What can help your low back pain if your doctor advises to "wait and watch"

A recently published article in the Globe & Mail entitled "Unnecessary medical treatments can hurt budgets and patients too" listed fifteen tests or procedures deemed unnecessary or potentially harmful by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP).

Number 1 on the list was "Don't do imaging for low back pain in the first six weeks unless red flags are present. Low back pain is one of the top reasons for visits to family physicians, but imaging -- CT scan or MRI -- does not improve outcomes for most people."

There is very little other than surgery that doctors can do about back pain. They can mask it with analgesics, anti-inflammatories and muscle relaxants, but that does not address the cause. If a painkiller masks your pain, you will likely continue to perform the actions that caused your back injury in the first place, possibly making it worse.You would likely do better with physiotherapy, osteopathy, or chiropractic, physiotherapy in particular because a physiotherapist will prescribe exercises for you that will strengthen your back and help prevent future attacks.

I like working with physiotherapists in my bioenergy practice. I feel I complement what physiotherapists do (and vice versa). They complement what I do by teaching people how to keep the gains they made through energy treatments. I complement what they do by helping people get better faster.

So if you do have that dreaded low back pain and your doctor chooses the "wait and watch" approach advised by the AAFP, come and see me.

Another instance of "guerilla healing"

It seems I can't stand seeing people in pain and not doing something about it.

I was on the beach last week late in the day when few people were around. The water was too cold and rough to swim so I lay on my towel watching the world go by. Near me was a man who periodically got up to walk around to stretch his limbs and who was clearly in some kind of pain.

My assessment watching him was that he had some kind of lower back pain. His right side looked "locked up" and he was limping. Occasionally he even grimaced.

After a while I couldn't stand watching him any more, so I made myself decent (didn't want to pounce on him wearing only a bathing suit) and approached him to ask if he would permit me to give him an energy treatment.

After I explained what I proposed to do, he consented.

It needs to be said here that what I do involves no manipulation nor do I actually need to physically touch the person I am treating.

It turned out that he didn't have back pain. He explained that two years ago he had knee surgery to repair torn ligaments on his right side (the one that looked locked up), but his pain now was in his left hip. He surmised that the surgery left his right leg shorter than the left and that resulted in wear and tear and osteoarthritis in the opposite hip. He had had the pain for quite some time and had been told that he would only find relief if he had a hip replacement. Younger than me, he didn't look old enough for arthritis or the drastic step for a hip replacement.

So I did a discrete treatment right there on the beach, focusing on the painful hip. Occasionally I asked him to stand up and walk around to see if we were making progress. He reported less pain on each try, but the pain was still present. Then, ten minutes before I had to leave, it came to me that I should not be treating his left side but his right, which was the one that called my attention in the first place. Specifically, it came to me that I should be treating his right knee.

No, no, he protested. The surgeon told him that the surgery had been perfect and the knee, thought it would never be perfect, did not give him trouble.

I treated his knee anyway and told him to try walking around again.

This time, there was no hip pain and he moved with much greater ease. He was quite pleased.

How could working on his right knee help the pain in his left hip? Through the principle of "tensegrity". This is something an osteopath friend told me about many years ago. Osteopaths treat your connective tissue, without which you would be a formless puddle on the floor. Your connective tissue is, by definition, all connected. Pulling on it at one spot affects other spots in other areas of the body. My friend once successfully treated a frozen shoulder by treating adhesions caused by a hysterectomy. So essentially, if something is wrong in one area of the body, it affects other areas by causing misalignment. Physiotherapists would probably say it's all about compensation, the tendency to favour compromised areas of the body by shifting your weight to other areas.

A geodesic dome or a "Bucky ball" would be an example of tensegrity:

You can clearly see how pulling on any of the black balls would deform the entire structure. Pull hard enough, and it stops being viable.

Any kind of surgery is likely to interfere with the energetic integrity of the body by creating blockages through scar tissue. As I was treating this man's knee, he reported feeling pins and needles similar to when the sensation returns after your foot has fallen asleep. Once the energy blockage cleared, his right side no longer seemed "locked up" and he moved more freely, and the pain in his left hip magically disappeared.

Three for three

I have now treated three people for my bioenergy healing knee study. The third person was someone who has had five arthroscopic surgeries and had residual pain and stiffness in the knee that had been operated on, especially after he exercised. After 4 treatments he reported 95% functioning and almost zero pain, and much faster recovery after exercise. One of the other participants reports that the improvements she experienced after her four treatments (no pain and full functioning) continue to hold. The other was pain free after three sessions. All three participants had had knee issues for many years prior to seeing me, and two of them rated their pain prior to the treatments as 8.5 out of a possible 10, on a scale where 0 meant no pain and 10 was the worst pain they had ever had.

How useful is arthroscopic surgery?

A study soon to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that arthroscopic knee surgery for a torn meniscus or osteoarthritis produced results little better than physiotherapy and exercise. On a hundred-point functioning and pain scale those who had surgery had an average of 20.9 points of improvement and those who did physiotherapy and exercise, 18.5. The results were more or less the same at 6 months as at 12 months. An earlier study comparing surgery with exercise alone showed similar results for patellofemoral syndrome (pain in the front of the knee) and another done in 2002 comparing arthroscopic surgery versus sham surgery for osteoarthritis of the knee found that

In this controlled trial involving patients with osteoarthritis of the knee, the outcomes after arthroscopic lavage or arthroscopic débridement were no better than those after a placebo procedure.

In my own little study two participants, one with chronic patellofemoral syndrome and another with chronic severe knee pain, have found significant improvements both in pain relief and functioning immediately after the first session, and experienced further improvements in subsequent sessions, both well beyond the 18.5 or 20.9 per cent improvement posited by the NEJM study for surgery and physiotherapy with exercise.

Update April 10th: One participant who had been told by a doctor that she was looking at a knee replacement "down the line" reported zero pain and full functioning after her last (fourth out of four) bioenergy treatment. The other participant, who had been diagnosed with chronic patellofemoral syndrome, reported full functioning and zero pain after her third treatment. I will now do regular follow-up to monitor their condition.

Knee study distance healing extension

If you live anywhere in Canada outside of Toronto or in the U.S. and you have knee pain, you may be eligible for the distance portion of my knee study.

Please contact me if you are interested in participating.

Surgical wait times for knee replacements not improving - CBC

I just ran across this item on CBC news: "surgical wait times for priority medical treatments like hip and knee replacements are not going down despite concerted efforts in all provinces to improve the situation, a new report shows."

That means there are a lot of you and a lot of your loved ones out there in considerable pain, suffering daily and looking at a diminished quality of life, not able to do many things that make life worth living.

You are probably taking pain-killers and anti-inflammatories, receiving steroid injections, and possibly having painful physiotherapy and even paying for it out of pocket.

At the same time you are probably unaware that there is something out there that could help you: bioenergetic rehabilitation.

If you were willing to try it, you could already experience noticeable change after one single treatment. There is no manipulation of tissue; no drugs; only bioenergy. You may feel some heat, some electricity, some tingling, or nothing at all but an easing, relaxation, and less pain. If it doesn't work for you, you will know it the day after that first treatment. But if it works, you might be amazed at the change.

One person who was amazed was my former fellow college alumnus George, now a neurologist, whose debilitating knee pain gradually vanished after one single treatment. He needed pain-killers to drive and when I asked him what his pain level was on a scale of 0 to 10 when he came, he said it was 8. He had had the knee condition for two years and even steroid injections had only helped temporarily. His knee felt better immediately after I treated him, two weeks later his pain level was 3 (and he no longer needed pain-killers to drive) and over the space of a month he said his pain went away. He was so impressed, he wrote a testimonial on my website.

Please come and try it. You could be in less pain and experiencing more mobility tomorrow, instead of waiting for months or years.

Update on knee study

My knee study is proceeding apace -- except now it's a knee and shoulder study. People are coming in saying "yes, I have a knee problem but my (fill in the blank) is worse". Sometimes the fill in the blank, for instance plantar fasciitis or heel pain, would affect the gait and therefore the knee, so it makes sense for me to treat it as well. And so many people responded who had shoulder issues that I expanded the study to include shoulders.

I am meeting some very interesting people. So far everyone has been a believer in energy healing. But I don't just want believers. I also want to include people who know nothing about energy healing and people who think it's bunk. In the intake questionnaire I ask respondents both about their injury and their general attitude to energy healing. I am curious to see whether belief correlates to outcome.

Respondents receive four free energy treatments for their condition. In addition to the intake questionnaire, there is regular follow-up to document progress. Ultimately my hope is to take the results (if the results warrant) to doctors who deal with patients who are waiting for knee surgery and to present energy healing to them as an alternative to the current protocols used for pain relief.

Participants wanted for bioenergy healing knee study

I have had a good deal of success treating injured and painful knees and have had many people vouch for my skill. However, all this is "anecdotal", which carries little weight with the medical community. As a result, I would like to do a more comprehensive study of the effectiveness of "bioenergetic rehabilitation" in treating knee pain. Please note that bioenergetic rehabilitation does not involve physical manipulation of the knee.

I am looking for participants located in Toronto for the hands-on portion of the study and for participants living anywhere in Canada, the U.S., or the U.K. for the distance portion. Participants will be asked to provide a name, a recent photograph, and contact information, and to fill out a questionnaire about their condition and their attitudes to energy healing prior to receiving treatment. Four half-hour treatments will be given, with follow-up in between and afterwards. The cash value of the treatments is $200, but they will be offered free in exhange for participation in the study. Participants agree not to receive other treatment such as acupuncture, physiotherapy, or chiropractic for the duration of the study, which should be a month.

Please click here if you would like to participate or if you have questions.

Yet another successful knee intervention

This testimonial came from a skeptical MD:

"I injured my knee 2 years ago and developed persistent pain. It was interfering with walking, exercising and even driving. I tried anti-inflammatory medications, and an orthopedic surgeon injected steroids in the knee. As a physician (I am a neurologist) I have very conservative views of how illness occurs and how treatments work, but I became desperate. I was really skeptical when Judith offered to help me. To my complete astonishment (and joy) the healing touch worked, and the pain gradually disappeared after a month. I am able to do everything now, and I don’t take any pain killers. I still don’t know how or why the treatment worked, but work it did. I am grateful to Judith for what she did."

Click here to read all the testimonials.