Many patients suffer from chronic back pain without any genuine relief from treatments offered by doctors and alternative practitioners. Unfortunately, when these patients stop seeking help, they may be mistakenly categorized as “success stories.” The reality is often quite different; these individuals may be living in pain, feeling hopeless, or even accepting their condition as a part of life. This phenomenon highlights a critical issue known as survivorship bias, where only the positive outcomes are celebrated, leaving untold stories of struggle in the shadows. In this article, we will explore many traditional back pain therapies and their limitations, the risks of relying on passive treatments, and the importance of adopting an active role in your healing process. Understanding the full picture can empower you to make informed decisions on your journey toward lasting back pain relief.

This is PART 3 of the series Unraveling the Mystery of Back Pain A 4-Part Deep Dive:

• Part 1 - The Truth About Back Pain: Who’s Really Suffering? - Statistics
• Part 2 - Understanding Nonspecific Back Pain: What You Need to Know
• Part 3 - The Truth About Popular Back Pain Treatments - Find what works! A Scientific Perspective
• Part 4 - The Somatic Solution: A Path to Lasting Back Pain Relief

Not all back pain reliefs and treatments are equally effective. Please understand that some so called “reliefs” may be pure placebo, meaning that our brains just do their work and we feel better without there being any impact from the “treatment”. While other treatments can be completely dangerous and unsafe. There’s a fine line between safety, effectiveness and danger.

I will only analyze the most common therapeutic treatments and healing modalities, so we won’t go into full details about all existing ones.

You need to know that, 2 out of 5 people will still be in back pain after they finished a back pain treatment. Back pain recurrence is common in two thirts of individuals within 12 months after recovery.¹

Most back pain treatments are passive, meaning you’re completely dependent on someone else to do something for you. Imagine taking a pill or getting a massage, you’re not engaged in your healing nor treating your back pain you just rely on something external. Instead of being active and taking part into the back pain recovery and healing such as advocated by LinSublim somatic movement.

It’s best to combine multiple treatments so you get lasting relief, however, one thing is certain. Do not combine multiple somatic practices. As they will haywire your nervous system and it will become confused.

I’ll keep the best relief, somatic exercise, as the last treatment option for back pain, since in 99% of the cases, people who have struggled for years with pain find it after they’ve depleted all other options. And it never fails them. Many go on to study to become a practitioner so they can take care of themselves, others, kids or the elderly

Safe back pain treatments (effective and placebo ones)

Anti Inflamatory Diet

Anti Inflamatory diet means changing your eating habits and eating a more natural diet. Thus no longer including processed foods which can act as inflamatory agents.

What does this have to do with back pain!? Anti inflamatory foods which are natural, packed with vitamins, aid in healing.

In short: cut all sugar, cut all processed flour. a golden rule in healthy eating which includes anti inflamatory diet is this: If it’s packed in something other than it’s natural packaging as if you were to pluck it from a tree, the field or from the ground, then it’s been altered and processed.

The fresher a vegetable or fruit is, the more vitamins it has. This is why having a potager or a small garden can pay dividends. You can produce more than 500 KG of vegetables from 80 m2.

People who are prone to autoimmune diseases including reumathoid arthritis and others which cause back pain have been found to get good relief when changing their diets.

This topic in itself is extremely complex and nuanced, and doctors and other healthcare practitioners fail to be adequately informed and almost never mention this aspect.

YOU NEED to change your eating habits not only because of back pain, but because diet is dirrectly correlated with all other top 10 mortality factors such as:

• cardiovascular (heart) disease
• Cancer
• diabetes
• Stroke

One word of advice, don’t jump into any new “diet” trend, just eat healthy.

“Energy Medicine” - Ultrasound, infrared, laser and electrotherapy

A true passive treatment is energy medicine which is using various man made electrical appliances which generate force fields such as ultrasound, infrared, laser or electrotherapy of which there are many forms (TENS, TERN, dyadinamic, etc). This may be known as phyisiotherapy.

Each form of energy medicine such as electrotherapy has a plethora of research indicating benefits, especially if combined with movement practices such as physical therapy, kinetotperahy (movement) or somatics.

The kind of energy medicine I’m talking about you can read more in two great books:

• The Body Electric: Electromagnetism And The Foundation Of Life Paperback by Robert Becker and
• Energy Medicine The Scientific Basis by James L Oschman

Those two books analyze the scientific details of what actually happens and why some appliances can be effective.

The reason why these treatments work is largely due to how our body functions. Most such treatments emit a specific measurable energy field (again, scientific !!) be it electrical (millivolts or microvolts, milliamperes), eletromagnetical field (tesla), infrared (specific nanometers of light ex 660nm, 830nm spectrum). It’ll keep it simple, however know that it’s more complicated than this: The idea is that when a healing process of our body doesn’t work properly due to some biochemical reasons. Let’s say a wound isn’t closing, or a bone isn’t healing properly or even a certain organ isn’t functioning, what a device does a specific measurable energy field which helps our tissues (be it skin, bones, ligaments) to kickstart and rebegin healing processes which we all have within us. In practice, depending on the problem someone has, and the type of energy medicine apparatus (if it isn’t fake, so beware of snake oil salesmen) it gives a message to the certain affected area “Hey, you need to restart what you’re doing and begin healing!”. It doesn’t per se, heal us, no more than a pill does the “healing”, pills in this case are just some chemicals which usually send a message our body interprets. So the functioning is Almost the same thing.

Keep in mind, all heaing is your body healing.

Scientists have found certain specific fields which work on specific cell types. Meaning that each cell type in the body has it’s own electrical field to which it responds.

This understanding highlights the danger of charlatans who speak about energy in vague, unscientific terms. They lack the necessary knowledge and background, essentially leading others astray with overly simplistic and ultimately misleading information.

Energy medicine with back pain is MORE effective when combined with movement practices.²

Before you go out and buy such a machine, I’d recommend two things. Verifying research, not all machines and energy medicine therapies are created equally. Some can be placebo.

Spending more time in the SUN (morning and evening in summers) since the sun is the number one emitter of electromagnetic and light energy. Both infrared, near infrared and other forms of light including the visible spectrum.

Near Infrared NIR and Red Light Therapy

Near Infrared (NIR) has been proven to actually have many beneftis and penetrate deep into the skin and even bones, they set a cascading effect of biological processes. ^{3 4} We even produce melatonin in the skin due to one of these processes. This melatonin is different than that in the pineal gland and is hundreds of times more numerous, it’s actually the most powerful antioxidant in the body and the one produced locally in the skin when exposed to NIR light, also meaning.

We;re all actually antenna’s of the sun.

This topic will be expanded in a separate article.

Various mineral water baths

Various mineral water baths including those with salt have been in use since antiquity for a variety of ailments including back pain, osteoarthritis. Their effectiveness is debatable, often the bacteria and relaxing stress relieving nature can often be a placebo. Often times having a bath combining with consuming

Balneotherapy / Hydrotherapy is scientifically evidence-based and does have effects on various systems of the body. ⁵

Salt water, sulfur water, thermal warm water, mineral water… there are plenty of options and I won’t go into this topic. For back pain? Well, old people in many countries are indicated specific treatmeents they shoul do once in a year…

Counseling, psychology and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

It’s no secret that the mind has a powerful impact on the body since they’re both interconnected and one. (The Soma) Counseling, psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral therapy have been found to help relieve back pain⁶ This may sound weird but remember that our emotions impact our pain receotirs and that pain may often be only a neurological remain in the nervous system. Something learned, while there may not be actual pain anymore as in the case of chronic long lasting pain.

This is well known in Somatic Therapy and LinSublim, however, we don’t go directly to the psychological problems, rather, we retrain our nervous system to have a better biomechanical posture, use our skeleton properly and get out of pain naturally.

Medication - Chemical pills, injections, etc

Anti inflamatory medication or injections can provide relief for back pain, however look out for the side effects. Medication alone won’t solve the issue, it will merely mask the symptoms. It’s effective, and often safe, but for rare occasions (think of taking 2-3 pills once a month!)

Look into adding movement practice such as somatic exercises to effectively retrain your nervous system and actually get a look at what’s causing your back pain! ⁷

Physiotherapy or Kinetotherapy

Physiotheraphy (also called kinetotheraphy) or “movement therapy” is the first line treatment for chronic lower back pain. It’s one of the most effective treatments IF you get access to good physiotherapist AND get a good diagnosis AND get perscribed a correct sequence of exercises AND follow the movement regime. You really DO need to be lucky to get all 4 in a row!

These 4 prequisites are essential or you might end up like 4 out of the 10 people who have no relief or feel worse after their back pain treatment.

I’ve also done physiotherapy myself a few times. And I know it’s a 50/50 business towards success, it works but it also caused me more pain and didn’t solve my problems and jumping from professional to professional is not always the best choice as it puts a mental burden on the patient.

If you try anything as a treatment for low back pain this should be the first line of defense as you take an active role in your healing.

It is not clear what type of physiotherapeutic approach is the most effective in terms of pain reduction and function improvement. ⁸

Often, physiotherapy is combined with other form of therapies such as magnetotherapy, ultrasound, laser, electrotherapy etc. This combination has been found to have better pain relieving results 52.5% than 25.4% using physiotherapy alone for back pain reduction. ²

Yoga

Although Yoga as a good reputation world wide, it’s been noted that most people who practice it are those who are often hyper mobile and already had tendencies towards such practices.

If you’ve never exercises in your adult life, and start doing yoga, then it will probably do some good. However, the problematic aspects of yoga is it’s focus on stretching which is counterintuitive to pain. Stretching an already tight muscle won’t do any good.

As with other practices, it might provide a relaxing component for which the body is able to recover. Yoga can be used, my recommendation is to take the yoga asana’s and add more dynamic movements to them in the from of LinSublim Somatics.

Stretching

Stretching has caused more harm than good due to the fact that it fails to solve the problem initial problem. Often straining and forcing an already tensed muscle can leade to even more injury

A recent meta-analysis of 23 studies has a rather interesting conclusion:

Neither acute nor chronic stretching had an impact on posture. Chronic strengthening was associated with large improvements , but no study examined acute effects. Strengthening was superior to stretching. Sub-analyses found strengthening to be effective in the thoracic and cervical spine but not in the lumbar and lumbopelvic region . Stretching was ineffective in all locations (p > 0.05). ⁸

There are many other studies which have began to enlighten us that stretching is ineffective in “curing” low back pain. IN cetain cases it seems that even “strenghtening” your lumbar spine doesn’t seem to produce the desired results if you don’t release the tension first through neuro-muscular reprogramming.

I’ll detail what the most effective treatment and relief for back pain is later.

QiGong, Tai Chi

QiGong and Tai Chi have a good reputation of of helping alleviate back pain by using slow conscious movements and they can be considered safe. However they require finding a well trained practitioner and in certain countries that might be difficult.

The problem with QiGong and Tai Chi is the fact that they rely on Chinese “Medicine” and often rely on psuedo science which sometimes have nothing to do with true science.

I’ve explored both QiGong and TaiChi for wellbeing and stress relief. QiGong led me to discover the vast works of Moshe Feldenkrais and Thomas Hanna upon which LinSublim is based. I’ve found 100 times more relief including back pain when doing true somatics such as those practiced in LinSublim somatic movements for certain ailments than from QiGong.

Massage, trigger points

Massage is a passive therapy and provides only temporary pain relief. It feels good and helps the body relax. However it doesn’t do much to change the underlying problem. Certain doctors don’t advise massage during acute low back pain as it can actually increase the pain and cause problems if you have disc bulges or hernias. More “vigurous” forms of massage can be contraindicated and can be dangerous, see the spinal manipulation section. I know from firsthand experience that I lost feeling in my left leg due to yumeiho massage when I received during an acute back pain episode.

There are some very well versed massage experts who went on to become Somatic Practitioners in Hanna Clinical Somatics (from which LinSublim evolved). Why did they move on? They themselves and their clients failed to find long lasting comfort from massage, thus they searched and discovered something much better. Somatics!

Alternative medicine: ineffective, placebo or quackeries for low back pain?

It should make sense. Most therapies have a half/half probability of success, 4 in 10 people are still left with low back pain after treatment and the recurrence is high after 1 year. Because of this, many people lost their faith of treating back pain or anyother form of ailment in modern medicine. This leads people to search for “alternatives” which make false promises and claims.

There are many other “therapies” and quackeries which claim they can help “cure” low back pain, most often than not they’re pure placebo’s and sometimes such treatments can be extremely dangerous.

Psuedoscientific therapies are all around, beware and don’t believe the hype.

Anything can be mixed up with enough make believe so that it looks “good”.

If it looks too good to be true, it has mysticism around some intangible concept, feels cult like, revolves around a single person whom is considered a semi-diety, then it may be a quackery.

When in chronic pain, as discussed earlier, people are more likely to make bad decissions, including being desperate enough to try something which will get you rid of your money and may proove to be dangerous and ineffective.

Dangerous and often innefective back pain treatments

Surgery is an ineffective and dangerours back pain treatment

IN short, surgery has a role in alleviating radicular back pain or disability from nerve compression and can provide relief in case the cancer or infections need to be treated. Low back pain should be managed in a biological psychological and social approach with non surgical measures. THis is where Somatic movements and exercises shine.

There’s also something called a “Failed Back Surgery Syndrome” in which lumbar low back pain persists after surgery. New pain may originate after surgery, or the surgery may exacerbate or insufficiently ameliorate existing pain.⁹. 1 in 5 low back pain survivors often get a reoperation (new surgery) within 5 to 10 years. Surgery does not solve the issue and yet again causes more problems. ^{10 11}

There’s really a lot to talk about surgery and its ineffectiveness. There are many more studies, books and people sharing their horrific stories of how they got worse after spinal surgery.

Always seek surgery as the last option when everything else has failed and if you’re in one of the few cases mentioned above, remember that most back pain is nonspecific.

Spinal Manipulation

Spinal manipulation as that done by various trained and licensed practitioners (chiropractors, osteopathic physicians, and some physical therapists) is often seen as controversial especially since many peole should avoid spinal manipulation or adjustments. Severe osteoporosis, high stroke risk, spinal cancer and unstable spine, including those who experience any form of tingling or numbness should NOT attend spinal manipulation.

Scientific research is not concludent the effectieness of spinal manipulation, especially since adjusting the spine often provides only temporary relief ad the muscles/tendons tend to readjust to the old ways.

Mild to moderate side effects are very apparent such as discomfort, sitffness, headache and more pain.

However, serious side effects have been observed such as spinal and neurological problems or even strokes. These are estimated to be “rare” so tread safely as rare doesn’t mean not occuring.

Osteopathy can be helpful if not doing any forceful spinal manipulations since they should in theory study the human body pretty well. Chiropracticians also study and use some laser and electrotherapy, however, chiropracticians are known for many adjustments which provide “limited relief” which only last untill the next visit.

The Real Lasting Solution to back pain relief

Continue to Part 4 - The Somatic Solution: A Path to Lasting Back Pain Relief