Back Pain Tips to Help Improve Your Life

Back pain affects many of us. It’s like a horrible phathom that just keeps coming back.  (No pun intended.) If you haven’t had to deal with it, you might not realize just how debilitating it can be.  Of course, there’s a wide range and degree of back pain. For more than a decade I’ve tried to figure out how to manage my back pain.

When my brother-in-law mentioned a friend’s wife was having back pain that no one could seemingly resolve, I began thinking about my experiences and what I’ve learned. I feel lucky. Despite having lots of back pain (I have 10 herniated discs from my neck to lower back), I have done two triathlons and just ran five miles for the first time in 10 years.

Here’s my story and a few tips. Hopefully, this will help you.

MY PAIN IN THE B*@%

My back pain started while I was rowing in college.  I’m 6-feet tall, and as a sweep rower (an athlete who rows with one oar) in the Varsity 8, I overdeveloped one side of my back and got my first dose of TENS treatment (where you get hooked up to a nice machine that runs electrical current through your body.) It was a weekly treatment until I graduated, but things seemed relatively fine after I stopped rowing.

I spent a day in the booth with Dan Dierdorf and Dick Enberg while on the NFL Road Trip.

Then I went on an internship project where I drove some 25,000 miles with two other guys I didn’t know, to every NFL city in the country, for The Sporting News’ “Ultimate NFL Road Trip” in 2000. We covered games, wrote about life on the road, the fans and NFL cities we visited. While on the trip, I was sitting in the back seat that was rear ended by an oil tanker in Foxboro, Mass. on December 5, 2000.

The back seat of the car I was sitting in when it was rear ended by an oil tanker

To this day, I don’t remember it. After being in a coma, having a punctured lung, internal bleeding, five broken ribs – including two that broke on the airplane ride home to Chicago because the air pressure was too strong – I recovered. But not before learning how worker’s compensation works (or doesn’t really work), seeking alternative treatment, being told I should have 30 injections in my back, and four years of physical therapy.

To celebrate my comeback, I did my first triathlon in Crystal River, Fla. a few months shy of  my five-year anniversary of the car accident.  Ironically, a year later I was hit on the driver’s side by a MACK truck while driving in Florida. Again, I resolved to recover. I came back from that, after two years of physical therapy, only to take a nasty fall down a flight of basement stairs at a now ex-boyfriend’s parents’ house in Cincinnati, Ohio. (His mother had individually covered each of the 15 steps into the basement with bath towels to protect the carpeting.)

Inflatable donut aka "ass ring."

Lying, unable to move at the bottom of the steps, I thought I broke my tailbone.  (Let me tell you, making a 6-hour drive back from Cincinnati with an inflatable “ass ring” (insert joke here), that keeps deflating so you have stop at a gas station to inflate it, is quite an experience; along with having your butt x-rayed,  which feels like you’re pulling an old-school prank where you are xeroxing a body part.) But a month or two later my left foot went numb and my left leg was constantly shooting pain. Although I tried to avoid surgery, I could barely walk to the bathroom on my own. Several MRIs revealed the fall had injured my already sensitive back. For a while I ended up writing from bed. After four months of yoga, therapy and huge dosages of 40 milligrams of Prednisone, nothing improved and I ended up having  surgery (an L4-5 microdiscectomy) on my lower back in August 2008.

I was terrified.

You hear all sorts of horror stories about people who end up needing 10 back surgeries and it only makes matters worse.  I interviewed six or seven neurosurgeons and orthopedic doctors and consulted with a lot of people. I eventually made a great choice. I would do it again in an instant. I trust (and did trust) my life with my neurosurgeon, Dr. Doug Johnson, and nurse practitioner Laura Guzman (who does a whole lot more than that) at Wheaton, Ill.-based DuPage Neurosurgery. Dr. Johnson has a great bedside manner, is completely anal-retentive in the operating room, operates in combat zones with highly unusual and complicated problems on veterans in Iraq and is one of the few surgeons I’ve ever met who doesn’t recommend surgery unless it is absolutely necessary.

When I came out of surgery at Central DuPage Hospital, I was able to finally walk without pain, although I could barely walk half a block.  Slowly, I began to build up stamina.  Like I said, I’m lucky. Ironically, the therapist, Nikki (Michelle) Thennes who worked on me after my first car accident, helped me again after back surgery. A year after back surgery, I competed in the 2009 Chicago Triathlon. I owe a lot of my success to many people, including my parents, who helped me through the recovery process, multiple times.

WHAT HAS HELPED ME

* Try a lot of alternatives from physical therapy to acupuncture  before even considering surgery.

Frankie Burget working with a patient.

* Consider myofascial release treatments. Myofascial is the tissue between the muscle and the skin that forms a thin membrane like spider web. When it’s messed up it’s like undoing a ball of yarn. I went to an amazing woman, Frankie Burget, while in Dallas.  A physical therapist from Baylor Hospital sent me to her when I started getting worse rather than better.  She told me it was where they sent everyone to Frankie when “they really weren’t sure what to do” with a patient. I started developing a hump in my back (from the scar tissue) and Frankie really changed my life. She is a unique individual who combines Western and Eastern medicine together with CranioSacral treatments. Frankie’s work at her practice, Windsong Therapy, earned her the 2006 Occupational Therapy International Health Professional of the Year Award from Cambridge’s International Biographical Centre.

* Try “flow”  Vinyasa yoga. Slow gentle movements can help strengthen your core and relieve tension. Child’s pose actually helps you self- traction your back so it opens up.

Me at Yoga Circle.

* Look for therapeutic yoga sessions. I went to an intensive 6-week yoga instructor training class (at Yoga Among Friends in Downers Grove, Ill.) where I was one of the “guinea pigs” for new in-training yoga instructors to work on. (They wanted unusual cases to study. It helped me and it helped them.) I also went to private lessons with yogi guru Gabriel Halpern at Chicago’s Yoga Circle. He had me doing assisted inversions from a chair, and from a door with straps, so I could traction my back at home on my own. Now I do yoga once a week at my gym or at the Chicago-based running store, Fleet Feet, which holds free weekly sessions.

* Use a Thera Cane to hit pressure points. I feel like a freak when I use it since it looks like a Little Bo Peep Shepherd’s Crook, but it totally works because you wrap it around your body and can trigger point hard to reach places, and you can do it to yourself.

* Lie on a small, cantaloupe-sized inflatable ball the size.  Some people use a tennis ball, but that is too much pressure for my back. Roll around on the floor with the ball under your back to hit pressure points.

* See a chiropractor. Just make sure you have someone who knows what they are doing. Like any profession, some are good, some aren’t. Every two months or so, I know my hip pops out and one leg becomes an inch to almost two inches longer and creates back pain. My chiro adjusts me and I’m fine.

* Take Epsom Salt baths. It’s so inexpensive at less than $5 a bag and can help so much. I was taking three baths a day before surgery just so I could walk. It helps relieve muscle tension, pain and dumps out the toxins in your body. Use two cup of salt in the tub, soak for 20 minutes or more. You’ll be amazed. (Here are some other home remedies.)

* Really listen to your body. You know what feels “normal” and what doesn’t better than anyone else. When it comes down to it, doctors, physical therapists and everyone else are just making educated guesses, and sometimes their suggestions are wrong. Keep searching until you find something that works for you.

* Ask lots of questions and do a ton of research. Talk to everyone you know and meet, you never know who will know something. Even if you think it is a basic and stupid question, ask.  Any pain, unchecked and un-managed can be debilitating. No matter how light people make surgery, it is still surgery and there is always a risk you can still die if there are complications. (They always ask for a living will when you check into the hospital for surgery for a reason.) If someone is being patronizing before surgery, think of how they will be after. I had a neurosurgeon who wanted to operate on me the week after I walked into his office. It was way to quick for my comfort zone. As it turned out, one of his patients, who shared a recovery room with me, had complications and didn’t see her neurosurgeon until 15 hours after her surgery. I had two follow-up visits, one immediately after surgery and one the next morning. It made a big difference.

* Know that your back is divided up into several major parts: the cervical (neck) which doctors call C1-C7, the thoracic (mid-back) T1-T12 , lumbar (lower back) L1-L6, Sacrum (S1) and Coccyx or tailbone (which doesn’t have a number.) Also realize that numbness or shooting pain in other parts of the body can directly relate to back pain. (That’s why there’s reflexology where you can trigger different parts of  your body in your foot.) See the diagram to the right.

* Consider making changes in your diet. Certain foods can be inflammatory including: salt, sugar, processed meat, junk food, and caffeine.  Drink lots of water to flush out toxins that build up when you have chronic pain. This can also help you lose weight, something I’ve struggled with for a long time, especially after gaining some 30 pounds in a six weeks after taking the high dosage steroids. But I also know that some doctors will attribute ALL back pain to weight gain. While it certainly doesn’t help the situation, that may not be what is actually causing the pain.

* While doing my “back pain” research I came across University of Chicago alum Brian Hainline, MD’82, the U.S. Open chief medical officer from 1992 to 2007. I ended up interviewing him for the U of C’s alumni magazine about his book Back Pain Understood. It’s a great resource that I highly recommend.

Pomodoro means tomato in Italian.

* Set a timer while you’re working at your desk so you get up and walk around every 45-60 minutes. (This is a good practice anyways, see Pomodoro Technique.)

* Try using a Chiroflow “water pillow” or Tempur-Pedic therapy pillow for proper sleep position.

* If you can’t sleep because of the back pain. Lie on your back, in bed, put pillows under your calves to elevate your legs to take pressure off your lower back. Stack several pillows high to make a “shelf.” Even 20 minutes of this can help.

* Or lay on the ground, on your back, with your knees bent. (Your legs will look like triangles). One leg at a time,  splay your knee out, lowing each knee out to the side to the floor  and then raise it back to center. Repeat with other side. It loosens up your lower back when it is locked.

* Do the “cat and dog”  (cat/cow) pose where your hands and knees are on the floor in a “table top” like pose. Arch your back and put your head down like a cat then reverse and stick your head up and chest out like a dog.

* Do the “Superman” where you lie stomach on the floor arms “flying out in front” and legs straight behind you. Lift arms and legs at once off the floor and then drop them back down. Repeat. Or do opposite arms and legs (ie left arm, right leg) if doing everything is too difficult.

* Bounce on a large exercise gym ball. Just bouncing on it will make a big difference because it helps  improve circulation and release toxins which can increase inflammation and trigger back pain. See more reasons here. (65 inch size for people 5′6″ to 6′2,” 55 inch for people that are shorter than that, 75 inch for people that are taller.)  Of course there are plenty of exercises you can do and you can sit on one at your desk to build core strength too.

* If you have to have surgery, find a doctor you trust and then believe, truly believe, that you are going to be okay. Your mental state is so important. As an athlete, I would always visualize my race before I raced, and it always helped. The same thing is true with surgery. The body and mind is a wonderful thing and if you can visualize actually go through something and being successful with it, then your body and mind acts like it’s the second time around when you do something, even if it’s not. I finally made peace with my fear of back surgery, and put my full trust in Dr. Johnson that everything was going to be okay. It made a big difference in the outcome. At the recommendation of another woman who had previously had back surgery, I listened to Peggy Huddleston’s Prepare for Surgery cds before going to the hospital. It also helped with the mental preparation.

* Remember there are always going to be good days and bad days.  Changes in weather pressure and temperature can affect how you feel, (at least for me), along with a whole host of other things, including stress. But I appreciate and I’m grateful for all that I can do. It’s always better to get out and be active, even if it is only walking.

* Most importantly, please remember I’m not a doctor or trained medical professional this is just my personal experience.