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Sometimes, I Just Have To Shake My Head.

© Dr. David L. Phillips

It really puzzles me why people go to such extreme lengths to find relief of their back troubles. Medicine has lots of therapeutic choices, none without compromises and risks, most unproven and often having poor outcomes. But why a person would consent to dangerous and highly invasive surgical procedures that have dubious rates of success, I’ll never understand. Disc excisions, laminectomies, facet and perifacet injections, epidural steroid injections, disc aspirations, lumbar discographies, vertebral fusions, and on and on the procedures go. In my naivety, I honestly thought that with the rise of alternative and complementary medicine, and the increasing scientific evidence in the effectiveness of chiropractic care for lower back problems, these terribly invasive and dangerous medical practices would begin to wane in popularity. Alas, not so.

In fact the opposite is true. Two recent studies that I found in The Back Letter Volume 18, Number 3, 2003 left me rather surprised just how fast the rates of these procedures are rising. The number of spinal fusions increased 7.5% in 12 months from 2000 to 2001, while the number of laminectomies rose 4.5% in the same time period to 244,000.

The other study, published in the journal Radiology 2002; 225(3): 723-729, looked at spinal injections, both diagnostic and treatment oriented, from 1993 to 1999. The author reported substantial increases in injection procedures over the 6-year period of study. For example, spinal facet injections rose from 38,000 in 1993 to 94,000 in 1999, an astronomic increase.

One reason for these increases may be the aging population; however, I believe it is mostly due to the pathetically inactive and sedentary lifestyle that we have grown so used to over the past 30 years. Television and the automobile have taken over our lives. Combine this chronic lack of physical activity with a poor understanding of how dramatic an effect our diet has a on the health of spinal discs, ligaments and bones, and we have created a recipe for disaster and disease.

I suppose it will take many more decades to convince people, both the public and the medical providers that conservative methods are safe and effective. However, the biggest lesson to be learned altogether here is that prevention for our spines and weight-bearing systems is critical in order to avoid these awful procedures. Yes, you are as old as you feel, but how you feel is largely determined by the flexibility of your joints. If you do nothing else, please adapt a simple routine of stretch exercises and do them religiously each morning shortly after arising from your bed. A dozen leg, spine, hip and calf stretches will take you 6-8 minutes and will set you up for the day. Nothing else you can do will give you such long-term benefits for so little an investment.

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