A back specialist is a healthcare provider who specializes in the treatment of symptomatic dorsal problems. Chiropractors, physical therapists and several types of medical doctors might specialize in treating back and spine conditions. Unfortunately for many patients, the emphasis of care is often placed on ongoing treatment, rather than accurate diagnosis leading to a true cure.
When a specialist wants to really help a patient, there is a good chance that the diagnosis achieved will be correct, the treatment prescribed will be effective and the relief enacted will endure. When the specialist is more interested in money than the patient’s health, the expert may use their knowledge and position to enslave the patient into long-term and highly profitable treatment or coerce them into sometimes unnecessary or premature spinal operations.
Back Specialist Problems
Back pain is an epidemic condition affecting up to 85% of all people during life. Chronic back pain is an ongoing problem for hundreds of millions of suffering patients.
Back ache is usually blamed on some physical abnormality, yet treatments often have little positive effect, even when the suspected anatomical source is completely resolved. Most patients with chronic symptoms skip from one treatment to another, searching for some measure of pain relief, but most often never finding it.
Many pain specialists find excuse after excuse for reasons why the symptoms will not get better. Many patients do not even question their doctor about why the treatments are failing. What medical science really needs to do is to step back and look at chronic pain objectively and as part of the total condition of mind and body health. Instead, many specialists compartmentalize disease, injury and degeneration, treat them separately and wonder why the entire human being does not respond to care.
It is crucial for all types of doctors to realize that pain can be a direct result of mindbody processes, as well as specific physical circumstances. Not considering this basic fact of humanity explains the poor results offered by so many treatments and providers.
Back Specialist Debate
Most doctors advise seeking medical attention for any serious pain. I would agree that this seems like prudent and wise advice. However, research studies have proven that patients who do not seek medical attention for acute back pain recover faster and more completely than patients receiving treatment.
When I read the European whiplash studies, which first documented this occurrence, I was in shock. How could this be possible? The answer to this question is simple, yet complicated. Let’s look deeper.
Spinal Specialist Nocebo
Patients receiving care for their pain are often diagnosed with some horrific sounding spinal condition. The patient is told that they are sick, broken or in some way damaged, and instantly suffer a psychological effect known as nocebo. This psychological suggestion often makes the actual pain and diagnosed condition much worse in the patient’s own mind.
The nocebo effect is well documented in medicine and can escalate both mindbody and purely anatomical pain syndromes. Unfortunately, most doctors do not take it into account when diagnosing a patient and some actually play it up to keep a patient in continuing treatment.
Back Specialist Misdiagnosis
It is amazing. In the time since I have written my various books and started this website, I have seen countless articles published that show a clear link between physical pain and the psychological realm. It is obvious that most doctors practicing physical medicine simply ignore these studies and continue to deny the mindbody link in favor of the antiquated and incorrect Cartesian philosophy of symptoms.
The reality of chronic pain is that some patients suffer from agony that is influenced through a psychosomatic process. Their symptoms usually fall into one of 2 categories:
Pain may be purely psychogenic. The mind creates the pain as a defense mechanism against repressed emotional conditions.
Pain might start due to injury or degeneration, but is perpetuated and/or worsened by some psychological process.
Regardless, 99.9% of these patients are misdiagnosed as having pain from a definite physical source. It is not hard to locate some scapegoat condition in the spine, since almost all of us have common spinal abnormalities often blamed for back pain
Osteoarthritis, degenerative disc disease and herniated discs are so common that they are almost universal in the adult population.
Guidance on Seeing a Back Specialist
Medical attention is important. I still advise going to a doctor for any unexplained pain or symptoms. However, being under the care of a physician does not let you off the hook for being responsible for your own health.
You must still learn the facts about back pain and any other condition you are diagnosed with. You must ask questions and make your doctor accountable for their diagnosis and treatments.
You must realize when a mistake has been made. You must also pay attention to the potential risks of many therapy modalities, especially surgery and drugs.
When it all comes down to it, you must be the one to help cure your own pain. Regardless of the cause, your suffering will not end till you do everything in your power to end it. If you rely on a doctor who treats pain for a living, odds are that you will continue to have lots of pain to treat.
