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thetyreman

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had a really bad back, needed some quite heavy manipulation from an osteopath, after 2 sessions it feels amazing now but just a warning to you all, be careful lifting and doing woodworking kids, don't be silly like me, look after yourself! :D (hammer) :ho2
 
thetyreman":obqgezz1 said:
had a really bad back, needed some quite heavy manipulation from an osteopath, after 2 sessions it feels amazing now but just a warning to you all, be careful lifting and doing woodworking kids, don't be silly like me, look after yourself! :D (hammer) :ho2

Glad to hear you're on the mend. There's a joke in there somewhere about being manipulated by your wife, but I wouldn't dream of looking for it. Things may go awry, and then it would become awkward.
 
Just my personal experience, and that of my wife and son, but I have to disagree with that comment re chiropractors. He sorted my son’s dodgy back, my sciatica and frozen shoulder, and as for my wife, she swears that were it not for her monthly visit she would not be mobile. Okay, so it may be placebo, but if it works for you so what? And, there is good scientific evidence re the benefits of chiropractic for sciatica.
 
Marineboy":2tmn7qes said:
Just my personal experience, and that of my wife and son, but I have to disagree with that comment re chiropractors. He sorted my son’s dodgy back, my sciatica and frozen shoulder, and as for my wife, she swears that were it not for her monthly visit she would not be mobile. Okay, so it may be placebo, but if it works for you so what? And, there is good scientific evidence re the benefits of chiropractic for sciatica.

No problem with placebos if they are upfront, they are not. I can't see any scientific evidence for chiropractic being any effective for anything. Sorry, if you want proper treatment go to an evidence based practitioner which in this case would be a physiotherapist. Chiropractors and osteopaths are not doctors and do not hold a medical degree.
 
Rorschach":1mhs9tup said:
Marineboy":1mhs9tup said:
Just my personal experience, and that of my wife and son, but I have to disagree with that comment re chiropractors. He sorted my son’s dodgy back, my sciatica and frozen shoulder, and as for my wife, she swears that were it not for her monthly visit she would not be mobile. Okay, so it may be placebo, but if it works for you so what? And, there is good scientific evidence re the benefits of chiropractic for sciatica.

No problem with placebos if they are upfront, they are not. I can't see any scientific evidence for chiropractic being any effective for anything. Sorry, if you want proper treatment go to an evidence based practitioner which in this case would be a physiotherapist. Chiropractors and osteopaths are not doctors and do not hold a medical degree.

ok but please don't turn this into a rant or oneupmanship contest, an osteopath in this case did a great job.
 
Rorschach":22vw5vhh said:
Marineboy":22vw5vhh said:
Just my personal experience, and that of my wife and son, but I have to disagree with that comment re chiropractors. He sorted my son’s dodgy back, my sciatica and frozen shoulder, and as for my wife, she swears that were it not for her monthly visit she would not be mobile. Okay, so it may be placebo, but if it works for you so what? And, there is good scientific evidence re the benefits of chiropractic for sciatica.

No problem with placebos if they are upfront, they are not. I can't see any scientific evidence for chiropractic being any effective for anything. Sorry, if you want proper treatment go to an evidence based practitioner which in this case would be a physiotherapist. Chiropractors and osteopaths are not doctors and do not hold a medical degree.
Scientific evidence doesnt come into it. over 30 years ago three seperate "qualified" GP's told me to get used to living in a wheelchair. 2 visits to a chiropractor (in which he tied me up into a human knot) gave me the last 30 years of 95% good health. He was also the ONLY one who actually took an X ray of my back. The NHS doctors felt that was a waste of money.
 
sunnybob":2cagzwag said:
Rorschach":2cagzwag said:
Marineboy":2cagzwag said:
Just my personal experience, and that of my wife and son, but I have to disagree with that comment re chiropractors. He sorted my son’s dodgy back, my sciatica and frozen shoulder, and as for my wife, she swears that were it not for her monthly visit she would not be mobile. Okay, so it may be placebo, but if it works for you so what? And, there is good scientific evidence re the benefits of chiropractic for sciatica.

No problem with placebos if they are upfront, they are not. I can't see any scientific evidence for chiropractic being any effective for anything. Sorry, if you want proper treatment go to an evidence based practitioner which in this case would be a physiotherapist. Chiropractors and osteopaths are not doctors and do not hold a medical degree.
Scientific evidence doesnt come into it. over 30 years ago three seperate "qualified" GP's told me to get used to living in a wheelchair. 2 visits to a chiropractor (in which he tied me up into a human knot) gave me the last 30 years of 95% good health. He was also the ONLY one who actually took an X ray of my back. The NHS doctors felt that was a waste of money.

my doctor took an xray to be fair of my back, looked at the results and said I'm fine, the issue wasn't arthitis but still couldn't tell me why I can't sleep on my right side for over 2 years without pain, my osteopath knew exactly what was causing the issue and how it was limiting my right hip and in just 2 weeks has got me back to full health, basically the doctor told me there's nothing we can do which I was having none of, I'm 34 at the moment and I was starting to feel like an old man, NHS doctors can only do so much and sometimes it's not enough.
 
Rorschach":25fdory1 said:
Marineboy":25fdory1 said:
Just my personal experience, and that of my wife and son, but I have to disagree with that comment re chiropractors. He sorted my son’s dodgy back, my sciatica and frozen shoulder, and as for my wife, she swears that were it not for her monthly visit she would not be mobile. Okay, so it may be placebo, but if it works for you so what? And, there is good scientific evidence re the benefits of chiropractic for sciatica.

No problem with placebos if they are upfront, they are not. I can't see any scientific evidence for chiropractic being any effective for anything. Sorry, if you want proper treatment go to an evidence based practitioner which in this case would be a physiotherapist. Chiropractors and osteopaths are not doctors and do not hold a medical degree.

If you can’t see any scientific evidence you haven’t looked. One thing in your statement which is actually right is that they are not doctors. Every doctor my wife, son and I have seen have said nothing we can do, take painkillers and go to a physio (useless). The only thing that worked for all of us was the chiropractor. Surely not coincidence.
 
I'm currently being treated by an osteopath for a long term back problem which was brought on by a botched operation. So far the results are good with much less back pain at night and leg pain (when standing in one place for a long time) during the day. The lady seems very knowledgeable in the field of nerves and bones etc so rightly or wrongfully I am putting my faith in her.

John
 
I wonder sometimes if some aches and pains like back pain is completely made up by our brains playing tricks on us, a bit like phantom pain in lost limbs I suppose. Then maybe that's why chiropractic/osteopathy works for some people if it is indeed a purely placebo effect, you brain registers that something was done about the problem so it dials down the pain accordingly.

Bloody brain, ruining my life!
 
Trevanion":cer3t8yo said:
I wonder sometimes if some aches and pains like back pain is completely made up by our brains playing tricks on us, a bit like phantom pain in lost limbs I suppose. Then maybe that's why chiropractic/osteopathy works for some people if it is indeed a purely placebo effect, you brain registers that something was done about the problem so it dials down the pain accordingly.

Bloody brain, ruining my life!

It's because a good massage really does help with the pain and loosening up the muscles, then we can get back into a comfortable posture which then stops the pains coming back again. Add in the placebo effect of having someone pay attention to your needs and then tell you feel much better. A physiotherapist could do the same thing but the NHS won't pay for a couple of good massages and some advice on posture.
That's really all a chiropractor and osteopath are doing, massage, attention, some reasonable advice on exercises etc. Most of what they do is perfectly fine and is fancy massage. My problem with them comes when they go too far in the realm of woo and start saying they can cure your cancer or do spinal manipulation on babies and children and cause lifelong paralysis (yes that does happen).
 
Marineboy":287v7pms said:
If you can’t see any scientific evidence you haven’t looked. One thing in your statement which is actually right is that they are not doctors. Every doctor my wife, son and I have seen have said nothing we can do, take painkillers and go to a physio (useless). The only thing that worked for all of us was the chiropractor. Surely not coincidence.

Oh I have looked. But please feel free to show me a peer reviewed study that shows efficacy.
 
There is also that little thing called regression to the mean. When your back is really painful, it is statistically more like to improve than not. The chiropractor or osteopath gets the credit. This phenomenon occurs in many fields, and is well documented.
 
Rorschach":lzidjhd3 said:
Marineboy":lzidjhd3 said:
If you can’t see any scientific evidence you haven’t looked. One thing in your statement which is actually right is that they are not doctors. Every doctor my wife, son and I have seen have said nothing we can do, take painkillers and go to a physio (useless). The only thing that worked for all of us was the chiropractor. Surely not coincidence.

Oh I have looked. But please feel free to show me a peer reviewed study that shows efficacy.

'ang on.... You will only be convinced that chiropractors and osteopaths CAN FIX the problem, when you have seen a study carried out by all "qualified" doctors who COULD NOT fix the problem? :shock:
You want them all to say "yes, we're rubbish, dont come to us, go down the road to get a proper cure" :roll: :roll: :roll:
And the man who thinks back pain is "all in the mind" has NEVER had back pain (hammer) (hammer) (hammer)
 
sunnybob":1pm6aeez said:
And the man who thinks back pain is "all in the mind" has NEVER had back pain (hammer) (hammer) (hammer)

No, I can't say I've had serious back pain, but it will eventually catch up with me as I come from a long family of back clutchers, I think "Oh my back!" might even be on the family crest. There's no doubt that chiropractic and osteopathy helps people with back issues, I have no problem with that, my pondering is purely that perhaps it's similar to phantom pain where some don't get it and some people do and it's absolutely debilitating for those people but is purely a mind-trick and there is no real pain. Pain, after all, is processed in the brain so surely you could say that perhaps in some cases where the body looks totally OK and functional in every test that perhaps the pain isn't actually there and it's just your brain assuming there should be pain there so it's making it hurt.

I may be totally wrong, I'm no doctor, just my musings.
 
Youre overthinking this.
A hypochondriac (yes they are real, one of my sister's qualifies amply) will decide they have a pain, and require a doctor to agree with their own self diagnosis. That person wont be happy with a chiropractor any more than a GP, because they will always expect to have a pain.

A person who has real unliveable pain, will do anything and go anywhere to stop the pain.
My own problem occurred when I was in my early 30's with a wife and 2 small children to support. I was unable to even get in and out of the bath, let alone go work to put food on the table. After the THREE GP's gave up on me (one measured my legs to see if one had shrunk :roll: , one gave me suppositories :roll: and the third just told me to get used to having a wheel chair (hammer) (hammer) ) I sought out a chiropractor in sheer desperation. He x rayed me before doing anything, and then 5 minutes later turned me into knots on a couch, and a DAY later I was able to go back to work. My back went bad about 4 years later, and I did not bother the GP's, just went back to the man who I knew could make me active again.

In the interests of fairness and possibly to help others, my friend had back pain, not as bad as mine because he was still mobile but he went to the same chiropractor, who after 4 visits said he could not help any more. My friend eventually went into hospital to have a couple discs fused together.

Chiropractors arent miracle workers (although it seemed like it to me at the time), but they certainly should not be rubbished without personal experience. (hammer) (hammer)
 
sunnybob":214ii3yf said:
A person who has real unliveable pain, will do anything and go anywhere to stop the pain.

Phantom pain is unliveable pain which people will do anything to stop including ending their own life, over pain that scientifically isn't actually real and is all made up by the mind. I'm not saying back pain doesn't exist and I'm not "rubbishing" chiropractors or osteopaths, I'm merely having a ponder about whether some back pain is actually some form of phantom pain, which is a genuine problem and not "hypocondria".

Not trying to argue whether back pain exists or not, because it does. I'm just wondering if there's other reasons behind some of it rather than just a bad back.
 
OK, I'll add my own two pence!

Had an accident in 1967 which broke a disc into 2 parts very down low in my back. The parts EVENTUALLY knitted together again (with assistance from a LOT of plaster and a bloody great "stretch you out again" corset affair with weights on it, keeping me flat on my back for nearly 3 months. That problem was eventually "cured" - you could say by "mechanical intervention",plus the natural propensity for broken bones to grow back together again.

BUT, as well as the actual damage to the disc, there are other "side effects" - no. 1 being the likelihood that at least some adjacent nerves get damaged (happened to me); and no. 2, the fact that whenever we have pain the surrounding muscles try to compensate by "pulling" your body into a position to at least reduce the pain. That can cause the muscles to go into spasm, and can (did in my case) create a "weakness, whereby, for example the muscles in my neck and shoulders would go into spasm again if I happened to throw a bit of "excessive" force on those muscles during "normal daily life".

I'm NOT medically trained in any way, but as the above has been an on-going problem since 1967, I have had a certain amount of exposure(!!!) to all facets of the medical osteo profession, AND their "unqualified quack supernumeries"!

My own experience is clear in that to me anyway, no amount of chiropractor of physiotherapy manipulation is going to cure the original broken bone problem. BUT manipulating the above muscles problem? Yup, that has worked for me over the years, and TO A CERTAIN EXTENT, continues to do so. And that's basically for the "muscle spasm" problems. And that's BOTH by Chiros and Physios.

I found the best "trick" is to find someone who manipulates you in such a way that your own pain is relieved. "ALL BACK PROBLEMS ARE THE SAME AND ALL BACK PROBLEMS ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT" is what a back surgeon once said to me.

But like the broken bone problem, physical manipulation will NOT bring dead nerves back to life, BUT, and again TO A CERTAIN EXTENT, a "half dead" nerve CAN be brought back into some function to a limited degree, provided it hasn't been "allowed" to deaden completely (you can tell I'm not medically trained from my simplistic terminology, can't you)?

But I do now have polyneuropathy which means, in my case, I have reduced feeling in the soles of my feet, which in turn means my natural sense of balance is severely limited - if I look up into the sky and loose the natural horizon I tend to fall over! Physio has helped that problem a bit.

So in a nutshell, if you find a Chiro whose work helps you, great. If you find one whose work doesn't, look for another - OR look for a fully professionally-trained Physio (which, since I ONLY use hospitals, and NOT the modern chromium-plated lifestyle fruit juice gym palaces), means all the Phyios I've had have not only been professionally trained (3 years) + also undergoing regular update & refresher training.

So based on my own extensive experience, please do NOT ignore all Chiros (or Physios) just because you may have had an experience that didn't work for you, or have heard such from someone else - word of mouth can be your friend here, and there's enough back problems of all sorts around that you won't find it difficult to get a range of opinions about specific therapists and therapies, BUT you must sort the wheat from the chaff -just like reading blokes wittering on on t'internet really!.

In short, IMO you can forget "scientific proof - like many other professions, it seems to me that the medical profession is by no means short of the "NIH Syndrome" ("Not Invented Here"). It's "The Curate's Egg" and all that.

But because my own experience is that clear it is indeed possible for "phantom, psycho-sematic" pains to appear (usually because one particular set of muscles have been in spasm for too long), so please do NOT assume that all back aches are attributable to that problem.

I can assure you that it ain't so, and though I am loath to admit it here, there have been several occasions (not too many over the years thank Gawd) where I've been rolled up in a ball on the floor crying my eyes out, unable to breathe properly. NOT much fun!

Since that first plaster + corset "operation" I've has 2 further ops ("proper anaesthetic-types"), the last was in Dec '14. So to those who've had a "magical permanent cure" by whatever means, I'd have to say PLEASE BE CAREFUL: The chances are that you now have some in-built "weakness" and you need to take more than normal care in your normal daily life - bend your knees (a lot) when lifting, don't over-reach, don't over-stretch, etc, etc.

I well remember being in the Physio pool with the Physiotherapist (VERY NICE bathing suit!) at the Rehab centre after my 3rd back op, and through the big windows we could see the blokes working on a new extension to the centre. "Look at that bloke there" she said, "If he carries on like that he's going to have back problems in later years", and sure enough, he wasn't lifting in "the proper way".

I know a lot of members here do work on building sites and do a lot of other "physical work", and based on my own experience when I was servicing aeroplanes, we do, all of us, make moves sometimes that will create new problems or bring back old problems. So please take it easy.

Right now I'm sitting here (with difficulty) wearing a 3-point corset which immobilises my spine from just above the waist to just below the neck. The reason is that I've got another disc broken into 2 parts (not the same one as the original 1967 one). I had no accident, fall, etc, to bring this about, but now know I have osteoporosis - I was surprised to learn that this porosity of the bones isn't something that affects just females, men get it too, and it comes mainly from ageing (I'm 74). Another nasty that can creep up on you without you realising.

The two parts of the disc will re-join, but I must wear the thing 24/7 (except when showering!), can't drive, can't walk longer than about 15 mins, can't stand longer than than about 15/20 mins, etc, etc. I've had the "thing" on since early Oct and the quacks say it stays until early Jan, provided the next MRI and X-rays show all clear. But throughout it all I MUST do (special, reduced-type) Physio twice a week to make sure no further nerve damage occurs

I'm not looking for sympathy here, and repeat that all back problems are definitely distinct to each person, but having acted like a lunatic in my own physical work back in my 20s it's, clear that if most of us aren't always thinking about what we're doing physically. That way you definitely can be storing up problems for the future - as above, "DAMHIKT"!.

But at least medicine has moved on since 1967, and although my present corset is far from being funny, it's MILES better than the plaster & corset rig up I experienced back then.

Blimey, what a rant! Sorry all, but I hope there's something in all the above that may help someone (BTW, the above took 2 separate sessions sitting at the keyboard - went out for a fag break in the middle). :D
 
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