2. Guidebook to Low Back Pain: Diagnosis and Treatment

By Me

On June 23-28, 2022, my guidebook was presented in Washington, DC, at the American Library Association Conference and Exhibition! There were an estimated 25,000 in attendance, including librarians, press, film producers, and celebrities.

This Guidebook to Low Back Pain: Diagnosis and Treatment was a significant endeavor for me. I so much appreciate and thank MainSpring Books for accepting it as your top 10 selected for exhibition. Here is an overall review of the book.

Audience. If you have back or neck pain, this book is for you. I describe our novel and stepwise pain protocol, modified from the wonderful work of Dr. Forest Tennant, Dr.P.H. You are walked through every step of pain, from insomnia to relationships.

This book is unique because it provides pictures of backs that most doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists and massage therapists and other health professionals have never seen.

Uniqueness. Or, more correctly, most have seen backs like these, but they did not recognize what they were looking at. That is because they were not trained to recognize diagnoses like spinal adhesive arachnoiditis or EDS.

Co-Morbidities. This guidebook describes co-morbidities found with severe, unrelenting low back pain in detail, the most common of which is Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome or EDS. Many with EDS may also have dysautonomia or Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), a neurogenic bladder, osteopenia/osteoporosis, gastroparesis, pelvic pain, lower legs with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD) or Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), and more.

Mental Health. Many patients with chronic low back pain or failed back syndrome also have been met with an array of doctors who do not prescribe pain medications, and essentially do nothing for patients but offer over-the-counter medications, perhaps sedatives for anxiety, all of which are insufficient at treating these patients.

They arrive traumatized by past experiences and a battery of doctors who did not believe their symptoms.

Readiness. Patients with chronic low back pain deserve a good, hard, look at what happened and why they were so adversely affected. Was the injury proportional to the accident? If it was out of proportion, that is a red flag for EDS.

Fortunately, once the practitioner knows how to do it, it is not difficult to diagnose EDS. Much of the diagnosis relies on clinical and family history, as there is no genetic test that reliably diagnosis the most common type of EDS, the hypermobility type. But fortunately, most patients were cheerleaders, were hyperflexible, and make the diagnosis based on the Beighton Score. Many patients have family members that died of a cerebral or aortic aneurysm.

Getting a Diagnosis. Don't have a diagnosis for your back? Then you can't get the right treatment. Use this book to discover the root of your problem, so you can heal.

Additional Audiences. Because of the detail, it is also good for those who have a medical record of their history of injury after an epidural for labor pain, or an ER spinal tap that led to upper extremity paralysis or postdural puncture headache, respectfully.

The reason this book is filled with so much detail is because we are a national referral center for EDS and spinal adhesive arachnoiditis. We have seen more cases than most doctors see in one lifetime, making this book an essential for any health care provider who works with the back or spinal cord.

Thank you for remembering how to help those with unrelenting back pain. They deserve a close look at not only the structural problem, but the etiology of why their injury is not healing but persists to the point where they have central pain.

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