American Chiropractors Directory and News

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Cooking can be a physical activity – bending, lifting, twisting just to boil a pot of pasta. For people with back pain, it can also require a lot of wincing and moaning. NPR’s Pien Huang tells us about a new cookbook with recipes designed to place less strain on the cook’s back.

PIEN HUANG, BYLINE: It’s called “The Healthy Back Kitchen,” and it’s published by America’s Test Kitchen, that cookbook empire. It’s for people like Julie Bozzo Cote. She’s had back and neck pain for the past 15 years that seriously limits her ability to cook. A typical dinner for her and her family is…

JULIE BOZZO COTE: Frozen pizza. It’s a lot of frozen pizza and salad or mac and cheese and salad or angel hair and salad.

HUANG: Cote works for America’s Test Kitchen. She wasn’t involved with making this book, but she got an early copy to review. She wants to cook more, but with back pain, it seems out of reach.

COTE: Chopping up a chicken for soup, which is something I love to do, or for just a weeknight, roast chicken is very daunting – thinking about trying to use that knife to get leverage and standing and pushing.

HUANG: One possible solution is to get a small chicken from the grocery store spatchcocked by the butcher. It’s one of many suggestions from the book to reduce the strain that cooking puts on your back. Along with clear recipes and glossy food photos, there are lessons in spinal anatomy. It was written with Dr. Griffin Baum, a spine surgeon at Northwell Health in New York City. He says it addresses two realities of life.

GRIFFIN BAUM: All human beings have to eat. So you have to eat. And all human beings will have back pain. That’s just, like, part of – like, there’s no person who goes their whole life without back pain.

HUANG: The book speaks to people with chronic back pain, often caused by arthritis in the neck and spine. That can’t be cured, Baum says. It can only be managed.

BAUM: So that’s the approach that we have, which is not, like, how do you eat better to cure back pain? No, it’s how do you make modifications in the kitchen? How do you approach the act of cooking and the act of eating in order to manage your back pain?

HUANG: You do it by prepping ingredients while seated, using a rolling cart to schlep tools around the kitchen. Baum says they spent weeks figuring out how to load an oven without bending.

BAUM: You know, we ended up coming up with what I think is pretty cool, on, like, you know, how do you pull out the rack when it’s, like, searing hot, 350 degrees, and using tongs? And how do you set up a stool, and what’s the right size stool, and how do you set something on there?

HUANG: Baum says standing for more than 10 or 15 minutes at a time can aggravate back pain, so the recipes have built-in breaks. On good days, you can chop extra onions and freeze them. On bad days, you can be extra gentle with yourself and even toast nuts in the microwave. This could be useful for people with other conditions. Dr. Linda Xu is a primary care physician who teaches patients to cook at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco.

LINDA XU: I think the same idea of, OK, let’s simplify this recipe. Let’s, you know, give you kind of lighter, easier-to-use cooking equipment. Those sorts of streamlining things would apply in many cases, actually.

HUANG: Where people are recovering from surgery or dealing with mobility issues – anyone who struggles with the stamina to cook. For Cote, the book offers more than just tips and recipes. It gives her hope that she can cook a healthy meal and still have the energy to do other things.

COTE: So we can have dinner and then go outside and play or be able to go on a bike ride before dinner and then quickly put it together, and, again, not just be frozen pizza.

HUANG: Today, her neck pain is pretty bad, but she plans to spend 15 minutes chopping onions and leeks this morning. She’ll take a long rest from standing before pulling together a lush, creamy cauliflower soup for dinner.

Pien Huang, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOROTHY ASHBY’S “COME LIVE WITH ME”) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

He told reporters that the back pain that has kept New York Yankees’ pitcher Carlos Rodon out of action is “chronic” and there is no timeline for his return. Rodon will receive a cortisone shot for his ailing midback “as quickly as possible” and one is tentatively scheduled for the next week.

Rodon, who signed with the Yankees a six-year, $162 million contract in December 2022, began the season on the injury list due to a left forearm strain that has since healed. The back problem arose during his forearm rehabilitation program. The former Chicago White Sox hurler and San Francisco Giants pitcher has yet to play a regular season game in a Yankees uniform.

Rodon was “definitely optimistic” before the Yankees game against the Tampa Bay Rays. “We have a lot of opinions and they all seem settled on the same thing. So I think that is the direction that we as a team want to go.”

Rodon is one of the many key Yankees currently on the injury list. This group includes 2022 American League MVP Aaron Judge, who was recently named team captain.

[Deesha’s Dugout:Last place Yankees’ issues easy but overlooked in the offseason ]

Judge continued his recovery from a right hip injury by working out at the team’s spring training facility on Friday. Boone said Judge was able to come off of the 10-day injury list on Monday. He hit indoors, ran and threw, as well as doing defensive drills, at the Yankees facility in Tampa. Boone hopes that Judge will be back early next week. He has scheduled him for another workout on Saturday.

Third baseman Josh Donaldson took batting practice at Steinbrenner Field with Judge. Right-hander Luis Severino was also present, but he was unable to pitch in a minor league intrasquad match due to a right lat injury. He is expected to pitch next for either Double-A Somerset or Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

The Yankees are currently 17-15 and in last place in the AL East, which is extremely competitive.

This report was contributed by The Associated Press.

: NCH neurosurgeon treats man with back pain.

Back pain is a common reason people visit their doctor.

It’s also common in older people who have a condition known as spinal stenosis. This is a narrowing or curving of the spinal canal.

This can cause severe pain if the nerve is compressed.

Even surgery can fail.

John Koffel said, “I’ve never done this before.” He had a procedure performed on his back recently to relieve pain.

It is almost a miracle to see Koffel play golf.

His back pain began after an accident when he was in his teens.

It only got worse despite several surgeries.

“I lived with sciatica for 50 years.” And I lived with it. Then it became nerve pain, and it was excruciating. It got so bad that I was incapacitated,” Koffel said. “I had no choice but to walk with a cane. I was afraid that I would be confined to a wheel chair for the rest of my days.

His options were limited and his pain was immense.

When NCH neurosurgeon Edison Valle photographed his spine, he saw a chance.

“On the opposite side, you can’t see the nerve,” Valle explained. “From all of the surgeries he has had, he has a lot scarring on one of his nervous systems. The nerve that went to the right leg had been severely compressed. He was trapped between two bones and every time the bones moved, the nerve was crushed.

His previous surgeries to fuse his back and relieve pain had now choked a nerve.

The fix was to open a space and free it.

This required a level precision that was only possible through the combination of several cutting-edge technologies.

The first was a nanoscope that is used primarily in ankle surgery.

It’s an ultra-small camera.

It looks like a needle. Valle said, “It gives you wonderful images.”

The challenge was to remove the bone without damaging any nerves and get through the layers of scar tissue.

“The next tool that allowed us to do this is an ultrasonic aspirator.” Valle explained that the tool is minimally invasive. “Through ultrasonic wave that give and take in the bone, you can basically destroy bones and at the time aspirate bone that is pressing onto the nerve without getting into the actual nerve itself and being able create a new home for the nerve,” Valle said.

This ultra-minimally-invasive surgery took only an hour, despite its complexity.

The results were immediate.

“This was the very first surgery in the system that used all these tools that were technology driven and innovative, right, so that we could help someone like him,” Valle stated.

Koffel says that for the first 50 years of his life, he no longer has back pain.

“I’ve never lived without back pain. It’s the very first time that I’ve not had it. Koffel said, “I don’t really know how to deal with it.

He feels now free to enjoy his life.

: Innovative therapy offers hope to chronic lower-back pain sufferers

After an innovative trial that combined psychological and physical approaches, there is new hope for chronic lower-back pain sufferers. Patients were empowered to manage their pain and move, which led to a dramatic reduction of the condition and its related mobility issues.

Around 80% of adult will experience lower-back pain in their lifetime. Its prevalence increases with age. Around a quarter of adults will experience chronic lower back pain that can last more than three months or even persist for years.

In a randomized, controlled clinical trial, cognitive functional therapy (CFT), a new treatment for chronic back pain, was tested on nearly 500 patients in 20 physiotherapy clinics. The results of the trial showed that those who received CFT, which involved seven individual sessions over 12 weeks with specially trained clinicians, and a booster six months later, reported great improvements in movement and pain levels.

CFT was developed by Professor Peter O’Sullivan of Perth’s Curtin School of Allied Health in Australia. It takes a physical-psychological approach to equip chronic pain sufferers with the tools they need to manage their condition confidently and to move in a way that reduces disibility.

“This new treatment takes into account the individual characteristics and limitations of the person living with chronic back problems by addressing their concerns under the expert guidance of a trained physical therapist,” said O’Sullivan. “This is different from traditional, passive approaches, including massage, spinal manipulative, medication, and injections, because it puts the patient in control of their condition. It helps them understand the factors that are contributing to their back pain, and builds confidence in their own body to get back into valued activities.

He added that it was “particularly rare and exciting” to find that the significant reduction of pain and distress experienced by these people with chronic back pain had lasted for an entire year.

According to a study conducted by researchers at Curtin University, Monash University and Macquarie University in Australia, over 80% of patients who had received CFT were satisfied with the results, noting that they felt empowered to move confidently.

“Lower Back Pain is the leading cause of Disability across the globe. It contributes to a loss of productivity and early retirement in many countries,” said Peter Kent, lead author, an associate professor at Curtin School of Allied Health. “These exciting results give new hope to millions of people who are disabled by chronic back pain around the globe. It also provides a roadmap for clinicians and policymakers to reduce the growing burden from chronic back pain using a low-risk, high-value approach based on scientific evidence.

Mark Hancock from Macquarie University who led the Sydney CFT trial is now teaching principles of the therapy to student. Five months of intensive training was required to upskill 18 practitioners who took part in the trial.

“It took a lot of physiotherapists training to develop the skills, confidence, and ability to deliver the intervention to a high-standard, despite the experience that many already had,” he said. He added that the results made it worthwhile.

“More that 80% of participants who received CFT were satisfied with the treatment and its results,” he said. “They reported significant improvements in pain levels, and were able to resume activities they previously enjoyed.

Some people we’ve spoken to following the study told us that they are still reaping benefits three years after the study.

Researchers believe this therapy approach, that tackles both the psychological aspect of chronic conditions as well as the individual physical issues has another huge benefit.

“The main economic results showed that participants who took part the CFT treatment were able to save more than AU$5,000 ($3,330) per individual, largely due to improvements in their productivity, both in paid and unpaid jobs,” said Terry Haines, a Monash University professor who investigated the efficiency of healthcare and workplace saving. This has the potential to save the global economy significant amounts of money because we know that lower back pain contributes to early retirement and loss of productivity.

The study was published by The Lancet.

Sources: Curtin University, Macquarie University