Back Pain Support Group

You need to be very careful with an inversion table. If you have a diagnosis of what is wrong with you, and you're certain of that, then you need to do your research and be sure that an inversion table is an appropriate treatment for your diagnosis. If not, you could do some major damage. If it is, then by all means, it is usually very helpful.

However, you also need to know exactly how to use it and to use it properly. If you do not, you could also end up doing damage to your injured area as well as damage your back in other ways. So, be sure you know what you're doing before you do it.

If you don't have a proper diagnosis, these tables should never be used under any circumstances. Your best bet is to speak with your doctor and be sure he or she has authorized the use of one, but if you haven't had diagnostics, a doctor's authorization is, IMHO, not good enough. I'd push for diagnostics, and then get the authorization.

Hope that makes sense, and I hope you get what you need out of your treatment. Have you had PT at all? I can't remember a lot of details about your condition... Have you gotten an actual diagnosis of what's going on? You have probabaly told us, but I have FMS and CFS, so I don't always remember everything about our members! So sorry!

Good luck, and let us know how things go for you!

Hugs,

jen

Last time I went into his office, he had started taking welfare patients, and in the waiting room looked like a bunch of drug addicts laying around. His wife a Dr was filling in for his nurse. AIDS had become big in the news, and she was covered from head to toe, with a long white coat, rubber gloves, a mask and a Face Shield..

I was thinking of the table for tightness in my lower back.

Although I have also had many bad experiences with dr.s and especially with chronic pain they seem to be guessing, I still wouldnt agree to any treatment which has potential to damages without a dr. If I didnt like my dr., I would look for another one.

I have had a herniated disk and an annual tear in another disk.

Have you tried anything more natural for pain relief? Like a tens unit, heating pad, physical therapy, etc.?

Post edited by: newrsd, at: 02/19/2011 11:08 PM

I think it would be very dangerous to use the table without an accurate diagnosis. Given what you're describing it sounds like you could have some nerve damage, and you really need to know exactly WHY you have nerve damage. You could have diseases of your discs or joints, you could have a nerve disorder or disease, you could also have any number of other conditions that could cause that nerve damage.

I agree that finding the right doctor who will order the correct tests (x-rays, MRI, etc) and the appropriate treatments (whether it be the table, PT, TENS unit, hot/cold therapy, etc) is key to determining not only what is wrong but how to treat it. If you don't seek an accurate diagnosis, tightness in the back isn't a diagnosis, it's just a symptom, and it can be a symptom of any number of things, and you may inadvertently re-injure the area over and over again, and eventually may do irreparable damage.

We don't say these things to irritate you or upset you. But sadly, most of us have been in your position. I fought for years to get a diagnosis, not only for my back but for other conditions, and I can tell you that getting it right and getting on the right treatment protocol made all the difference.

You can experiment with treatments all you want and go with as much natural remedies as you want, but until you know the cause of the pain, you will be playing hide and go seek with that pain and your treatments may work, but will likely be bound to fail at one point or another. I'm sorry to have to say that, but that is how it works. You'll get relief for a while, and once your body adjusts to it, you'll get a tolerance, and your body will need more of whatever you're doing. I think that's why you're finding that most things you try work sometimes and don't others.

That's just how it works. Even once you have a diagnosis, this may still occur, because you usually have to change your meds around. Back pain really isn't something to fool around with, because you have to remember that it is your stablizing force, it is what holds you up. If it goes out, you may be done with. It's something you have to protect.

I hope this will help you to get on the ball and find a better doctor who really can help you! Good luck, and keep us updated.

Hugs,

jen

I had a pulmonary function test early on, and they had to recalibrate the machine, saying they usually test 90 yr old emphysema patient, though I was gasping, and almost falling off the stool from the exertion. Another site, when I told them some of the #'s, told me they never saw #'s that good. They were doing an asbestoses study, so said, that was probably why, but they said, no, that sometimes they test for insurance purposed, when someone is going to work on a dusty site, and the best they had ever tested was a non smoking jogger half my age, and his weren't as good. I went to a neurologist at the Univ of Penn hospital, and he didn't have any answers. I started going to their med school library to look them up for myself. Looked up things for my hounds in their vet school library also.

I went to a Dr I knew had been working with agent orange cases, and when I asked him about a soldier he had been on TV with, he asked ME how he was doing. In his waiting room, I read an article by a Dr about similar symptoms, and a chemical that was in the copy machine ink that was in the office, and I called him in the Bahamas, and would have thought he didn't write the article.

Because a Dr said, my RBC's were probably damaged from the chems, but wouldn't test for it, saying it wasn't proven yet, I decided to contact a hemotologist a friends dad had been goig to before he died after 13yrs from leukemia, where he sometimes would get whole body transfusions. I called and the phone just rang and rang. I went to see my friends mom, but she wasn't in, so went to see their neighbors who were involved with the situation, and told them I was trying to contact the Dr with no Luck, and they said, I wouldn't have any, because he was in jail for selling drugs... I got to a hematologist on welfare, and he had me go through a Schillings test for B-12 absorption, and said I was absorbing. Then I find out the test isn't very accurate. I had to request a blood test for B-12, which said I was low, and that you have 18mo before perminant CNS damage occurs, and I didn't figure it out for about 20mo. I had picked up a Merck Manual, and, I kept missing the info about pernicious anemia, because it started with 2 lines on the bottom of a page, and with my vision problems, I kept missing it.

A friends surgeon uncle was blacking out while driving, and he had to go to the Mayo clinic, to find out the drugs a fellow Dr friend had him on was causing it.

Can you recommend a Dr?? The one who I knew who did prolo died, and I went to about 20, with little help, except what I pieced together, from many sources.

Post edited by: houndman, at: 02/20/2011 09:38 PM

It is funny, that we had similar injuries, and he kept saying WE weren't going to live long. He said, 10yrs a lot. I told him to speak for himself, and didn't know how long I had, as no one does, but since my grandfather lived to be 104, doing what he felt like, till a hospital killed him with infections, I wonder if I will make it that long. I'm a lot like him, and do many of the same things, Though I had an injury he didn't.

A physical therapist scoffed when I asked what he thought about cod liver oil that an old guy at the courts had just told me, asking if it Lubed the joints. The old guy was 70,and used to walk the 3 mi around thepark daily,and said he had been taking the cod for 7 yrs for his arthritis. I don't know what was causing my knee pain, but it fixed it for 20yrs, but a GF who said she had arthritis said it worked for her.

When my dad looked like I felt in the heat in the summer, when they started to warn about using salt, and read me the riot act, when I told him I had to take a salt tab eyery 15 min to play tennis in the heat, and started when I was disoriented at home, and when I remembered in the service, they had a salt tab dispenser on the water coolers, and only taking it straight, with water worked, and all my Dr said was, if it works, use it. I had to find out why, since it Was extreme. My GF at the time was Very salt sensitive, and seeing a salt shaker on the coffee table where I often ate, flipped out, calling it poison. For her, Yes... My dad who cut out All salt had a massive heart attack a few mo later. The salt warners didn't warn about Renin, which is released if we Don't have enough salt to regulate BP, and it does it by restricting blood flow, and in a recent study said, it can Clamp the blood vessels like In A Vise... When in CCU, dad told me to smoke, eat, and drink anything I wanted to. He told me to do what my grandfather did, not him, who was there to visit, and had just come back from spending a summer in Europe, by himself, at age 99. He said he does whatever he wants to, and who's in the bed??

I'm having a hard time making sense of all your posts, so I'm not sure if I'm just having a foggy day from my FMS or if you just sorta ran on some in your posts, or perhaps a bit of both. However, a lot of medical information is anecdotal, a lot of it comes from tests where doctors wish to prove one thing (and with enough money behind you, you can do that) and other doctors wish to prove another so info becomes contradictory, and too much information is available online--all of which can be written by anyone who wants to post in, and none of it has to be honest.

So, you have a plethora of information out there, but who knows who is correct? You have to learn your own body and go with what feels right, but you also have to have a doctor you trust. If you aren't relying on your own doctor, who has examined you and declared you either fit or ill, and made recommendations based on such, then you have nothing true to go by. Opinions of neighbors, friends of friends, cousins, fathers, sister, brothers, etc, are only opinions, and have no basis in what you should do.

No opinions or so-called facts posted online will give you what you need until you've spoken with your own doctor who's seen you for your condition within the last year, and preferably within the last 6 months. If you choose to try to treat a condition otherwise, then you are doing so without the consent of your doctor, and if you discuss it here, and ask our opinions, and we suggest you go see the doctor, there's not a lot more we can do.

Also, unfortunately, we don't keep a doctor database here, other than the one that is kept within the entire MDJ site. I don't know where you live, so that also doesn't help me in advising you. If you live in the Atlanta, GA, area, I might be able to advise you on who I see, and you can decide if you want the information on my doctors or not, but otherwise, I'm sorry to say that you'll have to search in your area and try to find someone with whom your opinions and the doctors will mesh.

I hope that helps you some.

Hugs,

jen