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Sciatica Fear
Sciatica Fear / InjuryOk, let’s start out by acknowledging the patients who do experience pain from an injury. This is common and an injury can cause severe back pain and sciatica. However, injuries will heal. The body is designed to repair itself and this is one of the most efficient processes in the entire human anatomy. Given proper care and time, typical injuries to the back and spine will resolve in a matter of several weeks to a few months time. There is simply no reasonable explanation why a person would demonstrate ongoing pain from an injury for years or even an entire lifetime, unless that injury was catastrophic…The reason for continuing sciatica symptoms has much more to do with the nocebo effect of the diagnostic process. Doctors sometimes warn the patient that they are permanently damaged and must be careful in all they do. This advice might be given out of concern, but displays a fundamental lack of understanding how these words can enact a chronic pain syndrome. This advice might also be provided in an effort to enslave the patient into a long term and highly profitable treatment regimen. This is the case with the many back pain injury mills which have thankfully become prime targets for prosecution by law enforcement agencies. Regardless, these warnings are taken deeply to heart and are often reinforced by caring family and friends who only want the best for the injured person. “BE CAREFUL with your BACK!” These words repeated ad nauseum will certainly produce the beginning of fear and frustration, since the patient can not live a full life and will really consider themselves to be irreparably damaged goods… Sciatica Fear / DegenerationIf there is no obvious injury present, most sciatica symptoms will be linked to some degenerative process in the spine. This might be a herniated disc or the laughably named degenerative disc disease. Maybe it is spinal osteoarthritis or one of its specifically named effects, such as bone spur growth or facet joint syndrome, which suffers the blame…Spinal degeneration is NORMAL, EXPECTED and UNIVERSAL. You have it. I have it. Your doctor has it! Degenerative changes have been vilified by the medical establishment as scapegoats used to explain otherwise idiopathic dorsopathy conditions, such as sciatica. Once again, the fear comes into play due to the diagnostic process and the subsequent warnings to be careful. Etc… Sciatica Fear AdviceMost sciatica concerns are the result of the complex interactions between the mind and body. The pain is enacted to serve some psychological imperative, not because of some structural weakness. This is the reason why most patients do not get better. Doctors might treat the structural concerns, but since these are coincidental to the pain, the symptoms continue on and on and on and...On the other hand, most patients who recognize this logical explanation and use
knowledge therapy
to act upon the emotional reasons for their pain recover completely, regardless of the varied structural diagnoses they have received. I know this for a fact, since I am one of them and have helped tens of thousands of others personally find this same lasting
relief.
7/3/08 Revised 12/17/09
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