Today’s busy world provides too much stress and not enough time for exercise. Instead of walking, running, and doing physical chores, we sit for hours at a desk, use machines to do work for us, and drive a car for even the shortest trips. As a result, more than sixty-five million Americans experience back pain, neck stiffness, and tension headaches. Dr. Kraus explains the causes of back pain and tells you what you can do to prevent and alleviate it. He presents six simple tests to determine whether you have the strength to carry your own body weight and the flexibility to match your height. According to Dr. Kraus, if you fail any one of these tests, you are underexercised or overtensed, and the odds are high that if you don’t already suffer from back pain, you will in the future. Dr. Kraus provides various approaches to back and tension problems, the primary focus being a series of carefully planned exercises to strengthen the whole body and to correct specific physical deficiencies. Featuring a foreword by Robert H. Boyle, Backache, Stress, and Tension is an essential handbook for everyone in today’s overworked, overstressed world.

The author offers six tests designed to reveal the tension and lack of muscle tone which are a direct cause of backache

Dr. John E. Sarno's groundbreaking research on TMS (Tension Myoneural Syndrome) reveals how stress and other psychological factors can cause back pain-and how you can be pain free without drugs, exercise, or surgery. Dr. Sarno's program has helped thousands of patients find relief from chronic back conditions. In this New York Times bestseller, Dr. Sarno teaches you how to identify stress and other psychological factors that cause back pain and demonstrates how to heal yourself--without drugs, surgery or exercise. Find out: Why self-motivated and successful people are prone to Tension Myoneural Syndrome (TMS) How anxiety and repressed anger trigger muscle spasms How people condition themselves to accept back pain as inevitable With case histories and the results of in-depth mind-body research, Dr. Sarno reveals how you can recognize the emotional roots of your TMS and sever the connections between mental and physical pain...and start recovering from back pain today.

Understand your back pain in a whole new way and break the cycle forever. Back pain is a serious problem, disabling over 5 million Americans and costing society $20 to $50 billion annually. Until recently both doctors and patients have misunderstood its true causes and have unwittingly fostered the pain cycle. Back Sense is the groundbreaking book that promises to change the way we approach the problem by proving that almost all chronic back pain is caused by stress and muscle tension, rather than by damage to the spine. On occasion nearly everyone experiences short term back pain--from sore or strained muscles. But for many who come to treat their back gingerly because they fear further "injury," a cycle of worry and inactivity results, which actually increases muscle tightness and leads them to think of themselves as having a "bad back." In reality, most backs are strong and resilient--built to support our bodies for a lifetime. Contrary to popular belief, truly "bad backs" are extremely rare. While seemingly abnormal disks and other parts of the back are, in fact, often present in those who suffer chronic back pain, they are also frequently found in those who have absolutely no pain whatsoever. Back Sense uses the latest scientific research to discredit the perfectly understandable, but counterproductive assumption that back pain is caused by these "abnormalities." Drawing on their work with patients and studies from major scientific journals and corporations such as Boeing, the authors have amassed conclusive evidence proving that stress and inactivity are actually to blame. Since conventional treatments of back problems encourage excessive caution, most sufferers get trapped in a vicious cycle in which concern about pain and physical limitations leads to heightened tension, more pain, and further distress. The authors of Back Sense--all three are former chronic back pain sufferers themselves--have developed a revolutionary self-treatment approach that works. It allows patients to avoid the restrictions and expense of most other treatments. After showing readers how to rule out the possibility that a rare medical condition is the source of their problem, Back Sense clearly and convincingly explains how chronic back pain results from other factors. Building on this idea, the book systematically leads readers toward recapturing a life free of back pain.

By the director of Muscle Pain Research at NYU School of Medicine, a revolutionary book about solving back pain without surgery and drugs.