Each year millions of people struggle with lower back pain and unfortunately, many of them unnecessarily.
The reason is most of the treatments that patients with back pain receive only address the symptoms. And while treating the symptoms can provide some pain relief, it is often only temporary. If you want to get lasting relief, you have to look deeper than just the symptom or even the condition.
The two words that are keeping you in pain
If you suffer from lower back pain, or any other physical condition or injury for that matter, I am willing to bet that you have never heard these two words from the mouth of your doctor, physical therapist or other health care provider.
So what are these two mysterious words? Muscle Imbalances.
See, what most people don't realize is that lower back pain is typically a process, meaning it develops over time. While people tend to attach it to an incident like shoveling snow, sneezing or picking up a box, the fact is the problem has been there for months or years but you are just now aware because there's now pain.
Here's what happens...
Over time, various muscle groups in our body become out of balance. One muscle gets stronger while the opposing muscle gets weaker. This imbalance pulls our bones, joints and spine out of alignment. These muscle imbalances force our body to function in a dysfunctional way and this places excessive, uneven and unnecessary strain and wear and tear on our muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, cartilage and spinal discs.
While we can function with the imbalances, it usually isn't long before the body breaks down. A good analogy is to think about your car. What happens when your steering is out of alignment? Your car pulls to one side and the tires wear down unevenly and if you don't deal with the underlying problem, eventually you'll have a blow out. Well the same is true for your body.
The real key to eliminating lower back pain (or any other ache, pain or injury) is to start at the beginning and that means you need to identify and address the underlying cause, which is almost always, muscle imbalances. So if you are dealing with lower back pain, or any other condition, I suggest you make identifying your muscle imbalances your number one priority and once you do, you'll be on your way to lasting relief.
While this evaluation and treatment approach is extremely effective, it is not well known so you will likely have a very hard time finding a health care professional that is trained in this approach. The good news is, there are simple "self tests" you can do on your own to get very good idea of what dysfunctions you have and the underlying muscle imbalances that have created your condition and pain.
Jesse Cannone is a certified fitness trainer, rehabilitation specialist and co-founder of the Healthy Back Institute. He is recognized expert in the treatment of back pain and has been featured on both television news programs like NBC, radio programs across the US, magazines like Woman's World, Entrepreneur and on leading website like Spine-Health.com, Ediets.com and About.com. Over 32,000 people in 94 different countries around the world have used his "Lose The Back Pain" system to eliminate their pain.