As a chiropractic physician my recommendations are made based on a variety of factors including spinal biomechanics, research evidence and practical considerations such as ease of advice implementation and cost particular products. I would like to disclose that, although I may get a referral fee from some of the items advertised or reviewed, this will never impact the integrity of my reviews or recommendations. I hope you find my recommendations useful; however, if you have a specific spinal problem or condition, and have not yet done so, it is recommended that you contact your qualified health care provider for recommendations that may apply to your particular case.
Peter C. Spathis, DC
Books With The Best Advice To Help Relieve Back Pain
Can a book really help relieve back pain? The short answer is yes! Books and other media can help you understand the cause of your back pain and provide useful advice regarding ways to minimize or prevent it. This may include postural considerations to decrease stress on pain sensitive structures, stretching recommendations to loosen "tight" spinal supportive muscles and tissue, strengthening advice to correct muscle imbalances and provide proper spinal support and more. Some books may even cover the psychological component of chronic pain and how this affects us in ways we may not have considered as well offering methods to help deal with its impact or even use a psychological approach to help relieve the pain itself.
Every book on this topic approaches back pain relief in a different way and its emphasis on the various components associated with back pain will vary accordingly. I have tried to choose the top books written for the general public by qualified health care professionals in the area of back pain relief while offering some variety in the approach taken by each author. I hope you find my recommendations useful and that one of these books will help you attain the pain free status you deserve.
Although more expensive than the other choices on this page, this comprehensive book is a great choice for many people with back pain as long as they actually read it and apply the self assessment and exercise recommendations contained within. Many of the techniques described are used by physcial therapists and chiropractors to treat spine related symptoms with a mechanical origin. After you have been examined by a qualified provider to ensure you don't have any underlying problems or other conditions that would contraindicate a home exercise and pain management program such as this, I would recommend this book as one to consider. Please discuss this with your qualified health care provider to see if it is right for you.
Developed by New Zealand Physiotherapist Robin McKenzie, the McKenzie method is known and accepted worldwide in the field of musculoskeletal medicine. I myself frequently use elements of this method to treat various spinal conditions, including lumbar disc herniations. However, as with any method or treatment approach that you plan to use at home without supervision, there are details that should be reviewed with your qualified health care provider. That considered, I believe this book offers a practical approach to self assessment and treatment of chronic back pain that is simple enough for most people to understand and perform. This, along with the unexpectedly low price and likely best value for the money at the time of this writing, makes this back pain relief book another great choice to discuss with your qualified health care provider.
The author of this book, John E. Sarno, M.D., has credentials that include Professor of Clinical Rehabilitation Medicine at New York University School of Medicine and attending physician at the Howard A. Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, New York University Medical Center. However, based on the book's contents, I'm not sure if he is a genius, a quack or somewhere in between! As I consider myself to be an evidence-based provider, I can't even believe I'm including it in this list but let me try to explain my decision and who this book may benefit.
When we consider that our brain is ultimately the mechanism through which we perceive pain, we can see how an approach that addresses the "mental aspect" of this mechanism may work. Dr. Sarno believes the subconscious mind plays an important role in back pain and describes a condition he calls "Tension Myositis Syndrome" (TMS) along with a related mind-body connection theory. Dr. Sarno then provides advice aimed at mediating this condition to help relieve associated pain. Due to the lack of scientific evidence to support the details of this explanation, I do not believe that we can accept it be be accurate. However, the brain is involved in our experience of pain and many people have actually been helped by this approach. For this reason, I do believe some people will find this book very helpful.
In my opinion, the people most likely to benefit from this book are those with chronic back pain for which other types of treatments have failed, especially if a specific cause of pain has not been found after appropriate testing (MRI, etc). Further, I believe the people that will respond most favorably to the advice provided are those who are not concerned about the lack of scientific support for the proposed theories but are more interested in practical steps they can take to get relief regardless of how the method works.
