Why Do Our Backs Hurt? | Dr Stuart McGill

I, I never put a person's images up on the view box early in the consult. I really try and understand the person, uh, who they are, their personality, and, and then I, I assess them for their physical pain triggers, and only then will I look at the images. And when I looked at the images, I, I was quite horrified. He'd split his sacrum front to back, L5 was heavily fractured, and the discs were, uh, if I use the word obliterated-

(laughs)

... uh, that would be, um, quite accurate. So we started to talk, and he was starting to move a little bit better, and, uh, uh, but he had to humble himself right back to getting the movement patterns right and some very, very basic, uh, patterns, athletic patterns. Um, and then, uh, he said, w- in our conversation, he said, "Well, do, do you think I'm gonna get out of pain? Because the surgeons I've s- I've said- seen, th- they, they said I'm done. I, I, I'm not even gonna get out of pain, I've done so much damage to my back." And I said, "Well, I don't know, but let's, let's ... th- here's my best effort and my best suggestion on what to do." Well, believe it or not, he was outta pain in about three weeks, just learning how to avoid the, the triggers. But he said something very curious to me. He said, "Well, I'm gonna get out of pain, and when I get out of pain, I want my, my world record back." And I said to him, I said, "Well ..." and obviously I'm a lot older than he was, and I said, "Well, if you were my son, Brian, I'd give you this advice." I said, "Let's work on getting you out of pain, but I, I, I would seriously consider doing something else with your life. I mean, th- this is a pretty compromised spine. To build you back t- to set a world record again is ... " But he said, "No, I wanna do that." And I said, "All right. Well, if we do it, we'll write a book together." So that was the story behind, uh, uh, the book called Gift of Injury.

(wind blowing) Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. This episode is brought to you by The Protein Works. I'm very happy to be supported by them again for this episode. They're giving away over 100 pounds of supplements this week, and all that you need to do to enter is share this episode. I'm absolutely certain it's going to be a massive help to a lot of people, so find a friend that you think would be interested, fire it in a group chat, or feel free to post it on your socials. All that you need to do is then send me a screenshot @chriswillex on whatever social media you want. Find me a screenshot or tag me in your share, and I will pick someone over the next week, and I'll announce that, uh, before next Monday. But onto today's guest, Dr. Stuart McGill. We are getting fully spinal today, aren't we? How are you? Welcome to the show.