Thursday, January 13, 2011

Back pain....another perspective

Michael Allen Smith  has an interesting post on his back pain

2 comments:

Tim said...

I watched the interview of John Sarno. Interesting that he often sees a correlation between allergies and back pain. I've been thinking about that myself the last couple of weeks. The ones I know who have back problems also have allergies or signs of gut issues.

I get back pain when running a lot and my posture could be better. In addition to that I've always had allergies. But I'm not sure I buy the reasoning that stress is what causes my allergy. I had the allergies when I was only a few years old.

I suspect cortisol (causing fight-and-flight response which increases muscle tension) could be the issue here. Chronic psychological issues can definitely cause chronicly elevated cortisol, but I suspect so can allergies and food intolerances. Maybe for some the sum of both the psychologically mediated cortisol and gut problem mediated cortisol is necessary before symptoms show and dealing with the psychological issues is enough for the symptoms to go away.

This is just guessing from my part, but it's a theory at least. I've ordered a cortisol test to try my theory. Then I will try something like the GAPS diet to get rid of my allergies and heal the gut and then I'll see if that had any effect on cortisol and back pain.

Anonymous said...

Hi Tim, I'm interested in what you found with this - could you relate your back problems to your diet or stress levels. Thanks for posting!