Back Sufferer's Bible [Paperback]

Back pain can hit any one of us at any time of our lives for any number of reason ranging from damage to nerves, joints and muscles to the spine itself, with totally curable conditions suffered by 90 per cent of the population. For those people The Back Sufferer's Bible is something of a godsend.

Physiotherapist Sarah Key draws on over 25 years of experience to give a no-nonsense overview of the five stages of spinal breakdown, removing the mystery of back pain and getting down to the nitty-gritty of how to successfully treat your own back.

With straightforward explanations of the different causes of back pain and easy-to-follow programmes to bring relief to even the most chronic pain, Sarah Key's gem of a book gets straight to the point and is a must for sufferers who want the chance to take the health of their backs into their own hands. --Susan Harrison --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'Sarah Key's exercises really do work', HRH the Prince of Wales, --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Straightforward, point by point, self-help manual enabling the back sufferer cure their own problems. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

This text for back-pain sufferers charts an easy-to-understand model for the way the human spine breaks down, starting off with commonplace totally reversible conditions (which 90% of us have) and progressing to more difficult ones. The author reveals that most back pain starts from a simple linkage problem between two spinal segments - something so benign that it is often overlooked. Because of the structure of the spine and the way we live our lives, the spine gradually gets worse, passing through five progressive stages of breakdown. This book describes how each stage manifests itself, and sets out a logical course of treatment. It explains all the exercises; how to carry them out; and the common pitfalls of each one. It explains when you need medication and when you need to rest in bed. It is intended to lead you by the hand out of your back problem and to help you do the fixing yourself.

Understanding back problems is half the cure.
The world over, there is a litany of gibberish about back problems: what they are, what causes them, and how they can be fixed . . if indeed they can be fixed at all.

With that in mind, it seems but a small step for a down-home Auzzie girl like me to have a go at unveiling the mystery of bad backs. And this is what my new book 'The Back Sufferers' Bible' is all about. With nearly thirty years of tinkering around in human spines, I thought it not unreasonable to put forward a new model for the way I see them breaking down.

First of all, I propose the vast bulk of common-or-garden backache is caused by nothing more than a stiff spinal segment. Segments stiffen more readily at the base of the spine because our vertical stature means the bricks at the bottom of the stack take more weight, but they also stiffen because we sit too much. Both factors squelch together the lower spinal segments thereby squeezing fluid from the intervertebral discs (the small pillows between the vertebrae). This makes the bottom of the spinal column more brittle.

I believe this alone is the provenance of most low back troubles. If a segment gets stiff enough, particularly L5 (the lowest spinal vertebra), it is common to get gnawing old backache which steadily becomes more prevalent. But more to the point, spines suffering ever-increasing degrees of brittleness are that much easier to hurt. What starts off as a grumbling backache can steadily worsen as you keep jarring it and ricking it with everything you do. For this reason, it doesn't matter who you are, prince or pauper, olympic athlete or couch potato, usually sooner or later spinal problems will visit you.

What starts off as a benign pre-clinical condition, where you are achey after a long car trip or sleeping in a soft bed, can then keep going (if you are unlucky enough) through five distinct stages of breakdown. These categories are my own proposition and I suggest they correspond to five generic groups of spinal disorder. You, the sufferer, have a unique opportunity of understanding what category you are in, and what might be going on inside your back. You'll see it's easier than you think, although I'm not suggesting that you circumvent your usual back-carer. You will be greatly empowered by having some handle on your own problem, particularly in understanding how it came about in the first place, and you may recognise the familiar symptoms which flag the different milestones as your problem spreads wider.

And finally, there's what you can do about it. There are simple regimes for you to follow which reverse the compression of the spinal base, and then exercises which beef up the strength of your trunk muscles to maintain the vertebral separation already achieved. If you still need manual or manipulative therapy, administered by your physiotherapist, osteopath or chiropractor (which most people do,especially in the early stages), their job is made so much quicker and easier by what you do yourself. It's simple. You'll see. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Sarah Key trained as a physiotherapist in Sydney before going to London in 1975. In 1976, she established the Sarah Key Physiotherapy Centre in the Harley street area of London before returning to Sydney, where her practice has been based since 1987. (19960904) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.