Archive for November 2010

Middle Back Pain – Treatment and Prevention

Brue Baker asked:




Middle back pain is not as common as lower or upper back pain, but it can be just as debilitating and painful. It also can range in intensity from mild to severe and can be temporary or chronic.

Most people experience middle back pain because they have tried to pick something up that was too heavy; weights, a box etc. or they experienced some type of trauma, like a car accident. Middle back pain can also be caused by certain spinal problems.

Is Middle Back Pain A Serious Problem?

If your middle back pain is a problem for more than a few days, or if you notice other bothersome symptoms, such as nausea, trouble breathing, or paralysis in any part of the body you should see a doctor or chiropractor as soon as possible. While it is sometimes hard to pinpoint the cause of your pain, your doctor should be able to prescribe some form of treatment to help you.

You should understand that the middle of your back is the strongest and most stable part of your back. Many people jump to conclusions when they have any type of back pain and get stressed and panicky that it is some serious condition. Don’t worry, just get yourself to a doctor or chiropractor and let them diagnose and treat you.

Common misconceptions associated with middle back pain include:

* Disc herniation
* Degenerative discs
* Spinal stenosis
* Instability of the spine

How Can I Treat Middle Back Pain?

Besides the chronic or severe pain from sudden injuries or trauma, middle back pain caused by muscular irritation and joint dysfunction can be easily treated by using anti-inflammatory medications. These can be over-the-counter, prescribed, or natural anti-inflammatory creams, found at your local health food store.

Obesity is a common cause of all types of pain. When you have all that extra weight it is that much harder for your back to remain straight without too much strain. Start an exercise program and start eating healthy organic food and you should see the extra weight come off.

Try taking yoga or tai chi classes as well in order to increase the flexibility of your back. A flexible spine, that is healthy and strong is less likely to suffer injury.

Regular massages and visits to your local chiropractor are also very beneficial if you either have middle back pain or if you are looking to prevent it. Good luck on your journey towards health and wellness!

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Painkiller Abuse and Insomnia

Chris Dreyer asked:




There is a distinct relationship between painkiller abuse and insomnia. People who use painkillers over a long period often become dependent on them. Whether they are still using or they are trying to stop, insomnia can occur.

Painkillers which come from opium or synthetic opium are among the most frequently abused. Acetaminophen combined with codeine is a very popular prescription for doctors to hand out. Vicodin or hydrocodone can also be used for pain management. However, when the person develops a need to take the pain medication continually, it becomes a problem.

People begin by taking the medication that has been prescribed to them. Next, they clean out the medicine cabinet of any similar medications that have been prescribed to family members. Finally, they will shop around for painkillers. They will do this by convincing each of their individual doctors, dentists, and specialists that they need a prescription for the painkillers.

The result is painkiller abuse, and insomnia is a part of the package. When the person first begins to take the painkillers, the initial effect is sleepiness or grogginess. This is a pleasant feeling to many people, especially to those in pain. They want to experience it again and again. They may even combine their painkillers with other drugs or with alcohol to increase the sedative effect.

The problem is that, over time, the body begins to get used to the painkiller. It takes more to get the desired effect. This means that sleeplessness is likely any time the person who is addicted cannot increase or at least maintain the dose usually taken. The addict wants more than anything to relax and often to go to sleep. This becomes increasingly difficult.

Even when people who abuse painkillers do go to bed, their sleep cycles are not normal. They are not able to go into the various stages of light to deep to REM sleep the way most people do. This leads to more sleep disturbances, and eventually to more insomnia.

Another reason painkiller abuse and insomnia go hand in hand is because of withdrawal. When a person does decide to get off of painkillers, a period of insomnia is almost certain to take place. The body is craving its accustomed fix of medications. It will not let one sleep unless they are given, or until long after physical withdrawal is complete.

Rebound headaches are a different source of painkiller abuse that can lead to insomnia. The painkillers may simply be over-the-counter preparations such as aspirin, acetaminophen, or ibuprofen. They could be migraine medications or opiates as well. When one takes them indiscriminately, it is a recipe for problems.

People begin by taking too much medication, or by taking it in anticipation of needing it. The body becomes used to having the medication. When a day of medication is missed, the headache comes back worse than before. Insomnia is one of the problems associated with this syndrome.

Painkiller abuse and insomnia are both problems individually. When the abuse is the cause of the insomnia, the difficulty is compounded. One must not only recover from the substance abuse. One must also tame the insomnia that has resulted.

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Stress Management

Mike Logan asked:




Stress management to me means learning that the inside of my body is mine to control no matter what is happening outside of it.

Stress, stress chemistry, whatever you want to call it, is an option then, unless I need to respond quickly to a real threat.

Think driving home and someone swerves into your lane, and I bet just thinking about that brought a bit of a jangle to your body.

That jangle followed an image in your brain or maybe the very rapid recall of that kind of experience from your past, and the jangle was a stress response, or what John Gottman, Ph.D. calls DPA, or diffuse physiological arousal, and that stress response in this case followed a past or future memory, which occurred while you were reading information at your computer.

Stress management must be based on that very simple experience. The chemistry in your body, in this case adrenalin and cortisol, follows closely on your thoughts, so closely that it is faster than you can blink your eyes, which takes all of 1/10th second.

The stress response, or DPA as Gottman calls it, will limit us to three behavioral options at its strongest, run for your life, flee for your life, or freeze, none of which are going to help your gracefully accept a gift of fruit cake from your aging Aunt this Christmas, although you may consider fruit cake to be a deadly threat.

The key to stress management then is not to eliminate stress but to learn management tools that allow you to steer your body like you steer your car, with lots of small changes.

If you think about how you drive, you are attending to a significant number or variables and adjusting the position of the vehicle on the road, accelerating, slowing, ect. constantly.

If we can do that with the inside of our body frequently, and adjust our thoughts and breathing, we can quickly manage a stress response.

How Quickly?

Ever heard of EEG biofeedback, or heart rate variability biofeedback?

EEG biofeedback is a tool which helps folks learn how to manage brainwaves which can cycle anywhere from around 4 cycles per second to 42 cycles per second.

Heart rate variability biofeedback can work at your pulse rate, which we will say is 70 beats per minute for the sake of discussion.

While not as fast as EEG Biofeedback, heart rate variability biofeedback is plenty fast for my stress management process, and since technology is so wonderful, I do have a program to recommend that you learn for very rapid stress management, literally heart beat by heart beat.

Earlier I mentioned John Gottman,Ph.D., who has done some amazing research about marriage, and about the masters of marriage.

He says the masters of marriage have developed the ability to recognize and soothe themselves when they are flooded, and Gottman’s recommended tool for that recognition is to take your pulse and if your pulse rate is over 100 beats per minute, then take a time out for 20 minutes.

The program I like for a quicker version of this recognition and choice process is a version of heart rate variability biofeedback.

Not only can I use heart rate variability biofeedback as a stress management antidote, I can practice it for joyful generativity.

I mean why not keep the inside of my body coherent, based on my heart rate coherence, until such time as someone swerves their car into my lane?

(That swerving cannot happen near me until I am actually driving, right)?

Stress Management or Joyful Generativity?

Lots of my anger management and domestic violence clients report that since they only get mad every so often, they are not in need of anger management or domestic violence services.

Most of us who are not suffering heart attacks routinely may look at stress management the same way, I only need to manage stress when the boogey man attacks.

I want to suggest that waiting to manage stress is deadly. I also want to suggest that if stress is optional, so is joy.

Since my feelings follow only my thoughts, not anything external, I see no reason not to generate some joy or contentment on a regular basis, say every five minutes, for two heart beats.

Instead of adrenalin and cortisol, and the jangley feeling, I can feel contentment and have a lot of DHEA flowing through my body, which is the anti aging hormone by the way, and all that joyful generativity comes from learning heart rate variability biofeedback, which is a really simple process.

In fact, if you are a business person, your entire staff should learn Heartmath, so staff meetings could have a coherent heart beat.

Just imagine that your entire staff, or your family took a moment to make the brain in their hearts coherent, and then brought that coherent cooperative and affiliative physiology to a staff meeting instead of the jangly physiology?

Staff meetings could become fun and truly efficient.

Don’t believe me? You will just have to check out stress management the heart rate variability way.

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