Lower back pain is the single most common chronic pain, experienced by 60-80% of the population at some time in their lives. Even though many people can achieve healing through good physiotherapy or other treatment programs, roughly 20% of lower back pain sufferers never get relief.

These are the people who will almost certainly be helped by this article.

YOUR LOWER BACK PAIN - CHRONIC OR ACUTE?

Chronic pain is pain that is experienced over a long time (even years) without any improvement even though you’ve carefully followed your doctor’s treatment advice. Although there may have originally been an injury, or they may even be existing spinal damage or wear, the pain is independent of that.

Using x-rays of spinal damage, studies show that it’s impossible to predict who will experience pain and who won’t. Incredibly, there is no relationship between the damage and the degree of pain felt.

Chronic pain is not actually generated by the body, it is generated in the brain in response to normal signalling, and the proof of this lies in fMRI, or functional magnetic resonance imaging, which shows maps of the working brain. Brain maps of chronic pain look just like brain maps of intense emotion. This is very, very different to the brain maps of acute pain!

So this is why, if you’ve had your back pain for a long time, despite trying many treatments, you are most likely to have chronic pain, and this article is most likely to help you.

YOUR CHRONIC BACK PAIN - 7 STEPS TO ELIMINATION

Step 1: Take out the stress. Have you ever seen a car alarm that would go off for no good reason? Maybe a slight breeze would blow and off it would go! Your nervous system can be just like that, all tightwired and ready to produce pain at the slightest provocation. By taking out the stress, you help your system to calm down and behave normally.

Step 2: Check your emotional state. Do you react to things angrily? Are you sad? Do you constantly feel frustrated? These things also hype up your nervous system and create or maintain chronic pain. But now we know how to switch these reactions off too, so you can feel calm and think a whole lot more clearly. Try the experiment at the end of this article on something that “gets to you” and you’ll see what I mean.

Step 3: Mix with others. One of the things that we now know makes pain worse is isolation, and yet when people are in pain they often want to withdraw. With acute pain this is a very good idea, because the peace and quiet is important in those early healing stages. But with chronic pain it’s completely and utterly different, and social time becomes crucial to healing.

Step 4: Be more physically active. When people experience pain it’s only natural that they want to stop moving and withdraw, and with acute pain that’s actually sensible. But with chronic pain it’s the last thing you should do because activity is essential to your recovery. In fact it’s essential to even the most basic physical and mental health.

Step 5: Have an interest outside of yourself and your family or work. Focus is an amazing thing. If we’re focussed on our pain (because there’s nothing else more absorbing going on) then the pain will actually increase. It’s not merely that we perceive that it’s worse. It IS worse. So even if you’re depressed and feel you can’t be bothered getting into anything “interesting” it’s essential that you choose something and involve yourself in it regularly. A good program will provide great support to you in that way.

Step 6: Take a look at your relationships. Who are you dependent on? What would happen to that relationship (good and not so good) if your pain suddenly disappeared? Who leans on you or would like to lean on you? What would happen in that relationship if your pain suddenly disappeared? Pain can serve a very useful purpose in maintaining co-dependency, so it’s worth checking out they dynamics of your relationships.

Step 7: Use BMSA (Brief, Multi-Sensory Activation). BMSA is designed to re-train your nervous system so that it stops producing chronic pain signals. Most people get relief immediately, and over 50% of people can eliminate their pain totally. Another 30-40% can reduce their pain dramatically, all through using BMSA.

TRY THIS BMSA EXPERIMENT

Before you try any treatment, it’s a good idea to “dip your toes in the water” and have some experience of what it’s like. Not everyone responds straight away, but many people do, and so it’s worth while going through the following steps to see what happens for you.

Take time to really think about your pain, concentrating on what words most accurately describe the location and nature of your pain. It’s really important that they’re your own words, words that seem very natural to you. For instance it might be something like:

I have this stabbing pain just above my tailbone I have this burning pain in the middle of my lower back but a bit to the left Etc, etc, etc.

Notice that you’re describing the type of pain, and where it’s located. Now rate that pain out of 10, with 10 out of 10 being the most awful pain you could possibly imagine, and 0 out of 10 being no pain whatsoever.

Now you’re going to say that statement over and over again, maybe 12 times, each time saying something silly on the end of it. And at the same time you’re going to keep up a quick tapping process all over your head and body, using your fingertips to tap on your head, shoulders, face, chest, legs, anywhere you can reach. Mix it up, using tapping on the spot, tapping out shapes or letters of the alphabet.

In the example given above “I have this deep ache near my left hip”, for instance, you could be tapping along saying:

“I have this deep ache near my left hip, but butterflies are crunchy.”

You need to repeat your sentence (the pain bit at the beginning and whatever sentence ending you decided you use) at least 12 times. Immediately you’ve done that, still focussed on the pain, start tapping away on your chest, take a very full breath through your nose, and then blow it all out very hard through your mouth.

Once you’ve completed that first round, take a minute to check that pain. Has the level gone up or down? Is the pain in exactly same place or does it seem to have moved? Is the type of pain the same, or has it changed it some way? Are other body pains more noticeable now?

BMSA is much more than this, of course, but this little exercise is a simple way to experience the fact that it can at least impact on your pain. Because everyone is so different, it’s impossible to predict what might happen now, whether you got an obvious effect from this or not. Some people might find their pain continues to decrease. Others will find that it comes back exactly the same or almost exactly the same. If you stick with it (see the book “The Pain Train - Time to Get Off”) you’re highly likely to get the result that you’re after.

Author Christine Sutherland is a researching clinician and an expert in treating back pain. You’re welcome to read more great articles on back pain on her web site.

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