Take Back Your Back

Although back pain is common, the fix isn’t. Take Back Your Back shows you how to diagnose and manage your particular back pain and alerts you to red flags and often-misdiagnosed issues that may worsen your condition.

—Do you have non-radiating pain on one side of the spine? Your issue may be Muscle Injury, and you need to control inflammation.

—Does your pain shoot down the leg? You may have a Slipped Disc that requires physical therapy and possibly surgery.

—Does your pain worsen with sitting and ease off with walking? You may have Sciatic Nerve Compression and need special stretching exercises.

Leading back pain expert Beth Murinson, M.D., director of pain education at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, brings together the latest science on back pain diagnosis and treatment from medications and surgical procedures to traditional physical therapy to alternative modalities such as acupuncture, meditation, and water and inversion therapies that are showing promise.

For each condition and procedure, you’ll learn what to expect in the hospital or the doctor's office, what self-therapy solutions you can do on your own, and when to seek out intervention. Detailed illustrations and easy-to-understand descriptions help you select the best treatment options to improve your unique type of back pain and live a back-healthy life.

“Primary outcomes from this book, such as more informed discussions with physicians, better decisions about treatment, and the restoration of a patient’s sense control over pain and its treatment, will undoubtedly be followed by better clinical outcomes for patients and by happier doctors.” —Rollin M. Gallagher, M.D., M.P.H., editor-in-chief of Pain Medicine, Deputy National Program Director for Pain Management, Veterans Health System

“A must-read for people living with back pain...As a pain management nurse, I found Take Back Your Back an easy-to-use and welcome resource. I recommend this reading to those new to back pain as well as those living years with persistent back pain.” —Micke A. Brown, B.S.N., R.N., director of communications, American Pain Foundation and past president, American Society for Pain Management Nursing

Take Back Your Back is a comprehensive, user-friendly guide to preventing, reversing, and managing all the different kinds of back pain from one of the top orthopedic doctors and pain specialists in the field today using the latest techniques and medical research available. Readers get the latest information on surgical and non-surgical approaches as well as what guidelines to follow in regards to hotly debated treatment options like spinal fusion. For each condition and procedure, readers learn what to expect in the hospital, at home during recovery, in the doctor’s office during follow-up care, and what they can do at home to prevent relapses. Pictures and diagrams make complex concepts understandable while checklists, self-assessments, and appendices make the book a tool that readers will reference again and again during their care.

--Do you have non-radiating pain on one side of the spine? Your issue may be Muscle Injury, and you need to control inflammation.

--Does your pain worsen with sitting and ease off with walking? You may have Sciatic Nerve Compression and need special stretching exercises.

For each condition and procedure, you'll learn what to expect in the hospital or the doctor's office, what self-therapy solutions you can do on your own, and when to seek out intervention. Detailed illustrations and easy-to-understand descriptions help you select the best treatment options to improve your unique type of back pain and live a back-healthy life.

--Do you have non-radiating pain on one side of the spine? Your issue may be Muscle Injury, and you need to control inflammation.

--Does your pain worsen with sitting and ease off with walking? You may have Sciatic Nerve Compression and need special stretching exercises.

For each condition and procedure, you'll learn what to expect in the hospital or the doctor's office, what self-therapy solutions you can do on your own, and when to seek out intervention. Detailed illustrations and easy-to-understand descriptions help you select the best treatment options to improve your unique type of back pain and live a back-healthy life.

Dr. Beth Murinson is one of the top pain specialists in the country. She completed a residency in neurology at Yale University followed by fellowships in Clinical Neurophysiology and Peripheral Neurology at Johns Hopkins. Now an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Murinson directs Pain Education for the department of Neurology. Her clinical expertise is in painful conditions of the peripheral nervous system including peripheral neuropathy, neuropathic pain, and stiff-person syndrome.