Can you get rid of your back pain forever?  Yes, says Norman J. Marcus, MD, in his 2012 book End Back Pain Forever –A Groundbreaking Approach to Eliminate Your Suffering.

Dr. Marcus has Pain Centers and medical experts from all over the world praising his work.

But I have a problem with it…something ‘funny’…

Here’s one review:

“The Treatment of back pain in American has suffered from weaknesses of diagnosis and a poverty of effective treatments.  This volume…brings intelligence and clarity to an area that profoundly needs such an activity.” – Robert Cancro, MD, Lucius N. Littanuer Professor of Psychiatry and chairman emeritus

Here’s another:

“Your back pain can be cured.  Read this book.  Dr. Norman Marcus eliminates low back pain by focusing on the major problem–muscle pain.  His treatment and prescribed exercises work–I know because he treated and cured me.” – Thomas J.J. Blanck, MD, PhD; Dorothy Reaves Spatz, MD Professor of Anesthesiology, Physiology, and Neuroscience chairman, Department of Anesthesiology, NYU Langone Medical Center

Wow!  This book is regarded as breakthrough treatment for back pain by highly regarded authorities and pain clinic experts.

There’s just one funny thing…

Here are some things from the book:

1.  Dr. Marcus says muscles are the primary source of 75 percent or more of all back pain, not the spine.  (But you knew that if you read here much.  I would have estimated 90 percent.)

2.  He says medical tests make you more likely to have surgery because they show such things as herniated disks but they may–or more likely may not–be the cause of your back pain.  (And this is true, too.  Most of us have abnormalities in our spines and disks but no pain.  Just because something is seen on a test does NOT mean it is the cause of your back pain.)

3.  He treats painful back muscles with forms of electrical stimulation to fatigue them and relieve their tightness and pain.  (That’s a more high tech and expensive way than massage therapy.  Massage is low tech and also can be very, very effective in getting rid of pain.)

4.  He says “The widespread failure by doctors to recognize muscles as the primary source of back pain is helping to fuel an epidemic.”  (Good way to put it, Doctor!   Med schools don’t teach much at all about the relationship between muscles and pain.  Or muscles, period.)

Dr. Marcus also has self-help exercises in End Back Pain Forever.  There are a few I don’t care for like sit-ups.  You can injure your tailbone or your neck with sit-ups.  Reverse crunches are safer.

So, why is this a brilliant book?  Because it was written by an MD who says exactly the same things my brilliant non-MD instructors have taught me over the years.

But there is something else funny about it…

But you know what?  His fellow doctors will not believe him.   A few will be won over when he helps them relieve their own back pain but most will scoff.

That’s okay.   We believe him.

• Take action.
• Do the correct exercises.
• Take care of your muscles with massage.
• Pay attention to true messages.

You can end your back pain forever!

Oh, are you wondering what the first ‘funny thing’ is?

Dr. Marcus seems to believe he is the only one who can help people get rid of pain and dysfunction with his technique.

No where in the book does he acknowledge that muscle therapists who understand and practice trigger point therapy can do what he does with his equipment.

It’s important to know that many doctors and massage therapists who say they practice trigger point or other rehabilitative massage really don’t get it.  I think Dr. Marcus says that, too.

But there are many who do and those people make enormous differences in the way people feel and function.

So, the book is quite good but there’s just something funny about ignoring a large segment of the natural therapy field.  Perhaps his research didn’t take him quite far enough into the field of natural back pain relief.