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“The principle problem related to diagnoses and treatment of low-back pain is that the healthcare professionals who deal in back pain come from widely divergent medical backgrounds; their approaches to a particular back problem often have little if anything in common.

“While there is no unifying force or element in back-pain analysis and treatment, most in the business share two things: 1) Most non-surgical treatments—pharmacology and adjustments—focus on how to make you simply feel better, not necessarily get better. And 2), the surgical approach, while it may relieve a terribly painful situation, fails post-operatively to restore the back to a fully functional state, a state which, had it been restored prior to surgery, may have avoided such a drastic and irreversible course in the first place.”

©Vert Mooney and BackHealth® 2006

The BackHealth® System: 1) Physical therapy's most advanced back-healing technology; 2) May be used to predict spinal failure; 3) Prevents back injury in the workplace, in sports, and at home; and 4) Peaks athletic performance. See research below. How To Have a Healthy Back Five Case Studies Coca Cola Deseret Labs

Do you know how to measure your back's health? A simple test exists that accurately predicts your back's ability or inability to function dependably. Do you know what it is? The back-extensor endurance test is the most accurate predictor of spinal risk and spinal condition ever devised. Try it. Face down, hang your torso over the edge of a bed with your hands on the floor, your legs extended onto the bed, your hip joints at the edge of the mattress.  Have someone sit on your lower legs.  With your hands locked behind your head, raise your torso to a height level with your legs. Hold your  torso solidly suspended in the air for three minutes--four minutes for extreme performance expectations. This test immediately reveals whether your spine should be exposed to the risk of even a modest lift and how it might survive an even greater challenge . The length of time that your torso remains perfectly still--from zero to 180 seconds--proportionately predicts the condition of your spine. Any movement or wavering of the torso noted first in the shoulders spells failure at that point. When a spine fails this reliability test, a daily ten-minute exercise routine performed on the safe equipment available on this website quickly elevates the spine to a dependable range of function.  To learn of the additional magic that this program works upon the spine, please read on. Progress toward a safe and reliable back is marked by a weekly return to the back-extensor endurance test while continuing the BackHealth® Exercise Routine you are about to discover.

Treatment or cure? What's the difference? Ask anyone who has experienced a back ‘episode’ and they will tell you that the medical professional who treated them did just that; they received a treatment, not necessarily a cure. (Read once again the statement Dr. Mooney makes at the top of this page.) While 'treatment' may have alleviated the pain, the lessening of pain is only the first step toward returning a back to complete heatlh.  Even surgery may be inevitable in extreme cases, but no treatment or pill—surgery included—will return the spine from a painful condition to the complete health it once enjoyed.  A failing back is ultimately cured by first calming the pain generator, then by restoring muscle strength, disc space, ranges of motion and co-ordination.  If you have been a spinal patient, in addition to being treated for pain, did the medical professional who treated your spine measure or mention measuring the condition of your spinal muscles? Did the doctor insist upon assessing your spinal muscle's ability to painlessly take your spine through its daily routine? Chances are virtually certain that such an evaluation never happened. Why, when muscles are the only motion generators in the spine--apart from being treated with muscle-relaxing drugs--was a complete evaluation of spinal muscles left out of the diagnosis?  Full and painfree spinal function happens in this sequence: First, the pain generator must be calmed, and this happens through treatment or a series of treatments. Next, thorough and precise exercise on precise equipment begins returning the spine to its original health, and, no, rolling around on a giant ball won’t accomplish all that must be done.  Until and unless a back is restored to adequate muscle strength, original disc space (or as near to original space as can be accomplished), full ranges of motion, and coordination, the ailing back will not be cured.

Help your doctor. He can't do it alone. Most of what practitioners do is to eliminate pain, but an injured spine is not healed by simply lessening pain; a spine is only healed when restored to full function, and this is where you come in. The reason specialists can't fully heal backs is that they can’t perform the theraputic exercises necessary for full spinal recovery; only you can.  Your doctor can treat your back, calming the pain generator if it fits within his field, but that is as far as he can go.  The rest is up to you.  Only you--the person with a dysfunctional back--can take the steps necessary to fully restore your back’s health.  You must help your doctor.   He can't do it alone!

The Cure To understand the intricacies of the back, you first must learn how the spine functions mechanically.  To begin, two generalizations about the relationship between back-muscle performance and back pain must be understood.  Spinal muscles are the only motion generators in the spine, and they contribute to back pain in two ways:  First, spinal muscles, weakened from lack of use, allow the spine to misalign and/or to collapse upon itself. Pain is then generated by nerves pinched (impinged) between compressing vertebrae. Or, second, when a back has suffered the trauma of a direct blow, the ensuing pain results in restricted and altered motion such that spinal muscles atrophy and lose strength and coordination.  In the first case, poorly-conditioned spinal muscles actually promote the condition that causes pain.  In the second case, inactivity resulting from the pain of trauma allows spinal muscles to weaken.  In both cases, fully healing the back requires that spinal muscles be re-strengthened and re-coordinated. Only exercise can do this. It must be proper exercise, precisely and safely done on precise and safe equipment. The movement best suited for strengthening backs is called the back-extension exercise.  The back-extension exercise improperly performed on improper equipment can actually aggravate an already painful back, so be cautious about how this exercise is approached.  BackHealth® solves this problem with copyrighted exercises performed upon safe, patented equipment.  Caution: Do not underestimate the value of performing the back-extension exercise safely, on precise equipment precisely designed to protect the spine during this critical movement.  Attempting this exercise on standard gym equipment like a Roman Chair can worsen an already serious condition. What is an intervertebral disc? Second to muscle failure, intervertebral discs are next in line as contributors to back pain, but what is an intervertebral disc?  What is its function?  What about a collapsing (degenerating) disc?  And, how does one un-collapse (regenerate) a disc?  The intervertebral disc is a spongy, shock-absorbent cushion located between vertebrae.  Simultaneous with strengthening spinal muscles, narrowing (degenerating) disc(s) must be re-established as nearly as can be done.  This is not perfect science, but the theory works when executed upon the BackHealth® Exerciser.  The only known technique for re-establishing spinal discs is to stretch the spine.  Stretching the spine creates negative pressure within the disc such that it may intake fluid (hydration) and build new disc tissue (pulposa).  Traction has been the method of choice for stretching the spine and traction can be effective.  But traction is unnatural, expensive, restrictive, painful, and limited in daily application cycles.  The BackHealth® Exerciser (click on our virtual tour to the left) allows the spine to be stretched naturally during both the Lumbar-Stretch Exercise© and the Back-Extension Exercise.  Both of these disc-hydrating exercises may be done several times daily at home at no cost beyond the original cost of the equipment, and to the limit one feels comfortable.  The Lumbar-Stretch Exercise© is copyrighted by BackHealth®. Spinal discs have no direct blood supply. Discs depend entirely upon hydration cycles to intake nutrients needed by disc cells to regenerate disc material (pulposa) and to expel breakdown products. Picture in your mind a compressed sponge being released under water. What happens? The sponge intakes water. What happens when you squeeze a sponge filled with water? It expels its contents. Like a sponge, discs compress when loaded, when you are standing and especially when you are lifting. When unloaded—when you are lying down or when your spine is purposefully stretched—your discs intake nutrients. Discs intake tissue-building products from the nutrient-rich mucous membrane that surrounds the spine, deposited there by the blood stream.  With precise stretching on precise equipment, the disc may be hydrated several times daily, and hydrated naturally.  With increased hydration cycles comes increased opportunity for specialized cells within the disc to build new disc tissue (pulposa), and healing accelerates.

Added Benefits Physical benefits of a healthy back There is a further benefit to purposeful disc hydration. With the deliberately-accomplished hydration cycles of the Lumbar-Stretch Exercise©, the loss of height associated with aging—from tip-of-toe to crown-of-head—lessens and may cease altogether. Most shrinkage of height noted with age occurs within the spine, and this accumulated effect of gravity can only be countered by proper, gentle, and regular stretching of the spine. You can measure the effect of shrink by measuring your height on a wall prior to and after completing the BackHealth Exercise Routine©. A pleasant surprise awaits you! Only in rare cases is height not altered during the exercise routine. The amount of ‘stretching’ varies with physiology (build) types, and varies from eighths of inches to halves of inches. Clearly you don’t grow, but the daily effect of gravity is countered, and overall loss of height is mitigated. Athletic Improvement The final benefit of natural spinal stretching involves spinal nerves and their ability to transmit the nerve impulses that determine the quality of athletic performance. Picture the spinal cord as a tree trunk with branches attached evenly along its sides. These branches are nerve roots that connect the neves of appendages and thoracic muscles, of organs and of glands to the brain. A fully expanded disc protects the space between the vertebrae, the space required for nerve roots and their current of nerve impulses to enter and exit the spinal cord. A degenerated or degenerating disc allows the space between the vertebrae to narrow, and nerves become pinched (impinged) and pain results.  Also, pinched nerves—whether they cause pain or not—do not transfer signals as efficiently as nerves protected by healthy, fully expanded discs. Co-ordination suffers from pinched nerves, and athletic movements from the extreme complication and grace of the golf swing to the basics of tying shoes, diminish in efficiency, ease, and accuracy.  A healthy back fights aging Once spinal muscles begin returning to proper and powerful function and disc repair is under way, ranges of motion must be reclaimed and coordinated spinal response re-taught to the muscles. Performing a lift, like lifting groceries out of the trunk of a car, requires full ranges of motion and a specifically coordinated effort.  Picture the difference in witnessing a two-year old lifting an object from the floor and an eighty-year old lifting the same object. How would their body mechanics compare? Imagine the intricacies of the golf swing without appropriate co-ordination and full ranges of motion. A properly maintained back will perform the same movements the same way indefinitely. But with each incidence of pain, the body re-programs itself with limiting and protective movements. Attributed to each and every episode of spinal pain, halting, protective movements continue recording themselves, actually becoming embedded in the nervous system. Gradually, whole movements are eliminated, replaced with jerky, halting, slow, and inefficient ways of getting the job done. In the saddest case, independence is finally lost and one cannot dress one’s self, or bathe, or get out of bed. These freedoms are not taken as much as they are given up. The value of maintaining the body, beginning with the torso, in fit condition, cannot be overemphasized. Rarely, is it too late to begin.  Both an injured back and a healthy back prosper when regularly re-strengthened and their movements reprogrammed on safe, precise equipment. Smooth, accurate athleticism and physical independence maintain themselves in no other way.  BackHealth® makes this affordable and possible. Order your BackHealth® Exerciser now, and begin reclaiming your life today.