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I'm almost 60 years old and my back is in better shape now than when I was 30! Ten minutes a day is all I spend to insure that my back stays that way!

Some people want you to believe that it takes a lot of work and endless stretching and exercises to keep your back in shape and your pain under control, but it simply is not true.

It's a fact that good body mechanics and posture can help prevent injury to your back, but pain is only an "effect." Once you know the cause and treat it, the effect disappears!

The only reason we feel pain is because sensory nerves are being stimulated. When it comes to the back, the nerves that signal pain to our brain are those that exit our spinal column in areas where they are prone to be stimulated. The sensory nerves exit between the vertebrae. The only thing that prevents those nerves from being pinched or stimulated is the intervertebral discs.

Therefore, to keep our back pain free and in good health, we need to learn how to take good care of our discs. Let's begin by examining their composition.

The disc is a highly specialized cartilage tissue that consists of a tough outer shell with a spongy and gelatin-like core. Over 90% of it is water. When they say that most people are chronically dehydrated, they mean just that. Unfortunately, our body will pull fluid from wherever it can to make up for this deficit. Many times back pain will magically disappear when sufficient quantities of pure water are consumed on a regular basis.

Another enemy of the disc is gravity. We spend most of our waking hours in an upright position. If we carry extra weight around our midsection, gravity will cause compression of these vertebral discs. As the abdomen creeps out over our belt, gravity will cause that protruding gut to act as a lever to pull the normal curvature of our back into an exaggerated and unnatural curve. This also causes uneven compression of our vertebral discs. All this pressure on the discs squeezes the fluid out of them in much the same way that squeezing a sponge forces water out. The end result is that compressed discs cannot hold the vertebrae far enough apart to prevent sensory nerves from being pinched and stimulated which the brain interprets as pain.

Now that you know the true cause of back pain, let's explore how to reverse this effect.
If gravity is the cause, the solution is to reverse the effects of gravity. That is exactly what I have been doing for the past year and it is the number one reason why my back is in better

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