Thursday, February 7, 2019

The Blueprint for Back Pain Relief Review

Disclosure: I was provided a review copy of The Blueprint for Back Pain Relief. As always, all opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links, and www.andreaswellnessnotes.com will benefit from actions taken on the links. 



I recently had the opportunity to review The Blueprint for Back Pain Relief: The Essential Guide to Non-Surgical Solutions by Bradford T. Butler, D.C.

Dr. Butler starts out by outlining his own poor health during his youth and how chiropractic treatment was able to heal him. That experience inspired him to become a chiropractor himself so that he would be able to help patients in the same way he had been helped.

The book gives a lot of statistics as well as patient histories involving back pain. Dr. Butler points out repeatedly that in our current health care system only the symptoms of back pain are treated and not the causes. He makes a convincing case that medication and surgery are not the answer. He also makes the point that back pain causes many other debilitating conditions such as depression, sleep problems and stress.

He warns the reader that a back problem that is not treated correctly will cause more damage and, eventually, there will be a point of no return. He gives examples from his own practice where patients waited too long and, unfortunately, he wasn't able to help them anymore at some point.

Dr. Butler makes a very convincing point that chiropractic care should be, at least in part, preventative care. He draws a very successful analogy to dental care. Today, we mostly got to the dentist to prevent potential future problems. But that was not always the case. In the past, people only went to the dentist when they had a tooth ache. We can easily see that our teeth would be in much worse shape if we still did that today. And it's the same with our back.

Unfortunately, as we age, our pain threshold increases, and, Dr. Butler points out, this increased threshold may mean that we do more damage to our back because we don't seek treatment soon enough. That's why preventative care is so important, and we really should view our neck and back like our teeth. This is especially important because sometimes the back pain may subside, but the underlying problem will not subside without treatment.

To treat back pain, there have to be enough treatments so that the body can adapt back to what a healthy spine looks like and how it functions. Dr. Butler outlines different problems and how many treatments they require on average. He also points out that there needs to be a maintenance plan so that the correction of the problem can be maintained.

An interesting point Dr. Butler makes is to ask yourself if you move with ease. You may not experience pain, but you still may not move with ease. And that could be a warning sign of problems to come.

Dr. Butler also includes a quite comprehensive discussion of regions of the spine, which is very helpful in understanding where you have a problem versus calling it "back pain," which is quite a large region.

The book also talks about the two main types of injuries: traumatic and overuse. Dr. Butler points out that overuse injuries are especially problematic because they are often less severe, and the patient may think that the problem is therefore minor and not address it for a long time while it's in reality getting more and more severe over that period of time.

In conclusion, The Blueprint for Back Pain Relief is a comprehensive book that convincingly argues against drug treatments and surgery and for chiropractic treatment. In doing so, Dr. Butler educates the reader about the physiology of back pain and where it originates and gives many real life examples from his practice. Anyone how lives with back pain or who is not moving with ease should read the book to educate themselves about possible causes and treatment options. The Kindle version of the book currently sells for less than a cup of coffee (I believe the price will increase soon), and I think for many it'll be the best dollars they have spent in awhile.

Question: Do you ever experience back pain? If so, what, if anything, do you do to alleviate it? Have you ever seen a chiropractor? Or do you see a chiropractor regularly?

Be well,
Andrea