Experts advise therapy, medication for back problems

• By JOHN BOYD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Aug 28, 2008 - Page: 1E - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Exercise can be the best thing for a healthy back.

Exercise tapes can be the best thing for a healthy physical therapy business.

“Tae Bo was great for my business; Jane Fonda was great for the business,” physical therapist Gus Gutierrez said, speaking Saturday at the Louisiana Men’s Health Conference.

Gutierrez and neurologist Dr. Kelly Scrantz attended the conference to speak about spinal health and the primary causes for back pain.

Work-out videos are just one of them.

When it comes to exercising — or even just performing daily activities — too many people don’t follow the proper technique for keeping a healthy back, Gutierrez said.

What is worse, Gutierrez said, is at some time in their lives, most people knew how to use their back properly but just forgot.

As an example, he pointed to how a small girl might pick up an object on the floor: rotating her legs out at the hip, bending at the knees and, with the object held to the chest for support, lifting with her legs.

“But what do we do?” he said, bending at the waist to pick up the imaginary object, creating a sharp, unhealthy arch in his back.

“The classic history is someone comes in, says they bent over to pick up a pencil and their back buckled,” Gutierrez said.

According to Scrantz, more than 90 percent of people will experience severe back pain at some time in their lives, propping up a $23 billion a year industry.

Back pain’s primary causes are accidents, poor balance, spine instability, poor posture and buckling — or what doctors call “single event movement injuries.”

Of the millions of back pain sufferers, only a relative few will require back surgery.