Making Your Bad Back Better, with The O'Connor Technique: How You Can Become Your Own Chiropractor

MAKING YOUR BAD BACK BETTER WITH THE O'CONNOR TECHNIQUE, HOW YOU CAN BECOME YOUR OWN CHIROPRACTOR is a unique spinal pain relief educational treatise and self-help manual that begins by describing the state-of-the-art with respect to back pain management and briefly elaborates on historical, contemporary, practitioner-mediated and self-administered back pain therapies, comparing all with The O'Connor Technique's method of backache management. It then reviews the anatomy and pathology of the spinal intervertebral discs (so as to educate the reader in the standard terminology necessary to understand the concepts) followed by a previously unpublished and elsewhere unavailable physical means to self-diagnose the source of back pain, neck pain, and backache. Then, through an instructional set of principles it carefully explains the mechanical forces that naturally act on the spine and how these forces can be controlled and capitalized upon to relieve and prevent spinal pain. Foremost, it advances an unique and revolutionary method of spinal pain therapy and spinal pain prevention by teaching individuals with the most common forms of back and neck pain how to manipulate their own spinal intervertebral disks to achieve pain relief, restore lost range-of-motion, avoid surgery, and prevent future pain and disability. It finishes by specifically targeting many of the activities of daily life which are especially associated with back pain and the author's perspective on optional therapies available.

The book and especially the self-administered physical therapy aspect was written to be read from a back pain sufferer's perspective, in lay language; however it was also intentionally written with sufficient technical detail so that a physical therapist, massage therapist, Chiropractor, or physician can apply the identical principles to patients in order to diagnose back pain or neck pain, relieve backache or neck ache, and prevent their back pain or neck pain from re-occurring.

No other existing back pain therapy, backache therapy, or neck pain therapy offered by the medical establishment, or available to the public through any media, approaches the successfulness of The O'Connor Technique in its ability to not only address immediate, acute back pain or chronic backache; but, over the life of the individual, it teaches how the painful biological process of degenerative disc disease can be avoided and, this previously believed to be relentless process, prevented from advancing at the rate it otherwise might.

In the universe of back pain books, one book could not relevantly address or specifically hope to treat every form of back pain. The O'Connor Technique (tm) is based upon the uniquely determined clinical understanding that the overwhelming majority of back pain originates from spinal mechanical problems in which the fibro-cartilaginous material of the intervertebral disc has been physically displaced or herniated. Often, this condition is correctly diagnosed as Mechanical Back Pain, Acute Back Pain, Chronic Back Pain, Functional Backache, Spinal Soft Tissue Injury, Connective Tissue Injury, Low Back Sprain, Back Strain, Lumbar Strain, Lumbar Sprain, Ligamentous Strain, Ligamentous Sprain, Lumbar Ligament Strain, Lumbar Ligament Sprain, Lumbar Disc Degeneration, (Lumbar Disk Degeneration), Low Backache, Chronic Backache, Acute Backache, Spinal Disease, Disc Disease (or Disk Disease), Intervertebral Disc Disease (or Intervertebral Disk Disease), Slipped Disc (or Slipped Disk), Spinal Disc Disease (or Spinal Disk Disease), Herniated Disc (or Herniated Disk), Herniated Intervertebral Disc (or Herniated Intervertebral Disk), Spinal Disc Protrusion, (or Spinal Disk Protrusion), Degenerative Disc Disease, (or Degenerative Disk Disease), Pinched Disk or Pinched Disc, Acute Neck Pain, Chronic Neck Pain, Cervical Disc Herniation, Cervical Disk Protrusion, Cervical Ligament Sprain, Cervical Ligament Strain, or Sciatica.

However, too, many times it is incorrectly diagnosed as Spinal Arthritis, Spinal Facet Joint Disease, Spinal Misalignment, Spinal Malalignment, Spinal Subluxation, Spondylosis, Facet Syndrome, Facet Arthritis, Degenerative Facet Disease, Spinal Osteoarthritis, Sacroiliitis, Muscle Sprain, Muscle Strain, Pulled Muscles, Muscle Spasms of the Back Muscles, Fibromyalgia, Fibrositis, Pinched Nerve, Nerve Root Syndrome, Radiculopathy, Shoulder Pain, Wry Neck Syndrome, Whiplash, Torticullis, Sacroileitis, Lumbago, or Scoliosis. Persons with these diagnoses should make an attempt to confirm or discount these diagnoses by engaging The O'Connor Technique (tm) of self-diagnosing your disk (see excerpt below).

The prospective reader can rapidly determine if their particular back pain is most likely caused by a disc problem amenable to The O'Connor Technique (tm) as well as quantify for themselves the probability of benefit by taking tests provided in the book. The book as well as its companion web site start off with a written test (see excerpt below) that selects for those whose back pain or neck pain problems most likely can be helped by The O'Connor Technique (tm) and largely eliminates those persons who probably will not benefit by it. The more a reader's back problem correlates with affirmative responses to the written test, the higher the probability they will receive back pain or neck pain relief. Too, the book describes a physical method in which back pain sufferers themselves can, by making specially designed postural movements, confirm the nature of their problem with a self-performed physical diagnostic test (see excerpt below). Once the reader is convinced that this book addresses their problem, a self-manipulative method, similar to chiropractic, but exceeding it in efficacy, is described to relocate the displaced disc material and prevent it from dislocating again, without tiring, repetitive, exercises or expensive devices.

Of note is the fact that it is not necessary for the reader to digest the entire 400 pages, the book may be used compartmentally, allowing the reader to go quickly to the sections pertaining to their specific pain area, without reading the entire manual; however, since most low back pain sufferers eventually have pain in other segments of the spine, the neck and the thorax are also treated individually. The over 110 illustrations and 220 photographs in the book help make the concepts and directions, although novel, easy to understand and perform.

WILLIAM T. O'CONNOR, JR., M.D. earned his University of Colorado baccalaureate degree with honors, in 1977, in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology as well as English where he received the Jacob Van Eck award for scholastic achievement and community service. He received his doctorate of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati in 1981. He completed his post-doctorate studies through the University of California at Davis where he subsequently served as an Assistant Clinical Professor for approximately ten years. He was board certified and licensed as a physician & surgeon in both California and Oregon. He is a certified Civil Surgeon, and has been in the active practice of medicine as the medical director of a Northern California clinic for fifteen years. He had long-suffered from back pain himself due to the inadequacy of its contemporary clinical management. His quest for pain relief led him to a number of valuable discoveries that proved to be hugely successful in treating a wide range of previously poorly treated or untreatable backache and neck pain patients.