Dr. Patrick Roth is a neurosurgeon practicing in New Jersey. He is the Chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at Hackensack University Medical Center and the Director of the Hackensack Neurosurgical Residency Program. He has authored numerous publications related to the spine. His interests include medical decision-making, minimally invasive spinal surgery, and rehabilitation of back pain.
He has had a life-long interest in exercise and diet. He lives in northern New Jersey with his wife and two children. He talks about in an article with dragondoor.com how kettlebells are an ideal tool for treating back pain. They not only strengthen the back, but also enable improved posture, improved bending form. Read on and open your mind to some extraordinary possibilities:
“Back pain can be successfully treated by harnessing the synergy between the brain and the body—or in this case the brain and back—and by harnessing the equally extraordinary capacity of the body (and back) to adapt and change when properly stressed.
Kettlebell training is an excellent medium for using the body’s self-healing and self-changing capabilities. I have used it successfully, at first personally, then professionally with my patients. The typical back pain sufferer usually stares back at me incredulously when I suggest such an aggressive treatment for back pain!
To imagine how kettlebells can help back pain sufferers, it is helpful in to envision the body (and back) as antifragile.
Our capacity to change as a result of stress is called phenotypic plasticity. Recent research has shown that much of what was once thought to be meaningless DNA in our genome is likely dedicated to individual cells’ capacity to adapt to environmental stressors. This adaptation occurs in the alteration and expression of proteins. When stress is applied to an organism—a cell, an organ, or the entire individual—the adaptation is cumulative and interdependent. The organism’s design changes to match the functional demand created by the stress. This biological matching of functional demand to structural design is called symmorphosis.
As difficult as it is for me, as a physician, to convince my patients of the efficacy of kettlebells to diminish back pain, I’d imagine it’s even harder for kettlebell instructors to encourage their clients to strengthen their backs when they have back pain. If the client subsequently becomes a patient of a therapist or doctor, one can only imagine the ensuing conversation… “He did WHAT to you?”
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