dr_bar wrote:For someone that's soon to go on one crazy adventure, you better get that back in shape soon. Time for a personal trainer to help you work on those core exercises and strengthen that lower back. I can't imagine how disappointed you'd be if you couldn't finish that trip on two wheels...
Spot on Doc! My anxieties entirely. There's only two months to go and I want to be on good form. I'm going to be one unhappy bunny if all my plans go pearshaped at the last minute because of a bad back.
I'm doing everything I can think of to sort it out: Alexander Technique, shiatsu, acupuncture and visits to my osteo. Also doing pelvic floor exercises and stuff to tone up my psoas muscles. (My home is full of some fairly exotic goings on first thing in the morning, these days!!!
) I won't go near a physiotherapist though. There are very few I would trust. I've seen too many bad results from Physiotherapy in the clinic - so I avoid them like the plague.
My back problems are caused by an old injury exacerbated by stress and not enough exercise. It does this to me every five or six years, I have a L4 that wobbles about like a pea on a spoon. But I'm wondering if there is now a prolapsed disc as well - getting lots of referred pain, tingling, cramping and spasming down my right leg - lots. That is what is not going away.
My whole Lumbar and lower Thoracic region are affected though, so I strongly suspect that there is a lot more to this than just a physical injury. All the emotional and physical stress of the last couple of years has just suddenly decided to pile itself on and this is the result.
Apart from my back I always have trouble travelling abroad because of my food allergies. So, I've started to dose up on a load of herbal and nutritional supplements. I do this stuff before going away to strengthen my digestion to cope with the change of diet. It's a pain, but it does work. I'm also booked in to see a physician in London (an old friend of mine, one of the very few people whose opinion I trust on these matters) to get some alternative form of prophylaxis for major tropical diseases, because I don't do vaccines. Never had any. And I have no intention of piling any of that dodo into my system. I don't buy the 'science' behind vaccines. (Oh Boy! There is a big rant lurking just behind that one.)
OK since I am on a rant here - IMNSHO what people are publicly told about vaccines is full of commercial misinformation and public health bullshit. (I'm more than a little worried about what my stepson and his wife are going to pump into little Oscar before his immune system is even ready to cope with it!
).
Next thing I must do is get my visa sorted...
Damn!
(Edit - Oh! that's awful!!!! 
)
