It is unexpected and agonizing. You reach over to pick up a package, bend down to tie your shoe, or put out your arms to scoop an “arms-up” child . . . and suddenly, something goes terribly wrong. You know it in an instant. A wrench. A tweak. A tear. A back muscle, or disk, or nerve…something has gone completely “off-line.” In the twitch of a muscle, but no twinkle of an eye, moving becomes misery.

Even if you’ve never studied anatomy ever, you are immediately an expert in just how intimately connected your back is to your arms and legs, neck and shoulders, hands and feet. Everything anywhere near your back, hurts. When there is a “wreck” around the spinal cord, the “super highway” of our nervous and pain receptors, all of the other roadways in our body, all the muscles and nerves, all su…