Lower back pain is one of the most significant health problems affecting Americans today. Look at some quotes from the National Institutes of Health (NIH):

* Seventy to 85 percent of all people have back pain at some time in their life.

* Back pain is the most frequent cause of activity limitation in people younger than 45 years old.

“Nearly everyone has low back pain sometime. Men and women are equally affected. It occurs most often between ages 30 and 50, due in part to the aging process but also as a result of sedentary life styles with too little (sometimes punctuated by too much) exercise….”

These are pretty frightening statistics. Apparently, there are few people who haven’t felt the shot of electricity running from their foot right up into their lower back. Agony. Better than a TASER any day. And you would wonder what the medical profession is up to. These numbers represent a lot of suffering for you and me. And it means a lot of money lost to us because of time off work, inconvenience and treatments. I ask myself regularly, “why isn’t the government really behind getting an effective remedy for this epidemic?” For, if practically the whole population gets it, it is an epidemic.

This is a real puzzle for me. Especially since I managed to figure out how to get rid of mine myself. You probably don’t want a long winded story about my particular experience with back pain. My friendship with the back pain dragon would stretch over fifteen years with repeated bouts of strong pain keeping me off work and making life a misery. I was in a prison of suffering and misery. And the road to the cure started with a visit to a member of the medical profession - my dentist! But I’m getting ahead of myself here…

The pain of sciatica and lower back pain is depressing. If you are like me, you feel a great sense of fear that it will never be better again. Well you can breath a sigh of relief - it does get better. It can even disappear completely and you can be back to a normal pain free state in a short time. And what’s more you can stay in this healthy state. Instead of facing of facing a future where you are not in control and your pain is in control of you, you can find yourself back in control again. And this is the key - control.

Before I dive in, let me say I learned these techniques from my own experience with back pain. I’m aiming this at people who don’t have cancer or some other serious illness. For most of us that isn’t the reason we have chronic pain in the lower back. And now I’ll tell you about my trip to the dentist. He’s not really a butcher, but he doesn’t like giving his patients painkilling injections “unnecessarily”. His explanations about the ill effects of novocaine and the fact my wife has known him so long make me put up with it.

So, there I am sitting back in the hot seat, waiting for the drilling to commence. And an article which I’d read about research carried out at the University of Turin, Italy a couple of years ago came to mind. It was all about pain, morphine and the placebo effect. The problem of lower back pain has to be approached in two ways or on two levels. This is because there are two causes for chronic pain. They are the amount of stimulation which the nerves experience and for how long. And the responses the brain learns to the pain. The researchers discovered that the brain can manufacture its own pain killers.

So back in the dentist’s chair, I simply told my lower brain to switch off the pain signals. Simply repeating the message over and over led to my hardly feeling a thing, while my friend drilled holes in four of my front teeth! That’s how I deal with back pain. When I feel it coming on, I start instructing my brain to switch off the nerves and reject the message. Try it yourself and see!

c James Barrington 2009

http://www.thestrongbackbook.com/

Scientists at Jefferson Medical College have received a five-year, $1.7 million National Institutes of Health grant funded by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases to study mechanisms regulating stem cell self-renewal and differentiation with the aim of regenerating diseased and painful intervertebral discs. A previous study by the same group showed that stem cells exist in both animal and human intervertebral discs. This grant will enable the researchers to continue studying the disc cells and determine factors which govern their activities in health and disease.

“Disc degeneration and the associated back pain that goes with it costs the U.S. healthcare industry approximately $100 billion annually,” said Irving M. Shapiro, Ph.D., associate director of Orthopedic Research and the director of the Cell and Tissue Engineering Graduate Program at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson

University. “As a major cause of lost productivity worldwide it is critical that we develop a treatment that will regenerate intervertebral disc structure and function.”

A variety of factors contribute to the degeneration of the intervertebral disc including age, genetics and biomechanical factors. Several surgical procedures are available to pacify the pain associated with the degenerative disc, but the most common procedures often only provide symptomatic relief. No current therapy can completely restore the function of a degenerated disc nor prevent its further deterioration. Historically, investigations of the intervertebral disc have been limited in scope, leading to a lack of understanding of the biology and function of both healthy and diseased tissues.

“Researchers have tried repairing the discs by injecting them with agents that are thought to have beneficial effects on cell function,” said Makarand Risbud, Ph.D, associate professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University. “However, these treatments are limited in their effectiveness in restoring disc structure and function. Our ongoing studies suggest that a group of proteins that compromise the notch signaling pathway in the intervertebral discs are central to this process. These proteins regulate a variety of activities of stem cells including proliferation, self-renewal and differentiation. Our goal is to harness the body’s own regenerative potential and activate endogenous cells.”

Drs. Risbud and Shapiro are collaborating with Drs. Todd Albert and D. Greg Anderson, their clinical colleagues at the Rothman Institute at Jefferson, as well as Dr. Ernestina Schipani, an expert in molecular genetics at Harvard University. The investigators plan to develop a genetically engineered mouse model that lacks selected proteins of the notch signaling pathway in the intervertebral disc. This model will provide important mechanistic insights into the role of the notch signaling pathway in controlling disc cell activities.

“Eventually, we hope to be able to regulate the activities of the disc cells including fostering their inherent regenerative potential,” said Risbud. “If we are able to do this it could lead to development of new therapies to treat degenerative disc disease providing relief to millions of back pain suffers.”

Source:
Rick Cushman

Thomas Jefferson University