Martial Arts used to treat back pain?

Reviews, Videos, and Everything Else Martial Arts in the News
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Does this sound like Bullshido? I report, you decide.

Martial Arts Used To Treat Back Pain
Chicago-Area Doctor Tries Innovative Therapy

POSTED: 8:20 AM CST February 9, 2004
UPDATED: 8:26 AM CST February 9, 2004

CHICAGO – Patients suffering from back pain often turn to physical therapy for relief. Now, the alternative medicine director at Alexian Brothers Hospital says there’s something that works even better.

“His technique comes from the sometimes-violent world of martial arts,” NBC5’s Nesita Kwan reported.

Kwan compared the physical moves of actor Bruce Lee in his martial-arts movies to martial-arts moves by real patients who are using the moves as self-defense against back pain.

“We’re not hitting bricks on the forehead or side-kicking doors and that kind of stuff,” Dr. Patrick Massey told Kwan. “Martial arts is about health.”

Massey had a black belt before becoming a doctor. He also had back pain and tried using movements to fix it.

“The pain just, really, began to melt away,” Massey recalled.

Massey began suggesting his program to patients and had surprising results.

“About 90 percent of those walk out of here pain-free,” Massey said about the patients who tried martial arts.

Massey said his carefully chosen movements target the specific tissues in the back that are inflamed. The movements increase blood flow to that area. The increased blood flow, in turn, promotes healing and washes away the inflammatory toxins causing the pain.

“We’ve taken different martial art forms, and we’ve taken little pieces of those forms, and we have adapted them so that patients who are in pain can do these movements,” Massey said.

Two patients, Mary Evans and Lorraine Madia, work out with the moves they’ve learned at home every day. Every few weeks, they return to Massey to learn new moves.

Evans’ back pain started when she was in a car accident 26 years ago. Madia’s pain started more recently and was caused by repeatedly bending over a jewelry counter at work.

Kwan said the two women both use martial arts as a cure. Both women told her they feel much better as a result of the martial arts therapy.

Massey said his treatment may even work with patients who have problems that otherwise would require surgery, such as a slipped disc.

For more information about the benefits of martial arts for back pain, as presented in HealthWatch at 10 p.m., go to AltMed.org or contact Dr. Patrick Massey at (847) 923-0046.

Is this the real power of Kata?

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Regular exercise is the best way to prevent back pain. As long as you aren’t actually injuring it further somehow.

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Martial arts will help with various aches and pains.

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“About 90 percent of those walk out of here pain-free,”

The other 10 percent go out in BODY BAGS!

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How is this bullshido?

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i have to say though, i used to have lower back pain but now it’s gone. i attribute it to the insane stretching that i learned in my xing yi class. i stretch out every morning and the back pain went away after a few months. losing some weight helped too.

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My mom’s best friend’s husband does something similar. He does TaiChi and some other MAs (but mostly TaiChi) for his patients in physical therapy. Apparently it works really well for them. And in case some of you need more credibility, my mom, her friend, and her husband are all Board Certified MDs.

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How do we know they’re certified? I haven’t seen and diplomas or certifications and those types of credentials can be falsified anyway.

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I doubt there is Bullshido here.
It sounds like they are doing various stretches and kata which is just exercise.

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Exercise has been proven to be healthy, definately.

Madia’s pain started more recently and was caused by repeatedly bending over a jewelry counter at work.

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Were you referring to my post Virtual Mantis? Because if you were, it’s easy to check to see if a doctor is board certified. Contact the specific medical board itself. You HAVE to be state licensed to practice medicine in this country, and although law doesn’t require it, you practically HAVE to be board certified as well. It’s one of those credentials that you just can’t practice without.

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Actually fellas, a lot of recent work has discredited the various surgical procedures for knee and back injuries in favor of exercise. This is secondhand, from a doctor in the family, but I also posted some links to a New England Journal of Medicine article on this topic a few months back as well.

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the only problem seems to be that they are under the illusion what they do can still be considered a martial art.

“Martial arts is about health.”

im not knocking the use of MA excersises for health reasons, but isnt the above the type of generalisation that comes back to bite us? maybe im just being pedantic.

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I here Yoga is good for joint and muscle aches. A 30 year old fellow emolyee swears by it.

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It’s a good idea and not bullshido. Maybe they shouldn’t call it MA but many moves from various MAs provide good workout and pain reduction. I know b/c when I had a slipped disc I went to a studio, part of the workout was clearly from some kind of TaiChi <-> Karate mix. It worked fine.

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Just before I started doing AIkido, I was suffering from a very stiff neck, I couldn’t actually look more than 45 degrees away from the front.
So I started doing aikido, possibly the stupidist thing I could do, considering the amount of rolling.
Bizarrely, after a couple of weeks, my problems had resolved themselves because of the stress I was putting on my neck.
Go figure.

Next time I’ll go to a doctor though.