Sunday, September 20, 2009

Spinal Therapies

The quest to reverse/cure/control my degerenerative lumbar disc disease continues. Last time I talked about my experience with Bowen Therapy. I haven't tried anything new yet, but I've been poking around for other options. Among them is non-surgical spinal decompression therapy, using a device called the DRX-9000.

I'm quite skeptical of medical claims made my companies with no formal association with recognized clinics or hospitals. However, this therapy appears to have no negative downside, so I am considering it. My physiotherapist is rightly skeptical of its claims, as well, but agrees that it cannot hurt me. The worst that could happen is that I experience no change, and would be out a chunk of change.

Well, it's more than a chunk of change. From what I gather, the DRX9000 programme requires about 20 sessions, each costing about $200. It's essentially a system of controlled, sustained traction. Sounds rather comfortable, actually.

Being a medical scientist, I first turned to the published literature to see what studies had been conducted on the device's efficacy and safety. I've only found this one so far, "Treatment of 94 outpatients with chronic discogenic low back pain with the DRX9000: a retrospective chart review" by Macario et al at Stanford. Here's the abstract:



The chart review study --which is not the most rigorous design, admittedly-- indicates cause for optimism with respect to the DRX9000. So I'm a tad excited.

Further research led me to a product called NuCore:



NuCore is essentially an artificial gel that is injected into the disc as part of a surgical procedure. The gel hardens into a consistency comparable to that of the natural disc, providing support for the otherwise hardening and shrinking disc. Its trials are making the news in the USA, as this Fox News broadcast indicates.

As far as any reputable research goes, I've only been able to find this study from Switzerland:



The long and short of it is that this study is also optimistic about NuCore's potential, but only as an adjunct to the traditional surgical procedure of microdiscectomy.

The plot thickens. Stay tuned, my droogies.

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Thursday, September 17, 2009

The Bowen Technique

Wooden fish, stolen from donj.co.uk


I got my MRI results back this week for my chronic lower back issues. Ready? Apparently I suffer from multilevel degenerative disc disease, which essentially means that several of my intervertevbral lumbar discs have slipped out and are impinging on nerve roots and even the spinal cord. There may be physiotherapeutic solutions, or maybe some more exotic surgical interventions, but the likely eventual path in the long term is spinal fusion surgery.

So of course I freaked out. My condition is likely the result of both genetics and a history of abusing my body through decades of high impact sports. Some people want to blame my recent reliance on chiropractic treatment. But I started those well after symptoms had already appeared. Maybe chiropractic adjustments worsened my condition or maybe they made it better or maybe they did nothing at all. Hard to say. I will agree, though, that my various chiropractors should have better diagnosed my condition earlier on.

The bottom line is that I immediately started looking for other options. Spinal decompression therapy looks interesting, both non-invasive and surgical. A discectomy might be an option, as well. I've already tried traditional massage, acupuncture and Tui Na massage, with negligible results. And I've made an appointment with an osteopath, but from what I gather he won't be doing anything more than what my excellent physiotherapist already does. (So stop emailing me, you osteopath zealots!)

Today I took a stab at Bowen therapy. This youtube clip summarizes the "scientific" rationale underlying the Bowen approach. I tried it mostly because there's no possible down side, no contraindications, and it was a good way to spend a morning.

I arrived with curiosity but trepidation, given the therapy's popularity amongst the sandal-wearing set. My fears were not allayed when the therapist started using that most detested of lazy words: "energy". Zod knows I hate it when New Age types use that word in a non-physics context. The therapy involved some extremely light touches followed by minutes left alone for me to contemplate the touches. The therapist then returns after these intervals to ask about my sensations.

When I say "light touches", you must understand that it was so slight and seemingly meaningless that it was like being tapped on the shoulder or accidentally brushed by a passerby on the bus. This was supposed to be physical therapy?

To be honest, I found the process sort of silly. But I decided to give it a fair shot and enjoy the time alone and horizontal with my thoughts and odours. Surprisingly, things started to happen. In response to the "treatments", I had some random muscle twitches, then my pinkies went numb, and my left elbow just spasmed outward! Somewhere along the line, my breathing patterns shifted noticeably. I even stopped breathing entirely at one point; but didn't find it alarming at all, just interesting.

Then a really weird thing started happening. I started to hallucinate! With each "treatment" --which, remember, just involved some light poking on the knee or scalp or something-- I received a vivid waking dream. At one point I was staring intently through a window and could not look away. At another, I was following a long thin tube intensely through a building's ventilation system. In another "vision" I was --get this-- wrestling a giant wooden duck. Immediately afterwards, I was swimming in an ocean of wooden fish. In the final and most intense hallucination, I was falling towards the right. I hope the last wasn't a premonition of an upcoming political shift.

I don't know what it all means --if anything. Maybe I was dehydrated from my morning workout. I do know that this particular drug trip was cheaper without drugs. For that reason alone, I will try it again. I still don't believe in any New Age "energy" nonsense. But I do believe in neurology, and I believe the neurological explanation offered in the video above might --just might-- have some credence.

I will also add this: it's now 3 hours later and I'm mostly pain free. Mind you, I haven't moved or stressed my body at all, so who knows what that means.

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Friday, December 26, 2008

The Biggest Loser


Well, I broke my carb embargo in spectacular style today, as Ed and Meiling Wong once more stupefied us with unbelievably delicious (and a tad fattening) brunch food. The lady of the house makes something particularly yummy and life-shortening called "monkey bread", which we devoured with such voracity that I'm pretty sure we'll all need insulin shots within the week.

That means I lasted about 6 weeks of an extremely low carb existence. Mind you, I've been sliding slowly back to the land of breads and sugars this past week, with the unavoidable Christmas drunkenness and the occasional bite of cake. But otherwise I've been pretty strong. I feel pretty gross right now, though, and need to wash it all back with a litre of Metamucil!

The gastric adventure coincided with my first exposure to an episode of The Biggest Loser, that American reality show in which a bunch of fat people compete to lose pounds. I found the show ver very troubling. Here are a few observations:

  • The show advances the belief that most fat people are just mentally weak. While I certainly subscribe to the school of thought that most people lack discipline, and that discipline is one of the surest paths to success in almost all aspects of life, there is a bit of wiggle room when it comes to extreme weight gain: mental health issues, metabolic diseases, poor nutritional education, insufficient access to proper foods and scheduling demands that prevent proper shopping and exercise among them.
  • I suspect that the show deliberately selects for contestants whose weight issues are discipline based, allowing them to promote their boot camp mentality and further propagate the above belief.
  • The show promotes weight loss as the end all and be all of fitness. This is perhaps the most dangerous of its failings. It's easy, for example, for a large muscular man to lose weight quickly. If he focuses on aerobic activity and ignores hydration, he will drop muscle mass and water weight very quickly. This is not healthy weight loss. There are many more acceptable metrics of progress:
  1. Inches (or centimetres) around the waist.
  2. Pinchable fat at the belly, hips and triceps.
  3. Body tissue electrical resistance, a proxy measurement for body fat ratio.
  4. Body mass index.
  5. Energy levels and psychological disposition.
  6. Serum cholesterol, blood pressure, arterial inflammation and cardiac enzymes.
  7. Clothing size!
  8. Physical fitness benchmarks

So far, I am not impressed by this show. Maybe I'll give it a few more viewings.

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Monday, December 15, 2008

What? Work?

I've got so many things I want to blog about --the ascension of Michael Ignatieff to the leadership of Canada's Liberal Party, the possibility of military intervention in Zimbabwe, the misuse of the word "sarcasm" on dating profiles-- that the possibilities are endless!

But, see, I gave away my TV to my mother last week and I suddenly find myself unable to properly procrastinate tonight. Gasp! I feel like working! So that's what I'm going to do.

In the mean time, I want to alert you to four things. First, is this ridiculous CBC "show" called "Being Erica", which masquerades as a video blog. Man, I hate stuff like that.

Second is this video from The Other Ray of a 67 year old dude demonstrating a work-out regimen that would make you and I vomit and pass out. He's my new hero:



Third, from EK Hornbeck comes an expose about the prevalence of fake university degrees.
Um...uh.... no comment.

Finally, I leave you with a video of a lecture I attended two years ago by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen... just to prove I'm not all about just old man work-outs and dead pin-up models. To access the video, click here.

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