When my Dad was a young man he fell off a roof while working a construction job and herniated a vertebral disc. Thinking it wasn’t serious he had my mother walk on his back in an attempt to pop or fix whatever was wrong, and the pain was so great it nearly paralyzed him. He finally got an operation, but forever after had serious back pain any time he sits for long periods of time, unable to enjoy movies, road trips, and sometimes just sitting on the couch. Because of my experience with my father, when I started having back pain in my mid-twenties I always thought it was something structural, that maybe I had injured my back lifting weights or strained it while running. I had a desk job, as a motion graphics artist, and would sit for 10 or more hours every single day and my back absolutely killed me—It hurt so much that it made me hate my job, and I tried for years to do things like yoga, taking walks, massage, stretching, and taking copious amounts of pain killers to deal with it. I even tried special chairs. Absolutely none of it worked, and the pain was so constant and so relentless I cut back on my work and feared that one day I might have to have surgery.

Well into my research for my book and health problems my back pain actually got worse. It became so bad that I found myself having to lift my body out of my bed and out of chairs by my hands as if I were a feeble seventy-year-old instead of thirty-five. I couldn’t hardly stand up straight after sitting and needed to use my hands to push myself to standing. I began to suspect that what was causing my back pain had nothing to do with injury, but instead by infectious bacteria because during the course of my experiments and research was trying different probiotics in the search for curing gut dysbiosis and SIBO which I knew to be at the root of many of my health problems, and it was during this experimentation after consuming the Japanese dish known as natto for its unique probiotic Bacillus subtilis and high vitamin K2 content that my back pain had gotten so much worse. After suffering this incredible deterioration for several weeks I resolved to use iodine to knock it out and within two days my back pain completely vanished. Gone. Not even a little bit of the debilitating, excruciating pain and I was suddenly able to get up and move around as if I had never had such health problems. I had not yet understood exactly the underlying bacteria, though, and later bought and used a specific probiotic of Bacillus subtilis as it’s often promoted as a probiotic and the debilitating back pain returned immediately, within a single day. Having my prior suspicions confirmed I again knocked it out with iodine and aspirin.

Someone I know with chronic back pain chose to undergo surgery rather than even listen to me and try to first eradicate the bacteria which cause it. Such surgical procedures are done by scoring connective tissue, to injure it and “lengthen” the connection. It’s actually a very traumatic procedure for those tissues and recovery involves the deposition of fibrotic tissue to repair those incisions which will in the long run cause more pain as the body ages and scarring worsens. This problem is even harder for people who, like my Dad, have actual back injuries and attribute their suffering only to that injury, and no other cause, and for some reason would rather persist in that pain than even try the simple steps I recommend which can and do resolve it, in spite of the injury. The reason back pain is caused by bacteria and not injury is that one of the major muscle groups responsible for our ability to stand upright, the psoas, runs directly through the gut and the intestinal system and as we age or suffer metabolic disease opportunistic bacteria like Bacillus subtilis enter and take up residence in our gut and produce toxic products like endotoxin, exotoxin, lactic acid, ammonia, histamine, and indole which then cause the psoas to stiffen and become rigid, making it more prone to injury. Making problems worse this also reduces the ability of the psoas regenerate and heal, so injuries also last for days, weeks, and even months because these microbes also stay in the gut unless action is taken to eradicate them and improve the diet and overall metabolic health, and then we are left thinking that the problem is serious damage which requires surgery. Eradicating these harmful microbes can heal back pain entirely in a matter of days. Even more serious injuries like a herniated disc are strongly influenced by these microbes too and often could heal as well if the interfering metabolites were eliminated.

If you have chronic back pain it’s pretty easy to fix. First, take a low-dose supplement of iodine to help assist the immune system eradicate those harmful bacteria. Aspirin is also very useful as aspirin actually raises the metabolic rate of cells and this helps them heal, but aspirin also assists the immune system by promoting interferon which is how the body signals to cells that there are pathogens present. While aspirin is not an extremely effective painkiller it will cause the injury to heal faster so that you aren’t in pain as long, and while other NSAIDs like ibuprophen and acetomenophin are actually very good painkillers they also inhibit inflammation too well and actually slow healing to prolong tissue regeneration and pain.

A useful probiotic which can compliment these efforts is actually Swiss cheese, which is rich in Propionibacterium which are useful in promoting gut health. Long term gut health must be resolved in order to fully rehabilitate the psoas and make it more resilient to any future strain and stress, as discussed in my book Fuck Portion Control. Although I am now forty-one and twenty-five pounds heavier (and still six-foot-seven) and continue having a desk job in which I sit for up to ten hours a day I have not had even a little back pain in years. As many of us have desk jobs in which we sit for many hours indoors my article Health for Gamers has information which can also help.