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Restoring Human Movement


Thanks for subscribing to my podcast!

I'm Dr. Sebastian Gonzales, the treating doctor at Performance Place®.

In this podcast, you will get to hear broken down information about conditions we treat, which also could be conditions you or one of your friends have.

My goal with this podcast is to form a common language between sports medicine professionals and patients/ athletes.

Listen to experts, learn anatomy and sports injury theory in my show.

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Jan 23, 2019

SHOW NOTES

 

BUY THE BOOK “I WILL BEAT BACK PAIN”

 

Over the last year, I’ve been writing a book on the topic of low back pain. I’m proud to say it’s unlike any other book on back pain available. There are no exercises. There’s no stretches. 

It focuses on one thing… getting yourself mentally back into a WINNING mental mindset for the recovery to take hold.

If you’re like me, I have loved ones with back pain, who make no attempt to get better. They say their tired of feeling shitty and say their ready to get better, but after that nothing happens beyond that. I’ve found giving free advice/ treatment/ rehab to friends and family is a waste of everyone’s time. They tend to not accept and implement the advice given, especially if it’s free.

Why do they continue to hurt?

Inertia and friction are strong.

You give them a shove, but they roll to a stop. Removal of the friction requires “inception.” They need to care about themselves more than you do, which removes the friction.

They need to goal-set and they need to take responsibility.

I don't’ believe the epidemic of back pain is because of poor treatment, funds or patient management… I believe it’s because people suffering from back pain don’t overcome inertia, friction or both.

I believe people with back pain, including myself, need to have a WINNING ATTITUDE about recovery… leading to more success stories as friction is decreased.

Too often are we (back pain sufferers) are self defeated and play a victim. Regardless of WHY back pain happens… the recovery starts with a “mental about face. 

In this podcast, I give a sneak peak of the audio version of my book called I Will Beat Back Pain: Setting A WINNING Mindset For Recovery. 

Buy the book for your loved one with back pain, overcome inertia and the book will get them to decrease the friction… recovery is eminent.

Get the book on Amazon in print, audio and Kindle HERE… don’t forget to review it so more people will find it for their loved ones on Amazon.

 

Enjoy!

Here is a sneak peak of the print version: 

 

FOREWORD


Are you stagnant in your back pain or sciatica recovery?

 

Have you never full heartedly attempted to recover and regain your past life prior to back pain or sciatica?

 

Are you tired of feeling run down by your back and/or leg pain?

 

You’re not alone.

In fact, millions of active and non-active people suffer from back pain yearly, yet 28% ever go seek medical attention of any type, and only 3% ever engage in a formal spinal rehabilitation program.

So what’s the deal?

Why do people in pain not seek advice? A better question is why do even less engage in a plan of attack that yields a high rate of successful recovery?

What’s the barrier? This book will help you explore your personal blockade that may be shielding you from a solution that could be a simple arm’s reach away.

  • Have you set goals?
  • Do you feel lost and unsure in your recovery process?
  • Are you hesitant or fearful that you won’t succeed or even worse, suffer another failed attempt at recovery?

 

If your back or leg pain was corrected with rest, stretching, foam rolling and/or massage, then it likely "fixed" itself within a few weeks. By the way, back pain and sciatica often go hand in hand. (But more to come on that later in this book).

If these methods helped you regain your life prior to injury...great! If not, you may need a new approach.

If you've failed at getting your life back following a bout of back or leg pain in the past, it's not your fault. There's lots of information out there, and it can be confusing. Many times that information overload keeps you from success. It's okay.

If you've been concerned in the past that you can't succeed at improving your back pain or sciatica, I want you to put those fears to rest. You can do this. You just need the right person to walk you through the process.

Gurus on Instagram, Facebook and other social media want you to think you need to use the newest type of technology and treatments to get better, like stem cell, vibrating guns and copper products. I'm here to tell you they're wrong. People have successfully recovered from back pain for years without these.

How do you think animals in the wild recover from back pain and sciatica? Did they gather all the nuts they’ve squirreled away to finance stem cell injections 3 times a year? No, they just moved and got better!

If you've ever thought there's a faster, more efficient way of recovering from back pain or sciatica than months of unfruitful stretching or rest, you're right.

I know you have aspirations of running your dream destination race, hiking on the weekend, surfing (aka slappin’ the lip), weightlifting or just plain old moving everyday as you go about your life without wondering if you’ll trigger your “bad back” in the process. I'm here to assist you in that process, but guess what… it all starts with a mental “about face.”

What would you do tomorrow if your back or leg pain was gone? Totally gone! Gone in the way as if you never ever had it and you have no fear of reinjuring it. Gone as in never again having a thought in your mind about your “bad back?”

Write it down. With that goal in mind, keep your eye on the prize and devour this book.

Enjoy!

 

 








INTRODUCTION


I’m Dr. Sebastian Gonzales and I’m a back pain survivor!

I have to admit; it feels good to say that.

Sadly, not a lot of people can say the same. Here are some rough stats you’ll encounter as you perouse through the Internet:

80% of people have experienced back pain at some point in their lives.

50% of people say that they had back pain some time in the last year.

~ 33% of people have had back pain in the previous three months.

 

Why is back pain so prevalent?

That is the billion-dollar question. We have many clues, yet very few solid answers.

Why is there so much mystery surrounding back pain?

Simple, because humans are complex beings. Nobody is the exact same.

You and I have so many differences:

  • Body type
  • Gender
  • Upbringing
  • Past and current jobs
  • Hobbies
  • Life experiences
  • What beliefs we create from those life experiences
  • Support systems
  • Financial status
  • Educational background

 

The list can go on and on, but in my opinion, the #1 most forgotten step of successful recovery from back pain is getting your head right first.

You need to be mentally ready for recovery before you go through a formal back rehab program.

As the saying goes, “The solution to your problem will present itself when you’re ready to hear it.”

How many times have you heard people say, “I wish I would have known that years ago?” To be honest, they probably did hear that piece of advice or suggestion years ago, but they weren’t in the right frame of mind to use that information appropriately.

Evidence based rehabilitation plans surrounding back pain are the same. As a rehab expert, I now know what will work in most cases, yet back pain is a nationwide, maybe worldwide, epidemic. Why? For all of the reasons I covered above.

My insurance won’t pay for it.

I have 3 kids and I don’t have time.

I tried everything and nothing worked.

I can’t stop doing the things that creates my back pain.

Everyone has different reasons why they still have the back pain they do, just like everyone has their own reasons for not eating healthy. We all kind of have an idea of what we need to do, but something is blocking us from getting it done.

I too had a mental block in recovery from my back pain. Mine was pride.

I knew what I probably should have been doing, but my emotions and fears got in the way of following my own instructions. I eventually swallowed my pride, appeared to not know anything about back pain to a colleague, and decided to succumb to his direction over my own. Mine clearly wasn’t producing the results I wanted. I was too close to the problem to logically guide myself.

I’ve been depressed, confused, overwhelmed and frustrated with my back condition as well, as you’ll learn in this book. Getting my head in the right mental state to recover was the missing link in my recovery.

Just to be clear, the pain is not “in your head,” it’s a real sensation that can successfully be reduced without surgery in a majority of people.

We often jump to the fear of having a surgery at the first hint of back pain, but it rarely needs to go that far.

I was just like you, I was frozen by fear of making it worse and I also needed some assistance, some guidance. My personal goals while rehabbing were to survive a plane flight to Europe and playing recreational league baseball again.

I’m confident this book will assist you finding your correct mindset for recovery. I look at my experiences defeating back pain as a real life education in what it’s like from a patient’s point of view. I’ve heard many people say they disagree with their doctors’ recommendations and say he or she never listened to their concerns.

I feel this book will provide insight to you as I blend my clinical knowledge about back pain with concerns I had as the patient. Allow me to begin by sharing my clinical perspective.

Over the course of my clinical career, I’ve been working with hardworking weekend warriors for over nine years to decrease symptoms of back pain and nerve pain to the glutes & legs. I’ve seen some really hard cases that ended up requiring surgery or injections and others that felt over 50% improvement in a matter of weeks.

In my early years I was what I would consider a “soft tissue doc” and had the belief that soft tissue care was literally the only thing people needed to get better. I had some failed cases and I just chalked them up to being “tough cases.” I was great with hips, knees, ankles and shoulders, but I was subpar at low back cases.

I thought many of acute low back cases were just “hard cases” that needed a little more time before I could do what I was good at. The problem was that I didn’t know what I didn’t know. In reality, these acute cases weren’t that hard and I was just missing some critical pieces of the puzzle.

My treatment plan was incomplete, yet my practice was thriving.

My patients were happy, but there were some people I just couldn’t help. These were the cases that ate me up inside, in fact I’ve had many nights of restless sleep thinking about what I could have done better. How could I have helped these patients who were clearly suffering?

During this point in my life, I was fortunate enough to have a local fellow chiropractor as a friend to drink beer and eat pizza with. We bounced cases off each other and discussed what we could have done better. We shared stories of successes and failures.

As you could guess most of my failure cases were spines, so one day I asked after way too many beers…

“So how much do you think I know that you know about back cases?”

“15%”

Now he was a bullshitter at times and I still don’t know if he was bullshitting me or not, but it sparked my interest to learn more. Long story short, he was right!

Nobody likes to admit when they don’t know what they were doing; I’m no exception. I did well with some types of cases, but I would continually “strike out” with low back pain people.

Some doctors are satisfied with people coming in weekly for pain management; I’m not. I expected better results. I expected people to have a huge reduction of pain within a few weeks and then we would continue to reverse the adaptive process of how they got in pain in the first place. I never seemed to have this type of success with low back patients.

I expected more than having patients lean on my hands as their weekly “adjustment.” In other types of cases, I had amazing success in getting people out of pain fast and then coaching them in reintroduction of what their long-term goals were.

  • Playing baseball
  • Surfing
  • Running marathons

 

Getting out of pain was never my goal of my patients, and it wasn’t their long-term goal either.

Within this book, you’ll learn part of the other 85% I’ve learned specifically in regards to low back pain. You’ll learn of the myths and guidelines of how to return to life and your favorite activity after experiencing a “bad back.”

I can say with confidence now that I can assist people with low back pain, yet I continue to get better weekly. The more I know, the more I know that I don’t know.

 

Fact: Recovery from back pain starts with a mental “about face.”

I’ve been there. I’ve had back pain that has taken me out of weightlifting, running, throwing and hitting a baseball. I know what it’s like to be depressed. I know what it’s like to shy away from hikes, not want to go on long plane flights because of fear of sitting and to be mentally preoccupied by thoughts of my back.

Knowing other people have been through it all before me was one the most important aspects of my recovery, which is what I’ll be sharing in this book. An advanced version of this book is available with the program I start people on when they have flexion intolerant back pain (can’t bend forward, but backwards is relatively comfortable).

The advanced version will include detailed videos to walk you through the process, step-by-step. You can find the advanced course at: www.P2SportsCare.com/Courses-List/

As for this book, consider it as step one in your journey to recovery.

 

Who will benefit from this book?

  • Weekend warriors with a passion to work hard and play harder
  • The busy moms, who have to keep up with their kids
  • The dads who relive their own "glory days" watching their sons play high school football
  • The 30 year old marathoner who’s pushing for Boston

 

The great part about getting your head ready for recovery is that everyone has the same building blocks: asking yourself what you believe to be true about your back pain and comparing it to what current research says. I’ll provide all of the common myths and facts about back pain in this book.

Before you start, I want to commend you for taking a deeper look into how to keep moving and pushing through your passion in a healthy way. Most people don’t know what it takes to keep them from an “overuse” injury and “old age aches and chronic boo-boos.”

Most of the people who present with back discomfort and sciatica into sports medicine facilities are weekend warriors… I would consider myself one. We are the majority who don’t get paid to play and often sacrifice proper planning for other aspects of life (work, kids, spouse, etc.).

Don’t be turned off by the technical aspects of this book.

The reason why people continue to have back discomfort and sciatica is because they decide to not take an interest in how their own body works. Some people I’ve had enter my clinic have been very open about not wanting to learn anything about why they are hurt… they just want to be told what to do, how often, how long and so on.

To be clear, this book is not written for that type of person. You’ll get a ton of information out of this book… more than you would ever get from 24 appointments of rehab that would cost you your copay x 24!

Read it a few times over and the next time you have an injury to the back, hip or leg you will know exactly what’s going on!

 

Let’s Be Clear

Real quick, before we go into my history of back pain, I want to make sure that I frame something really well for you. I want you to fully understand what this book is REALLY about.

 

I want you to understand where this book came from, and from what mindset it was born of. This book was originally a full course on how to assist yourself though low back pain, if there was no help within the next 100 miles.

 

The course was packed full of nearly everything you would need to get yourself better (if applied well). It was 260 pages, full of pictures, videos and simple analogies.

 

I developed this large scale course after I was asked by about 10 friends who lived far away, about how to improve their situation with their back.

 

They all had not found success with their first efforts, which included things like yoga, stretching, spinal adjustments, massage, rest, avoidance and exercise. To be clear, some of these work really well for people but they were not working for my friends.

 

Naturally, I wanted to help, so I frame worked a video based course with a correlated text that happened to be 260 pages long.

 

I gave this guide out to all of them for free under one condition, I needed them to grammar and spell check it for me.

 

A month passed before I followed up with each of them. I was hoping that they were feeling way better! 50% better or at least hopeful, after realizing how simply many forms of back pain can be resolved.

 

I was really surprised by the outcome. Absolutely NOBODY had even started to open the guide in any way, shape, or form. Not one page was flipped nor a video started. They never even heard my killer analogies!

 

Frustrated and wondering how to get anyone to read this book, that took me about 4 months to create, I asked them all what happened? Why didn’t they start? They received a possible solution for FREE for heaven’s sake.

 

Funny because I hear all the time how they can’t afford treatments, personal coaching or other very helpful things when it comes to recovery from low back pain.

 

After digging down into the root of these issues, one reason seemed to rise to the surface.

 

“It seemed too long and it was daunting to even start.”

 

After hearing this over and over again, I couldn’t help but recall the first time I heard someone tell be about the abbreviation TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read). Snotty teenager.

 

Working in an industry where I basically sell an idea of change to people who are not always receptive to the change needed to solve their problem, I thought about what needs to be done to get these 10 people to read this guide.

 

The natural thing seemed like I should cut it down, but it was already pretty damn trim. Back pain is a 600 billion dollar problem in the U.S. and I feel misinformation is one driver of this ongoing epidemic. Trimming even more would not help!

 

The compromise I settled on was to cut the course into two parts. The book before you is part one, yet within this section there is not one single physical suggestion about what to do and how to feel better.

 

I concluded that there needs to be a MENTAL MINDSET change that occurs before PHYSICAL RECOVERY can ever happen.

 

Listening to the feedback I got, I concluded that some people are not ready to commit to 260 pages or even a morning walk. Some people are sold on the idea that they can get better by paying for professional assistance or even opening a Youtube video that may be a very critical part of their recovery (and yes, there is great free information on Youtube, most people with ongoing low back issues are just using them the wrong way, at the wrong time, and the wrong dosage.)

 

Pla0in and simple. Some people just aren’t ready to change. Perhaps they have not set their goals high enough yet, perhaps they are deep in depression and hid it, or maybe they have been told that their diagnosis will not get better no matter what they try.

 

Regardless, lack of proper and adequate self motivation will yield poor recovery. Period.

 

So, now you know, this is part one of a larger course. I took the liberty of improving the storytelling and emotional impact it could have on you. Hollywood movies are great at this. Some people walk out of that movie and feel inspired to improve their situation, change their life some how or hatch an island of dinosaurs. The first part of this book is where I share my story of recovery that hopefully inspires you.

 

The second part, we go more into myth busting, analogies and actionable steps you can take.

 

Let me be clear… during the course of reading this book I want you to feel motivated to do something helpful.

 

That could be reaching out to your trusted medical doctors, chiropractor, physical therapist, health coach or even a friend who you’ve seen recover from a back issue personally.

 

I want you to take action. You don’t have to come see me. There are plenty of honest professionals out there to help you.

 

Yet, some of you are not as fortunate to live in an area where you have many choices of great rehab people. For this crowd, I placed mentions of my online video course (the part 2) within this book.

 

This book is not a scammy sale nor is this book an advertisement for me to sell you my online course. If the few references to  my course offends you in some way, my apologies, as that was not my intent. Please read this book in the light of WHY it was created-to inform people how simply many forms of back pain can be resolved.

 

Now you know why this book was created. I want you to get motivated and do something different.

 

See someone in person. No online course or directive you find will ever be better than in-person assistance. Never.

 

If your goal was to build a house, would you do it faster if I sent you a video or if I just came over to show you how in person?

 

You know the answer.