Treating Low Back Pain
In many cases, low back pain is immune distress. I typically treat it by getting calcium, healthy fats and sometimes B vitamins into me. (If you are seriously calcium deficient, you might also need magnesium, vitamin D and vitamin K.)
The reason immune distress causes low back pain is because the pelvic bones are the largest well of bone marrow in the body and bone marrow is where the body produces white blood cells. It's the factory for essential elements of our immune system.
For me, most low back pain corresponds to where the two areas of bone marrow would be found in my low back. This post is being written because I woke up with significant low back pain today. This is something I don't often have anymore.
I knew what triggered it. A few days back, we threw something out that was old and not clean and we've been going through hell the past few days because of it.
I treated it by having a vegetarian chalupa at Taco Bell (potatoes, cheese and lettuce in a chalupa shell) and some Mango Brisk tea. Cheese is a good source of healthy fats and of calcium, plus hydration helped.
I'm not right as rain yet but I'm doing much, much better. I'm no longer wallowing in dark jokes about how "The hardest mornings are the ones that start with you waking up at 3pm in too much pain to get up."
I also recently read an article about a celebrity with a diagnosis of sciatica who has been taking steroids to treat it. SIGH.
I don't actually know what "sciatica" is but when someone says "sciatica" I usually interpret that to mean low back pain with no specific known cause given a fancy name so doctors can sound smarter and more expert than they really are because you won't pay them the big bucks to admit "This is an educated GUESS."
I'm apparently not the only person mystified by what this term is supposed to mean. Here is the Definition according to Wikipedia:
So I am going to kind of Give My Opinions here. I've never met this celebrity and I don't actually know what the hell is wrong with them -- but, hey, their doctor probably doesn't really know EITHER -- and this is a BLOG and is NOT medical advice. It's just a jumping off point for talking about some things on my mind.
Some general thoughts about sciatica, low back pain and the physiology of the hips and lower pelvic area:
I have terrible belly bloat. Retaining fluids is a side effect of my genetic disorder and my bloated belly is one of the last remaining serious issues that I still haven't fully resolved.
I am gradually resolving it though and as my belly shrinks, one of the things that happens is that it impacts my gait because the hip joints are in the lower pelvis and they are seated in fleshy tissues that in my body currently are pretty water-logged.
There's a lot of nerve stuff in the gut. Some people refer to the gut as a second brain because of the amount of neurological stuff in the gut generally, plus there is a large nerve node just above the pubic area (or near there).
I don't get shooting pains from my low back into my leg, but I do sometimes have a burning sensation in the skin on the outside of one leg when I'm shrinking and my gait is going through changes. I used to think this was caused by local chemical derangement but I now think it's due to nerves in the pelvis being impacted by things being rearranged as I shrink.
Stuff going on in the lower pelvis will tend to impact the legs in some way. This is inevitable and in most cases likely doesn't mean there is anything wrong with your legs per se. This is about what is going on in the pelvis.
Steroids boost the immune system, which is why they are sometimes prescribed along with antibiotics if you have a serious infection and the doctor thinks that antibiotics alone won't be enough. They will boost the immune system whether that's the intended medical goal or not behind prescribing them.
So if this celebrity basically has pain in their low back/pelvic region AND the steroids are helping it, this fits with the idea that they may have immune distress as a primary cause of their problems. If so, nutritional support for their bone marrow could potentially relieve it.
This celebrity is not White, so the odds are good they are lactose intolerant. So my standard go-to answer -- cheese -- likely wouldn't be a good solution for them.
They likely need non-dairy sources of good fats and calcium. So let's talk about what that might look like.
"Good fats" generally means Medium Chain Triglycerides, also called MCT oil. Coconut oil and palm oil are both high in MCTs.
Butter is a good source as well though if you are lactose intolerant you may want to clarify it or simply purchase ghee instead. Clarifying it means heating it to cook off the solids (which contain lactose) and it leaves you with a clear, golden oil that doesn't firm up like butter. It can be kept for up to a few weeks without refrigeration.
Here is a list of 18 non-dairy foods high in calcium. For additional non-vegan options, see also: Calcium, NIH Consumer Fact Sheet.
I will add that I like munching on chicken bones if the chicken is extremely well done and some of the bones are, therefore, "burnt to a crisp" and easily snacked on.
It's an old habit from my childhood and I assume I like it in part because bones contain calcium. Deer have been known to bite the heads off of small animals (squirrels or some such) in environments where the deer are failing to get enough calcium, so eating bones seems to be a thing nature inclines us to do when desperate for calcium.
Pro tip: ONLY eat very well done chicken bones that readily break up when you chew them or you can get one stuck in your throat and that's a very not fun ER visit. I'm usually chewing on the thin bones found in the wings, FWIW.
You could also try bone broth, I suppose.
It took me three tries and I would have landed in the ER with both first attempts but for one I just so happened to have a routine check up with my CF specialist and I told him "I can feel it coming. If you don't prescribe me something, I will be in the ER within 48 hours."
Since he was my CF specialist and knew what CF does, he took me seriously and prescribed me something. I also resumed taking the steroids and it would be MONTHS before I could get off of them.
After that incident, one friend -- a former Registered Nurse -- told me "You need to TAPER OFF steroids. It's too hard on the body to quit them cold turkey." and another friend -- who had a history of serious respiratory problems -- suggested I take guaifenisen as lung support to help me get off the steroids. (See also: Withdrawal; Guaifenisen.)
After I got off the steroids, I had NO ENERGY for WEEKS. It was TERRIBLE.
I finally realized I felt anemic and I began going regularly to a diner and ordering calf's liver with two orders of hash browns and a salad (some lettuce, cucumbers, maybe a few carrots) and taking a few iron tablets in a ziploc bag in my pocket and downing them during the meal. A few weeks of that and I stopped laying around doing NOTHING all day.
I have absolutely no idea if getting off steroids NORMALLY causes severe anemia. This is anecdotal and just what happened to ME.
If you need more B vitamins, beef (and other meats) are a good source. Do not consume high iron foods with high calcium foods together in the same meal.
Kosher Jewish tradition says "Do not boil a calf in its mother's milk" or something like that. My hand-wavy understanding is this means they don't serve beef with dairy.
Cystic Fibrosis is very common among ethnic Jews. I have looked to Kosher food traditions at times for hints as to what works for people like me and I used to order food from a Kosher Deli in San Diego, California (the Ralph's there is -- or was -- the ONLY Ralph's with a Kosher Deli and they served hot foods and didn't ask if you were Jewish, though they wouldn't mix them in non-Kosher ways even if you weren't).
Anyway, it is my understanding that you GENERALLY should not mix calcium and iron in your stomach at the same time, having nothing to do with my genetic disorder. They interfere with each other and you get little benefit from either of them. They should be separated by at least half an hour.
So IF you had a diagnosis of sciatica and it were true that what you REALLY have is immune distress causing the bone marrow in your pelvis to hurt AND you followed the above advice to treat it nutritionally with healthy fats (because bone marrow is fatty), calcium (because bones are high in calcium -- and keep in mind that you may ALSO need magnesium, vitamin K and vitamin D if you need calcium) and B vitamins (which I think are needed for white blood cell production) and it WORKED, the way this would go would be something like this:
You start eating better (or taking supplements) and the back pain starts ramping down. You CONTINUE taking your prescription steroids and any other drugs they have you on BUT you stop reaching for the "extra" doses of OTC drugs (like Advil) that you routinely take ON TOP OF THOSE when the pain is just too much.
Some time AFTER you have stopped ENTIRELY reaching for "extra" drugs to manage your pain, you revisit the question of "Just how much medication do I really need to manage this condition?" You might discuss it with your doctor.
Or, if you are ME, you might make the decision to ramp down your drugs independently, after maybe talking to a knowledgeable relative (because I have several relatives who know a fuckton about medicine, including one who worked at the CDC for years).
I have had someone tell me "I took your advice and my child with (classical) Cystic Fibrosis needs fewer ER visits but is taking just as much medication." In other words, their need for MAINTENANCE drugs had not gone down.
But they WERE, in actual fact, taking fewer drugs because "fewer ER visits" meant fewer rounds of EXTRA drugs, like antibiotics and steroids, ON TOP OF the maintenance drugs.
The FIRST drugs to go will ALWAYS be the "extra" drugs taken for crisis management. ONLY well after those STOP being needed do you have ANY hope of cutting back on your maintenance drugs. This is true regardless of what condition you are treating.
Humans are really terrible about failing to count that sort of thing. You have GOT to learn to count the "extra" drugs that didn't get taken and not mentally go "I'm STILL on ALL my prescription drugs! This isn't helping!!!!"
If you are needing fewer "extra" drugs, it IS helping. You just need to keep at it longer before you get to the point of being able to adjust down the doses of your maintenance drugs and possibly eventually stop needing them entirely.
The reason immune distress causes low back pain is because the pelvic bones are the largest well of bone marrow in the body and bone marrow is where the body produces white blood cells. It's the factory for essential elements of our immune system.
For me, most low back pain corresponds to where the two areas of bone marrow would be found in my low back. This post is being written because I woke up with significant low back pain today. This is something I don't often have anymore.
I knew what triggered it. A few days back, we threw something out that was old and not clean and we've been going through hell the past few days because of it.
I treated it by having a vegetarian chalupa at Taco Bell (potatoes, cheese and lettuce in a chalupa shell) and some Mango Brisk tea. Cheese is a good source of healthy fats and of calcium, plus hydration helped.
I'm not right as rain yet but I'm doing much, much better. I'm no longer wallowing in dark jokes about how "The hardest mornings are the ones that start with you waking up at 3pm in too much pain to get up."
I also recently read an article about a celebrity with a diagnosis of sciatica who has been taking steroids to treat it. SIGH.
I don't actually know what "sciatica" is but when someone says "sciatica" I usually interpret that to mean low back pain with no specific known cause given a fancy name so doctors can sound smarter and more expert than they really are because you won't pay them the big bucks to admit "This is an educated GUESS."
I'm apparently not the only person mystified by what this term is supposed to mean. Here is the Definition according to Wikipedia:
The term "sciatica" usually describes a symptom—pain along the sciatic nerve pathway—rather than a specific condition, illness, or disease. Some use it to mean any pain starting in the lower back and going down the leg. The pain is characteristically described as shooting or shock-like, quickly traveling along the course of the affected nerves. Others use the term as a diagnosis (i.e. an indication of cause and effect) for nerve dysfunction caused by compression of one or more lumbar or sacral nerve roots from a spinal disc herniation. Pain typically occurs in the distribution of a dermatome and goes below the knee to the foot. It may be associated with neurological dysfunction, such as weakness and numbness.Medicine isn't as scientific as most people seem to think it is. I have talked about this before: Building a Mystery; We live in a toxic world.
So I am going to kind of Give My Opinions here. I've never met this celebrity and I don't actually know what the hell is wrong with them -- but, hey, their doctor probably doesn't really know EITHER -- and this is a BLOG and is NOT medical advice. It's just a jumping off point for talking about some things on my mind.
Some general thoughts about sciatica, low back pain and the physiology of the hips and lower pelvic area:
I have terrible belly bloat. Retaining fluids is a side effect of my genetic disorder and my bloated belly is one of the last remaining serious issues that I still haven't fully resolved.
I am gradually resolving it though and as my belly shrinks, one of the things that happens is that it impacts my gait because the hip joints are in the lower pelvis and they are seated in fleshy tissues that in my body currently are pretty water-logged.
There's a lot of nerve stuff in the gut. Some people refer to the gut as a second brain because of the amount of neurological stuff in the gut generally, plus there is a large nerve node just above the pubic area (or near there).
I don't get shooting pains from my low back into my leg, but I do sometimes have a burning sensation in the skin on the outside of one leg when I'm shrinking and my gait is going through changes. I used to think this was caused by local chemical derangement but I now think it's due to nerves in the pelvis being impacted by things being rearranged as I shrink.
Stuff going on in the lower pelvis will tend to impact the legs in some way. This is inevitable and in most cases likely doesn't mean there is anything wrong with your legs per se. This is about what is going on in the pelvis.
Steroids boost the immune system, which is why they are sometimes prescribed along with antibiotics if you have a serious infection and the doctor thinks that antibiotics alone won't be enough. They will boost the immune system whether that's the intended medical goal or not behind prescribing them.
So if this celebrity basically has pain in their low back/pelvic region AND the steroids are helping it, this fits with the idea that they may have immune distress as a primary cause of their problems. If so, nutritional support for their bone marrow could potentially relieve it.
This celebrity is not White, so the odds are good they are lactose intolerant. So my standard go-to answer -- cheese -- likely wouldn't be a good solution for them.
They likely need non-dairy sources of good fats and calcium. So let's talk about what that might look like.
"Good fats" generally means Medium Chain Triglycerides, also called MCT oil. Coconut oil and palm oil are both high in MCTs.
Butter is a good source as well though if you are lactose intolerant you may want to clarify it or simply purchase ghee instead. Clarifying it means heating it to cook off the solids (which contain lactose) and it leaves you with a clear, golden oil that doesn't firm up like butter. It can be kept for up to a few weeks without refrigeration.
Here is a list of 18 non-dairy foods high in calcium. For additional non-vegan options, see also: Calcium, NIH Consumer Fact Sheet.
I will add that I like munching on chicken bones if the chicken is extremely well done and some of the bones are, therefore, "burnt to a crisp" and easily snacked on.
It's an old habit from my childhood and I assume I like it in part because bones contain calcium. Deer have been known to bite the heads off of small animals (squirrels or some such) in environments where the deer are failing to get enough calcium, so eating bones seems to be a thing nature inclines us to do when desperate for calcium.
Pro tip: ONLY eat very well done chicken bones that readily break up when you chew them or you can get one stuck in your throat and that's a very not fun ER visit. I'm usually chewing on the thin bones found in the wings, FWIW.
You could also try bone broth, I suppose.
Studies have demonstrated that calcium and magnesium levels in broth are generally related to cooking time, but little is known about the extraction of other elements, including toxic metals, in broths.As is always the case, I would NOT recommend QUITTING steroids promptly because you read this post and went "I have a better answer!!!!!" Steroids are really hard on the body and they were the single hardest drug for me to get off of.
It took me three tries and I would have landed in the ER with both first attempts but for one I just so happened to have a routine check up with my CF specialist and I told him "I can feel it coming. If you don't prescribe me something, I will be in the ER within 48 hours."
Since he was my CF specialist and knew what CF does, he took me seriously and prescribed me something. I also resumed taking the steroids and it would be MONTHS before I could get off of them.
After that incident, one friend -- a former Registered Nurse -- told me "You need to TAPER OFF steroids. It's too hard on the body to quit them cold turkey." and another friend -- who had a history of serious respiratory problems -- suggested I take guaifenisen as lung support to help me get off the steroids. (See also: Withdrawal; Guaifenisen.)
After I got off the steroids, I had NO ENERGY for WEEKS. It was TERRIBLE.
I finally realized I felt anemic and I began going regularly to a diner and ordering calf's liver with two orders of hash browns and a salad (some lettuce, cucumbers, maybe a few carrots) and taking a few iron tablets in a ziploc bag in my pocket and downing them during the meal. A few weeks of that and I stopped laying around doing NOTHING all day.
I have absolutely no idea if getting off steroids NORMALLY causes severe anemia. This is anecdotal and just what happened to ME.
If you need more B vitamins, beef (and other meats) are a good source. Do not consume high iron foods with high calcium foods together in the same meal.
Kosher Jewish tradition says "Do not boil a calf in its mother's milk" or something like that. My hand-wavy understanding is this means they don't serve beef with dairy.
Cystic Fibrosis is very common among ethnic Jews. I have looked to Kosher food traditions at times for hints as to what works for people like me and I used to order food from a Kosher Deli in San Diego, California (the Ralph's there is -- or was -- the ONLY Ralph's with a Kosher Deli and they served hot foods and didn't ask if you were Jewish, though they wouldn't mix them in non-Kosher ways even if you weren't).
Anyway, it is my understanding that you GENERALLY should not mix calcium and iron in your stomach at the same time, having nothing to do with my genetic disorder. They interfere with each other and you get little benefit from either of them. They should be separated by at least half an hour.
So IF you had a diagnosis of sciatica and it were true that what you REALLY have is immune distress causing the bone marrow in your pelvis to hurt AND you followed the above advice to treat it nutritionally with healthy fats (because bone marrow is fatty), calcium (because bones are high in calcium -- and keep in mind that you may ALSO need magnesium, vitamin K and vitamin D if you need calcium) and B vitamins (which I think are needed for white blood cell production) and it WORKED, the way this would go would be something like this:
You start eating better (or taking supplements) and the back pain starts ramping down. You CONTINUE taking your prescription steroids and any other drugs they have you on BUT you stop reaching for the "extra" doses of OTC drugs (like Advil) that you routinely take ON TOP OF THOSE when the pain is just too much.
Some time AFTER you have stopped ENTIRELY reaching for "extra" drugs to manage your pain, you revisit the question of "Just how much medication do I really need to manage this condition?" You might discuss it with your doctor.
Or, if you are ME, you might make the decision to ramp down your drugs independently, after maybe talking to a knowledgeable relative (because I have several relatives who know a fuckton about medicine, including one who worked at the CDC for years).
I have had someone tell me "I took your advice and my child with (classical) Cystic Fibrosis needs fewer ER visits but is taking just as much medication." In other words, their need for MAINTENANCE drugs had not gone down.
But they WERE, in actual fact, taking fewer drugs because "fewer ER visits" meant fewer rounds of EXTRA drugs, like antibiotics and steroids, ON TOP OF the maintenance drugs.
The FIRST drugs to go will ALWAYS be the "extra" drugs taken for crisis management. ONLY well after those STOP being needed do you have ANY hope of cutting back on your maintenance drugs. This is true regardless of what condition you are treating.
Humans are really terrible about failing to count that sort of thing. You have GOT to learn to count the "extra" drugs that didn't get taken and not mentally go "I'm STILL on ALL my prescription drugs! This isn't helping!!!!"
If you are needing fewer "extra" drugs, it IS helping. You just need to keep at it longer before you get to the point of being able to adjust down the doses of your maintenance drugs and possibly eventually stop needing them entirely.
