well, guess what? 05:59 It just doesn't stay with their heart. 06:00 Too much fat can clog up 06:02 the arteries to the spinal cord, 06:03 okay. 06:05 And if the arteries to the spinal cord 06:06 aren't getting enough blood, guess what? 06:08 Another source of back pain. 06:10 Okay. 06:11 Even though trauma, posture, 06:12 lifting incorrectly is probably the most common. 06:15 We also see blood vessels being compromised. 06:18 A smoker that has a lot of back pain 06:20 and we can't find out physical problems, 06:22 it could be the blood vessels 06:24 aren't as good as they should be 06:27 and that's triggering pain when they do things. 06:29 But I see a lot of people that have back pain 06:32 and unfortunately rather than 06:33 getting at the cause of the back pain, 06:35 which is usually posture or a stress on our muscle, 06:39 you know, doing the exercises, the stretching, 06:42 they jump to a medication a little bit too quickly. 06:45 Now there is place for medications. 06:48 And sometimes medications with bed rest 06:51 can let the medicines heal. 06:53 You know, the medicines help to turn down the inflammation, 06:56 the inflammation goes down, 06:58 and the nerves can heal on its own. 07:00 Sometimes physical therapy 07:01 or chiropractors can take pressure off the muscle 07:04 which lets the nerves relax and heal. 07:06 But when people don't do that, Nick, 07:09 it just makes the problem worse, 07:10 because you're not getting at the cause, 07:12 they're treating a symptom. 07:14 And everyone wants to get back 07:15 to doing what they can so soon, 07:17 that they wanna jump, jump, jump to the final step 07:20 and they don't want to take the time to heal. 07:23 And in our fast pace world 07:24 everyone's moving around doing too much. 07:27 Now after you had your back problem, 07:29 what did your physician do to help your back out, 07:32 I mean to prevent it from happening again? 07:34 Right, well, I ask him about that 07:36 because I said, you know, this happened once. 07:37 He said, likely that will happen again and he said, 07:39 you know, it very well could. 07:42 For me it stems from a problem 07:44 actually that I had long ago with my knee, 07:46 I have a knee injury, I partially tore a ligament. 07:48 And I've functionally reduced the amount of flex in my knee. 07:54 So my left leg functions a little short, 07:56 my right leg functions a little bit long, 07:58 and that causes my hips to be misaligned. 08:00 So he told me if we could do some stretching 08:02 to get my legs functioning equally 08:05 that would help my hips stay in line 08:06 and then not cause the back pain. 08:08 Yeah, so I guess the first big point 08:10 we have today if you have back pain, 08:12 don't be afraid to rest. 08:13 Yeah. 08:15 Get at the reason why, 08:16 and think about some physical therapy, 08:18 a short course of medication might be useful. 08:20 Right. 08:21 Those are all things and then of course 08:23 if it doesn't go away, 08:24 they progress to the CAT scans and MRIs with those 08:27 to have surgery on your back 08:29 or long term medications are the last place 08:31 we want to go. 08:33 We want to try to find out anything else we can do first, 08:36 which brings me up to a story I heard. 08:38 Have you ever heard this term, placebo effect? 08:41 Yeah, sure. 08:42 Okay, I don't like that word. 08:44 I like to call it healing beliefs. 08:46 Yeah. 08:48 You know, if a person believes that treatment's helping them 08:50 and it actually does help them, 08:51 because the brain has the ability 08:54 to help heal the body. 08:55 That's right. 08:56 You know, we've talked about inflammation 08:58 but healing belief, 08:59 just sometimes our body can do things for itself 09:01 they can help heal it. 09:03 I remember a story I heard 09:06 about the islands out in the Pacific. 09:08 I don't know if you've ever been there, 09:09 but they have, 09:11 there is this bunch of young men 09:12 out on the islands of the Pacific. 09:14 And there is these bad guys 09:16 they would just fall over dead in their 20s. 09:18 Oh, my... 09:20 And no one knew why. 09:21 Yeah. Okay. 09:23 So they did the autopsies on these fellows 09:24 and there was nothing wrong with them at all, 09:26 nothing wrong. 09:28 They were completely healthy 09:29 and they were falling over death. 09:31 Well, they did some evaluation into that 09:34 and they found out that there was these witch doctors 09:36 that were sticking needles into them, 09:38 and these gentlemen thought that they were gonna die. 09:41 They just believes 09:43 what they were to, they would die. 09:44 Yes, they believed. 09:45 So healing beliefs has a very important treatment in pain. 09:49 Right. You know. 09:51 If you have believe in a treatment, 09:52 if you believe in something 09:54 it has some chemical properties that helps our body separate 09:57 than anything else we can understand. 09:59 Our bodies are much more complicated than we think. 10:02 Right. 10:03 As far as our brains, our genetics 10:05 and we know that people that are positive 10:07 that believe in the treatment that they are receiving, 10:11 they do much better, 10:12 so there is really not this placebo effect, 10:14 it's they believe it's helping them. 10:15 Yeah. 10:17 And I've heard of people that have back pain 10:18 that get rest and they're giving you know, 10:20 just some minor things 10:22 and they believe it's helping them, 10:24 they do the things right and just that in itself 10:26 has a very powerful ability for the body to heal itself. 10:29 Yeah. 10:31 But I really want to focus on 10:32 how important rest is in treating back conditions. 10:35 Yeah. 10:36 You know, some people don't believe 10:39 that they need to go see someone to get help. 10:41 I didn't know, you know, I thought four, five days, 10:43 I didn't believe I needed help 10:45 but then after the sixth or seventh day 10:46 I believed, you know, I do need help. 10:48 What do you say to people 10:49 who are reluctant to go get their back checked out? 10:51 Well, think about it, you know, 10:53 a little problem can become a big problem pretty quick, 10:56 you know. 10:57 If you had your car that was knocking a little bit 10:59 or the engine light came on, 11:01 would you keep driving that car 11:02 mile after mile down the road? 11:04 And it gonna get stuck somewhere. 11:06 No, you have a warning light 11:07 that something's not wrong, right. 11:09 Something is not right, yeah. Right, something is not right. 11:10 And pain is sign, a warning light in our body 11:14 that something is not right. 11:15 That's right. 11:17 And whether which organ it is 11:18 when we're having pain in the back, 11:20 sure most of the time 11:21 back pain is not life threatening 11:22 like heart pain or some other types of pains. 11:24 But long term it could be a big problem. 11:27 So if you're having pain that's unexplained, 11:30 that doesn't go away in a short period of time with rest, 11:33 you might want to see a professional 11:35 that can evaluate this. 11:36 And you know, general providers can do this, 11:39 physical therapists are excellent at this, 11:41 and there is some chiropractors that are very good 11:43 in helping you understand the cause of the pain, 11:46 especially when it comes to back 11:47 and can teach you some things, 11:49 whether it be getting up and moving every hour, resting. 11:52 And they also can evaluate you to see 11:54 if it's something more serious. 11:55 Right, right. 11:57 Well, sounds like some good advice there 11:58 and we've got questions from our viewers 12:01 and we're gonna get to those in just a moment 12:03 after the break. |
Revised 2016-11-14