When Back Pain Becomes Your Alarm Clock
This is something that has happened to me and many of my clients.
My back pain completely replaced my alarm clock. As you know, I used to be a former competitive power lifter and because of that, I had numerous different back injuries over the years. It got to the point that one summer, I could not sleep in at all. We all enjoy sleeping in, especially on the weekends. It was getting to the point where I would just wake up at about 5:30 in the morning, and it didn’t matter what I did.
All I Want is Sleep
I had this incredible deep pressure in the center of my lower back, and I couldn’t get any relief. At 5:30 in the morning, I would just lay there, wishing I could catch up on a little bit on sleep on a Saturday. It didn’t matter whether I laid on my stomach, my back, my side, or if I pulled my knees up to my chest. I even tried putting pillows between my knees, but I didn’t have luck with that either. The pain was really getting in the way of being able to relax and enjoy my weekends.
I got frustrated because I wanted to be able to sleep in and feel refreshed for my day. Then, when I would get out of bed, I would feel old because it would hurt when I bent over. I had an extreme tightness in the center of my lower back that would take 20-30 minutes to loosen up. Sometimes, I’d have to get down on the floor and do some stretches to get myself moving again.
I felt like I was getting older before my time and that wasn’t what I wanted. It affected how I was be able to relate to my family and I would get irritated with that. When it started, I had stretches and things that I would do, but nothing seemed to work. So, I just did what everybody else did at that time. I started managing with a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medication, like ibuprofen and Naproxen. This would alleviate that pain for a little while.
The Pill Struggle
I would take it before I went to sleep, but I would still wake up from the pain. Even though I got to sleep a little bit longer, I would still wake up with that same pain and tightness. Then, I would pop a couple more ibuprofen in the morning and tried to go about my day. I did this for a while, but I started noticing that I was still waking up with pain, and all the ibuprofen did was help me get moving a little bit better in the morning. Then, I started getting this pain underneath my rib cage. One night I woke up around 2 in the morning and I felt this intense burning pain underneath my rib cage.
It was so painful, and I didn’t know what was going on. I woke my wife up and she thought it could be heartburn. However, I’ve never had problems with heartburn before. I tried to drink a little bit of water and milk, but even drinking would make the pain come up to my chest and throat. We ended up getting some baking soda and water and mixing that together. It was the only way I could neutralize that. That’s when I realized that because I was taking so much ibuprofen and Naproxen, it was causing an irritation in my stomach.
Enough is Enough
I stopped taking the anti-inflammatory medication and started trying to find what the root cause of my back pain was. The problem with our Western medical system is that whenever we have an ailment or pain, they tend to focus only on the symptoms. You go to your doctor and they do the exact same thing. They ask you for the list of your symptoms to get you a diagnosis, but they don’t look at what was causing the pain or the ailment in the first place.
If you go to the doctor for the kind of back pain that I was experiencing, they are most likely just going to tell you to rest. They will give you a prescription for ibuprofen or muscle relaxer and tell you to use either ice or heat. And that’s it. However, those things are just addressing the symptoms. The medication just addresses the pain and the inflammation, but it doesn’t really talk about why you are having the pain and inflammation.
The medical system doesn’t focus on prevention and they don’t look at the whole human body. This is dangerous because we’re becoming solely dependent on just a few pills to take care of some symptoms. The minute you stop taking those pills, the problems come right back. Not only is this dangerous for your back, this is dangerous for your overall health. Many of these medications that you are just flat out dangerous. For example, despite the dangers of opioids they were being prescribed left and right when they first came out. Opioids are not meant for long-term use. Now, we all understand the dangers of opioid addiction and what could happen.
The Danger
There’s the danger of liver damage, brain damage, death, and addiction. This is becoming an epidemic in our country because we’ve been utilizing these medications just to minimize the symptoms, but it doesn’t address the root cause of the problem. For these over the counter medication, many people think they are safe. However, with long term use like I had been doing, it was starting to create some stomach related problems. These medications are designed to only alleviate symptoms for a short period of time. You need to be addressing what the primary cause of your problem is, not just the symptoms. The dangers of taking a nonsteroidal, anti-inflammatory for a long period of time can also increase your risk of a heart attack.
It increases your risk of a stroke, and it can even lead to early death. These medications come with numerous dangerous side effects. Instead of taking these, we must ask ourselves a bigger question: why do I have this back pain? In my case, I learned that when I tried to only manage the symptoms and I didn’t address the main cause, it was like kicking the can down the road.
It never fixed anything for me and started to create a whole secondary list of other problems related to the use of those medications. That’s why it’s so important to address the whole person. Holistic health care is important because every part of your being will affect your healing. It’s your nutrition, your mindset, your body imbalances, and it’s even your habits. All these things work together to influence what’s going on in your system. It seems like a big task, and I think that’s why we don’t even look at these other things.
The Big Picture
We don’t think about the nutrition and what this person is putting in their mouth to have an impact on their ability to heal. They don’t look at their mindset or how are they managing their stress. Stress can manifest itself physiologically and create a lot of body inflammation and other disease processes. You must think about body imbalances. It is possible you could be doing too much repetitive sitting, repetitive movements, or bending and twisting the wrong way. Over-utilizing muscle groups and under utilizing other muscle groups can cause imbalances in the body. Think about what you are doing in your day to day habits that are contributing to the wear down of your system. Look at all of these things in a systematic way. If you’re going to eliminate the root cause of back pain, it’s can seem like an overwhelming task.
It’s a lot easier to pop a pill and think that the pain is going to go away. However, it’s not going to go away. I know this because I’ve experienced that. Sometimes it can feel overwhelming to try and figure out what is going on with your body. It can even feel impossible. There’s a quote that I want to leave you with It says,
“It always seems impossible until it is done.” – Nelson Mandela.
Next time you have a back-pain issue, before you just start popping a pill, start analyzing what’s going on in your body and what’s going on in your own life that could be contributing as the root cause. A little pill is not going to fix it. We’re going to be live next Tuesday at 1:00 PM. If you want my new free report, “The Five Best Kept Secrets to Fast Back Pain Relief”, just message me through Facebook messenger we’ll get it sent right to you.
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