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I can personally vouch for the effectiveness of a morning routine of 15 minutes of exercise at home, targeting the pelvic muscles. The only equipment required

by femto 9y ago

I can personally vouch for the effectiveness of a morning routine of 15 minutes of exercise at home, targeting the pelvic muscles. The only equipment required is a floor mat, if the floor is hard. I started gently and naturally progressed to a higher level, taking the attitude that there is no hurry, because I'm going to be doing this for the rest of my life, so there is plenty of time to progress. My initial routine was just lying on my back trying to tighten my pelvic muscles without hurting. Three years later I'm up to front/back/left/right planks interleaved with stretching. I don't mean to be smug, as back pain really is an individual thing. There's an element of searching for what works, and I was lucky in that I was pointed directly towards an effective treatment. This result was science based, in that I was treated by a general practitioner who specialised in back pain and insisted on an evidence based approach. (This doctor also wrote the manual for NSW's worker's compensation scheme and lectures at a major university on the topic.) Edit: My doctor's rule was "pain free exercise". Go as far as you can, but stop if hurts. A test of whether you've really overdone it is whether the new pain goes away overnight. He also reckoned that it would be difficult to do a further injury whilst doing exercises, as the pain would make me self limiting. Further edit: My initial physio, and a cortisone injection, at the time of injury, weren't aimed at a long term fix, but at providing enough temporary pain relief to begin exercising.

bigiain 9y ago
I'll vouch for the effectiveness of losing 30+kg (65+lb). Which only reduces the back pain problem for overweight people to a known-intractable weight loss problem... :-/
- femto 9y ago
  Agree that weight/load is an issue. In my experience, a measurable side effect of a daily routine is some weight loss, which if nothing else provides motivation for continuing.
- taneq 9y ago
  Weight loss isn't "known intractable". Physically it's very simple, if an overweight person is physically prevented from eating too much, they'll lose weight, just like physically it's very simple to quit addictive drugs. And the drug analogy is a good one, because just like quitting drugs, you can't quit overeating (barring the aforementioned option of someone physically preventing you from doing so - which is literally what gastric sleeve surgery and the like are doing) until you actually choose to. When you wake up in the morning, look at yourself in the mirror, and instead of "oh I'm so fat" or "it's not fair" or "I wish I could lose weight", you think "I choose to lose weight by controlling what I eat", then you lose weight. And it stays off for as long as your choice holds.
  - beebmam 9y ago
    It is not physically simple to quit addictive drugs. It depends on the drug. Even alcohol is not simple to quit, depending on the person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens
    - taneq 9y ago
      A few people seem to be reading my comment as "dietary restriction is easy and so is quitting addictive drugs." I meant the comparison with addictive drugs to illustrate how difficult it is to resist the urge to overeat. And I believe the two cases are essentially the same - you can't save an addict who doesn't want to be saved, and you can't convince a fat person to diet if they don't want to lose weight more than they want to eat food.
    - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
      TIL what the beer brand is based on, thanks for that :p. (it's a strong beer with a pink elephant logo, very good stuff)
  - logicallee 9y ago
    you do not even need that. just set appetite = 80 in the human source code so you start eating 80÷ of your daily caloric use. the pounds will melt off. when you have a goal weight set appetite = 100÷ and you will simply stay at that weight. it is very simple physically. as for where to set it, I have nothing to say about it just as you have nothing to say about how to make a choice. /s The fact is, a choice fat people can make is "I will get gastric sleeve surgery" and this "commit" is statistically enough. the "commit" that parent suggests is the same as my suggestion at the top. I give no practical advice at the top of this comment and neither does parent comment. if there were a variable that would set someone's appetite and saciety then it would work. if there were a variable for commitment then parent's advice would work. parent ignores the hard work of finding and setting that variable, and parent ignores statistics that most fat people have spent a few dozen hours looking for how to set that variable and have failed to do so. your advice is as bad as when people defend some totally useless setup on the grounds that it's turing complete. yes, you can make a social media app with a custom backend written in C++. No that does not work statistically and most people who set out to do so fail. but physically it's very simple. reasonable people don't ignore the statistics.
joelrunyon 9y ago
Piggybacking on this - basic mobility exercises can free up a lot of your muscles from regular pain. You end up doing this a lot when you go see a physical therapist. This was part of the reason we bootstrapped our app - MoveWellApp.com - to give people easy-to-understand routines to stay mobile and pain free at home. It's a free download at http://MoveWellApp.com/download http://MoveWellApp.com/download for iOS, so if you have any specific feedback, I'd love to hear it. /blatant-self-promotion
- scrollaway 9y ago
  No comment to its quality, but it's pretty ballsy to piggy-back on a thread talking about a $100B/yr industry being "mostly a scam" to promote your app :)
  - thirdsun 9y ago
    Obviously he has the spine to do so :) On a more serious note, I think an app that motivates people to be more active isn't a bad thing or scam per se, though I can't speak to the quality of this particular one.
  - joelrunyon 9y ago
    Except instead of charging hundreds of thousands for pills or surgery, we're showing people how to do basic exercises at home for free. Take a look at the app for 5 seconds ;)
hpcjoe 9y ago
I've had back pain on and off over the years. Usually due to muscle cramping from poor posture. I had to make a conscious effort not to slouch at my desk. What I've found helps with back pain, sciatica, knee pain, are stretches, and free weights. Then again, I've been lifting for about 41 years, so its not a surprise to me that changing my regimen provides positive outcomes. Specifically, for me, dead lifts for lower back, squats and leg presses for legs and knees. Speak to your physician first about whether you can do this. Speak to a PT person about what stretches/weights you should do, and what you should avoid.
- femto 9y ago
  I struggled for ages with trying to keep "good posture", trying to position each part of my body correctly (shoulders back, etc). Once the importance of core muscles was pointed out to me, I saw that all I need to do was "turn on" my pelvic muscles and the other bits of my body fell into place without thinking about them individually. As the strength of these muscles improved due to a regular exercise routine, I found that I didn't have to consciously "turn on" pelvic muscles and they were strong enough to keep things in position by themselves.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
qazpot 9y ago
I have also found sleeping on a hard floor very effective in preventing back pain.
- gcb0 9y ago
  there are firm mattresses :)
  - Kluny 9y ago
    I tried a solid wooden bed platform with about 2 inches of foam mattress topper. If nothing else, it makes you really good at camping - sleeping on the hard ground is so much more comfortable when you're used to it.
- panglott 9y ago
  Laying on a hard floor with my arms above my head has been my near-term way of coping with back pain. But a little isometric back strength exercises like a nightly plank have helped with prevention over the past few weeks.
avip 9y ago
>I can personally vouch Which is the opposite of science. What other 15m routines have you tried, in a double-blinded manner? Something can help you, and still be a hoax. No contradiction.
- andrewla 9y ago
  I don't know why this is being downvoted -- it's the first sensible thing that I've seen here. For example, from the article: > Spinal fusion surgery, for instance ... costing a total of $40 billion per year ... ... with a price tag averaging $80,000, [and] has a success rate of about 35%. That's not a success rate of 0%. If you look around, you'll find tons of people (175k/year if my math is right with the numbers above) who have had success with spinal fusion surgery -- one such person actually posted below! At least this particular approach (light mat exercises) can't be properly called a scam, since it doesn't really try to trick you out of money. The fact of the matter is that the back is tremendously complex, and this approach, when analyzed across a large sample of back pain sufferers, might have an even worse success rate, especially considering the symptomatic divergence of people reporting back pain.
noir_lord 9y ago
I have a spinal condition (syringomyelia), I lost a similar amount of weight (250 -> 185). Started exercising gently and worked up to a fairly intensive callisthenics (starting with basic stuff and using a pull-up bar, pressups handles). Takes me 40mins every other day to do a full 'routine' (quoted routine because it varies every time). The end result was that I only take my medication on a night to sleep now, during the day I'm drug free which is fantastic because the medication wrecked my ability to focus. The funny part is I didn't lose the weight because of my back but because I was having other health issue (and had metabolic syndrome, a big warning sign for diabetes), at my last checkup all my results where slap bang center of normal for my age. My doctor told me pretty much the same thing when I asked him about exercise "listen to your body, if it increases the pain the next day back off that exercise". For the first time in 3 years my health is level enough to live a completely normal life, I will never put the weight back on (kept it off for nearly 2 years now by calorie counting and using an accurate scale tied to my phone, I get weight every morning and night at the same time and it shows me a nice graph).
pyromine 9y ago
I'm a healthy athletic 20 year old and I was having back pain for a while, and when I finally went to the doctor they suggested it may just be an imbalance in the strength of different muscles in my back that I didn't properly train for the sports I participate in. Gave me some exercises, and a month later back pain was all gone and my back felt stronger, with better posture. Crazy what can be done when you just have go for it
- kough 9y ago
  Got any links to similar exercises? I'm also early 20s, spend most of my day sitting at a desk, have dealt with backpain for a few years. Pullups (especially wide-grip) have helped but I'd like to know some stretches, too.
  - maccard 9y ago
    Exercises I was given were lunges - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COKYKgQ8KR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COKYKgQ8KR0 hip raises - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDP6O_aJpDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDP6O_aJpDg Start in a crawling position. The purpose of this is to give you more control of the pelvic position with independence from the chest. Quote from the PDF: Start in a crawling position. Without moving your head and shoulders, roll your hips so that you arch your lower back. Do not push into pain. Only go as far as you feel comfortable with, then relax. Try not to move your upper body & chest. If this is difficult, rest your shoulders, chest and ribs on the couch or bed, keeping your tummy clear. This will help to restrict the movement higher up and help you to localize the movement to the pelvis. The other thing my physio did was sat with me and showed me what my posture _should_ be like, and made me sit like that for an hour or so. It was then up to me to keep sitting/standing like that outside the office. The first day, I was exhausted after about 2 hours. Now, it's painful to sit slouched. EDIT: Even though this is a thread about the industry being a scam, I'd still recommend seeing a professional (even just your GP). As other people here have alluded to, you'll probably get some drugs to get you to be able to exercise pain free, but it could also rule out other issues (kidney problems being a good example), and ensure that there's nothing more serious going on. I'd also recommend taking up a pilates class.
  - 9y ago
CogitoCogito 9y ago
> I don't mean to be smug, as back pain really is an individual thing. There's an element of searching for what works, and I was lucky in that I was pointed directly towards an effective treatment. I think this is extremely important for everyone to remember. People tend to (correctly) scoff at anecdotal experience, but often that's all you can work with. When studying health problems, most studies will tend to find the "best" thing overall for a varied group of people, but basically forces the solution to be the lowest common denominator. You see this all the time with different diet studies, were people "prove" that some diets are better than others. Of course the true answer is that there is no solution that's best for everyone. Really you need to experiment and just learn a lot about your body. For example, I've been able to rid myself of my back problems by running. If I stop running for a few weeks all my really painful back problems start to come back. Since I mentioned the diet example earlier, I should point out that for myself the most effective way to lose weight is basically just starvation. I exercise a lot and track calories and only consume between 1500 and 2000 a day (I probably need at least 2500 a day and maybe closer to 3000). It's always been much easier for me to just be constantly hungry for a couple months than to play different diet games and figure out which foods are most filling. You need to learn to listen to your body. > My doctor's rule was "pain free exercise". Go as far as you can, but stop if hurts. 1000 times this! If I'm running in form, I'll probably run 6 days a week, but I've learned to just quit if I feel acute pain or if my muscles are very tight and I can't get them to loosen. You gotta know when to fight your battles. An injury today means no exercise for a while and that's way worse than whatever gains you'll get by continuing.
- tome 9y ago
  Excellent insights. This is one of those occasional HN comments that everyone should bookmark and revisit from time to time.
- kulu2002 9y ago
  >You need to learn to listen to your body. +1000 for this one!
- randlet 9y ago
  "I should point out that for myself the most effective way to lose weight is basically just starvation. I exercise a lot and track calories and only consume between 1500 and 2000 a day (I probably need at least 2500 a day and maybe closer to 3000)" Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point but this is the only effective way to lose weight. If your body needs 2500 calories a day and you eat 2000 you'll lose ~1lb a week.
yarek 9y ago
Is your doc Sydney based? Mind sharing the contact info?
- femto 9y ago
  I've sent an email to the address in your profile.

by femto 9y ago

bigiain 9y ago

I'll vouch for the effectiveness of losing 30+kg (65+lb). Which only reduces the back pain problem for overweight people to a known-intractable weight loss problem... :-/

femto 9y ago
Agree that weight/load is an issue. In my experience, a measurable side effect of a daily routine is some weight loss, which if nothing else provides motivation for continuing.
taneq 9y ago
Weight loss isn't "known intractable". Physically it's very simple, if an overweight person is physically prevented from eating too much, they'll lose weight, just like physically it's very simple to quit addictive drugs. And the drug analogy is a good one, because just like quitting drugs, you can't quit overeating (barring the aforementioned option of someone physically preventing you from doing so - which is literally what gastric sleeve surgery and the like are doing) until you actually choose to. When you wake up in the morning, look at yourself in the mirror, and instead of "oh I'm so fat" or "it's not fair" or "I wish I could lose weight", you think "I choose to lose weight by controlling what I eat", then you lose weight. And it stays off for as long as your choice holds.
- beebmam 9y ago
  It is not physically simple to quit addictive drugs. It depends on the drug. Even alcohol is not simple to quit, depending on the person: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens
  - taneq 9y ago
    A few people seem to be reading my comment as "dietary restriction is easy and so is quitting addictive drugs." I meant the comparison with addictive drugs to illustrate how difficult it is to resist the urge to overeat. And I believe the two cases are essentially the same - you can't save an addict who doesn't want to be saved, and you can't convince a fat person to diet if they don't want to lose weight more than they want to eat food.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    TIL what the beer brand is based on, thanks for that :p. (it's a strong beer with a pink elephant logo, very good stuff)
- logicallee 9y ago
  you do not even need that. just set appetite = 80 in the human source code so you start eating 80÷ of your daily caloric use. the pounds will melt off. when you have a goal weight set appetite = 100÷ and you will simply stay at that weight. it is very simple physically. as for where to set it, I have nothing to say about it just as you have nothing to say about how to make a choice. /s The fact is, a choice fat people can make is "I will get gastric sleeve surgery" and this "commit" is statistically enough. the "commit" that parent suggests is the same as my suggestion at the top. I give no practical advice at the top of this comment and neither does parent comment. if there were a variable that would set someone's appetite and saciety then it would work. if there were a variable for commitment then parent's advice would work. parent ignores the hard work of finding and setting that variable, and parent ignores statistics that most fat people have spent a few dozen hours looking for how to set that variable and have failed to do so. your advice is as bad as when people defend some totally useless setup on the grounds that it's turing complete. yes, you can make a social media app with a custom backend written in C++. No that does not work statistically and most people who set out to do so fail. but physically it's very simple. reasonable people don't ignore the statistics.

joelrunyon 9y ago

Piggybacking on this - basic mobility exercises can free up a lot of your muscles from regular pain. You end up doing this a lot when you go see a physical therapist. This was part of the reason we bootstrapped our app - MoveWellApp.com - to give people easy-to-understand routines to stay mobile and pain free at home. It's a free download at http://MoveWellApp.com/download http://MoveWellApp.com/download for iOS, so if you have any specific feedback, I'd love to hear it. /blatant-self-promotion

scrollaway 9y ago
No comment to its quality, but it's pretty ballsy to piggy-back on a thread talking about a $100B/yr industry being "mostly a scam" to promote your app :)
- thirdsun 9y ago
  Obviously he has the spine to do so :) On a more serious note, I think an app that motivates people to be more active isn't a bad thing or scam per se, though I can't speak to the quality of this particular one.
- joelrunyon 9y ago
  Except instead of charging hundreds of thousands for pills or surgery, we're showing people how to do basic exercises at home for free. Take a look at the app for 5 seconds ;)

hpcjoe 9y ago

I've had back pain on and off over the years. Usually due to muscle cramping from poor posture. I had to make a conscious effort not to slouch at my desk. What I've found helps with back pain, sciatica, knee pain, are stretches, and free weights. Then again, I've been lifting for about 41 years, so its not a surprise to me that changing my regimen provides positive outcomes. Specifically, for me, dead lifts for lower back, squats and leg presses for legs and knees. Speak to your physician first about whether you can do this. Speak to a PT person about what stretches/weights you should do, and what you should avoid.

femto 9y ago
I struggled for ages with trying to keep "good posture", trying to position each part of my body correctly (shoulders back, etc). Once the importance of core muscles was pointed out to me, I saw that all I need to do was "turn on" my pelvic muscles and the other bits of my body fell into place without thinking about them individually. As the strength of these muscles improved due to a regular exercise routine, I found that I didn't have to consciously "turn on" pelvic muscles and they were strong enough to keep things in position by themselves.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

qazpot 9y ago

I have also found sleeping on a hard floor very effective in preventing back pain.

gcb0 9y ago
there are firm mattresses :)
- Kluny 9y ago
  I tried a solid wooden bed platform with about 2 inches of foam mattress topper. If nothing else, it makes you really good at camping - sleeping on the hard ground is so much more comfortable when you're used to it.
panglott 9y ago
Laying on a hard floor with my arms above my head has been my near-term way of coping with back pain. But a little isometric back strength exercises like a nightly plank have helped with prevention over the past few weeks.

avip 9y ago

>I can personally vouch Which is the opposite of science. What other 15m routines have you tried, in a double-blinded manner? Something can help you, and still be a hoax. No contradiction.

andrewla 9y ago
I don't know why this is being downvoted -- it's the first sensible thing that I've seen here. For example, from the article: > Spinal fusion surgery, for instance ... costing a total of $40 billion per year ... ... with a price tag averaging $80,000, [and] has a success rate of about 35%. That's not a success rate of 0%. If you look around, you'll find tons of people (175k/year if my math is right with the numbers above) who have had success with spinal fusion surgery -- one such person actually posted below! At least this particular approach (light mat exercises) can't be properly called a scam, since it doesn't really try to trick you out of money. The fact of the matter is that the back is tremendously complex, and this approach, when analyzed across a large sample of back pain sufferers, might have an even worse success rate, especially considering the symptomatic divergence of people reporting back pain.

noir_lord 9y ago

I have a spinal condition (syringomyelia), I lost a similar amount of weight (250 -> 185). Started exercising gently and worked up to a fairly intensive callisthenics (starting with basic stuff and using a pull-up bar, pressups handles). Takes me 40mins every other day to do a full 'routine' (quoted routine because it varies every time). The end result was that I only take my medication on a night to sleep now, during the day I'm drug free which is fantastic because the medication wrecked my ability to focus. The funny part is I didn't lose the weight because of my back but because I was having other health issue (and had metabolic syndrome, a big warning sign for diabetes), at my last checkup all my results where slap bang center of normal for my age. My doctor told me pretty much the same thing when I asked him about exercise "listen to your body, if it increases the pain the next day back off that exercise". For the first time in 3 years my health is level enough to live a completely normal life, I will never put the weight back on (kept it off for nearly 2 years now by calorie counting and using an accurate scale tied to my phone, I get weight every morning and night at the same time and it shows me a nice graph).

pyromine 9y ago

I'm a healthy athletic 20 year old and I was having back pain for a while, and when I finally went to the doctor they suggested it may just be an imbalance in the strength of different muscles in my back that I didn't properly train for the sports I participate in. Gave me some exercises, and a month later back pain was all gone and my back felt stronger, with better posture. Crazy what can be done when you just have go for it

kough 9y ago
Got any links to similar exercises? I'm also early 20s, spend most of my day sitting at a desk, have dealt with backpain for a few years. Pullups (especially wide-grip) have helped but I'd like to know some stretches, too.
- maccard 9y ago
  Exercises I was given were lunges - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COKYKgQ8KR0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COKYKgQ8KR0 hip raises - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDP6O_aJpDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDP6O_aJpDg Start in a crawling position. The purpose of this is to give you more control of the pelvic position with independence from the chest. Quote from the PDF: Start in a crawling position. Without moving your head and shoulders, roll your hips so that you arch your lower back. Do not push into pain. Only go as far as you feel comfortable with, then relax. Try not to move your upper body & chest. If this is difficult, rest your shoulders, chest and ribs on the couch or bed, keeping your tummy clear. This will help to restrict the movement higher up and help you to localize the movement to the pelvis. The other thing my physio did was sat with me and showed me what my posture _should_ be like, and made me sit like that for an hour or so. It was then up to me to keep sitting/standing like that outside the office. The first day, I was exhausted after about 2 hours. Now, it's painful to sit slouched. EDIT: Even though this is a thread about the industry being a scam, I'd still recommend seeing a professional (even just your GP). As other people here have alluded to, you'll probably get some drugs to get you to be able to exercise pain free, but it could also rule out other issues (kidney problems being a good example), and ensure that there's nothing more serious going on. I'd also recommend taking up a pilates class.
- 9y ago

CogitoCogito 9y ago

> I don't mean to be smug, as back pain really is an individual thing. There's an element of searching for what works, and I was lucky in that I was pointed directly towards an effective treatment. I think this is extremely important for everyone to remember. People tend to (correctly) scoff at anecdotal experience, but often that's all you can work with. When studying health problems, most studies will tend to find the "best" thing overall for a varied group of people, but basically forces the solution to be the lowest common denominator. You see this all the time with different diet studies, were people "prove" that some diets are better than others. Of course the true answer is that there is no solution that's best for everyone. Really you need to experiment and just learn a lot about your body. For example, I've been able to rid myself of my back problems by running. If I stop running for a few weeks all my really painful back problems start to come back. Since I mentioned the diet example earlier, I should point out that for myself the most effective way to lose weight is basically just starvation. I exercise a lot and track calories and only consume between 1500 and 2000 a day (I probably need at least 2500 a day and maybe closer to 3000). It's always been much easier for me to just be constantly hungry for a couple months than to play different diet games and figure out which foods are most filling. You need to learn to listen to your body. > My doctor's rule was "pain free exercise". Go as far as you can, but stop if hurts. 1000 times this! If I'm running in form, I'll probably run 6 days a week, but I've learned to just quit if I feel acute pain or if my muscles are very tight and I can't get them to loosen. You gotta know when to fight your battles. An injury today means no exercise for a while and that's way worse than whatever gains you'll get by continuing.

tome 9y ago
Excellent insights. This is one of those occasional HN comments that everyone should bookmark and revisit from time to time.
kulu2002 9y ago
>You need to learn to listen to your body. +1000 for this one!
randlet 9y ago
"I should point out that for myself the most effective way to lose weight is basically just starvation. I exercise a lot and track calories and only consume between 1500 and 2000 a day (I probably need at least 2500 a day and maybe closer to 3000)" Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point but this is the only effective way to lose weight. If your body needs 2500 calories a day and you eat 2000 you'll lose ~1lb a week.

yarek 9y ago

Is your doc Sydney based? Mind sharing the contact info?

femto 9y ago
I've sent an email to the address in your profile.