Exploring the Root Causes of Chronic Back Pain and What to Do About It with Dr. Stuart McGill

Dhru Purohit Show

Dhru Purohit

Medicine, Health & Fitness, Alternative Health

4.7 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2024

⏱️ 126 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This episode is brought to you by Birch, Plunge, and AquaTru. Back pain is a common affliction exacerbated by our modern and sedentary lifestyles. This discomfort frequently hinders work and daily activities. Our guest today delves into the back's anatomy, identifying movements—or lack thereof—that contribute to pain and discussing factors contributing to its increasing prevalence. Today, on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru and Dr. Stuart McGill delve deep into back pain. Dr. McGill shares insights into why back pain is so prevalent, dispels myths surrounding it, and discusses the types of repetitive stress and strain that can lead to chronic pain. He also outlines his approach to treating back pain and highlights the limitations clinicians face in treating their patients. Dr. Stuart McGill is a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo and the chief scientific officer at Backfitpro Inc. McGill has written more than 300 scientific publications on the topics of lumbar function, low back injury mechanisms, investigation of tissue loading during rehabilitation programs, and the formulation of work-related injury avoidance strategies. He has received several awards for his work, including the Volvo Bioengineering Award for Low Back Pain Research from Sweden. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. McGill dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): The prevalence of back pain (00:00:36 / 00:00:36) Drivers of back pain in our modern world (3:17 / 3:17) Repetitive stress and strain that leads to back pain (12:00 / 8:36) Types of training and how to choose what is best (22:00 / 17:50) Dr. McGill’s Origin story (34:00 / 28:00) The myth of non-specific back pain (49:00 / 43:50) How to find an appropriate clinician (57:00 / 52:17) The Big Three principles to prevent back pain (1:04:00 / 59:06) Ancestors ability to engage in a variety of movements (1:15:00 / 1:10:10) Training in cycles (1:23:00 / 1:18:27) Advice for Dhru’s pain (1:33:00 / 1:28:00) Dr. McGill’s Seven-Day Approach (1:37:00 / 1:32:30) Strengthen what is weak and stretch what is tight (1:47:00 /1:52:30) Also mentioned in this episode: Dr. McGill’s book, Back Mechanic BackFitPro.com Spine Models For more on Dr. McGill, follow him on Instagram or his website. To get 25% off your Birch Living mattress plus two free eco-rest pillows, head over to birchliving.com/dhru today. Right now, Plunge is offering my community $150 off cold plunges and their core products. Just go to plunge.com/dhru or enter code DHRU to revolutionize your wellness journey today. AquaTru is a countertop reverse osmosis purifier with a four-stage filtration system that removes 15x more contaminants than the bestselling water filters out there. Go to dhrupurohit.com/filter/ and get $100 off when you try AquaTru for yourself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Stuart such a pleasure to have you here. You know today we're talking about getting to the root of back pain and some of the top myths that people have around this topic that you are most known for dispelling.
0:15.0	And most importantly, we're going to be talking about what people can do to address it or potentially prevent it if they don't have it.
0:21.0	Knock on wood, I hope they don't have it right now, but a lot of people do. And on that note, I'd love to start off a little bit big picture about something shocking that I heard you share, and maybe I'm just not in the know but I didn't know this statistic so I'm
0:35.0	gonna share your quote you just make sure that I got it right and then we'll talk
0:37.7	about it so I heard you share that up to 80% of people in their life today will suffer from some form of debilitating back pain.
0:48.7	So number one, did I get that right?
0:50.5	And number two, what the heck is going on in this modern world that we live in
0:55.4	that 80% of people are going through this. The word debilitating is interesting. I
1:01.2	was a professor throughout my life and I could have quite severe back pain
1:06.0	but it wouldn't prevent me from standing in front of a lecture hall and giving a lecture.
1:11.2	If I had a physical job, I say I worked as a fisherman or a car mechanic or a construction worker, the same level of pain absolutely was debilitating. So the definition is it's a severe impact on work, severe impact on the person's occupation and on their enjoyment of life, whatever that might be in their current stage of life, picking up a child being a grandmother would be such an example.
1:47.0	So the often quoted rate of incidents and prevalence is about 80%.
1:56.7	So to build on a little bit further,
1:58.8	I feel like you were kind of going there,
2:00.3	but just to understand how vast the problem of back pain is, especially, you know, I'm 40 years old,
2:09.0	maybe some people that are in my age demographic or younger think that as I thought that this was kind of like a rare thing,
2:15.5	people have injuries, but as you age and you talk to people,
2:18.8	you actually find out that just because somebody is not
2:21.1	on disability, just because somebody hasn't stopped working at their job just because they aren't showing up in the world
2:27.3	Doesn't mean that they aren't struggling with what still would be classified as debilitating pain and that's partly what I feel like I'm
2:33.6	hearing you say. Yeah, again it depends on what the person does throughout the day
2:41.6	if they are a computer operator and they are unable to concentrate
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -287 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dhru Purohit, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Dhru Purohit and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.