Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.
Today we are discussing how to build a strong pain free back.
Having a strong pain free back has numerous advantages, not the least of which is you're not in pain, as well as the fact that you can carry out your daily activities, any exercise or sports you might play, interactions with family members, like picking up a kidde, leaning down to get things out of a cupboard, or reaching up to get things out of a cabinet without any pain.
And back pain is one of those things that, even if minor and certainly if severe, severely impedes our ability to do most everything, even to just sit still or lay still.
And one of the things about pain, in particular back and neck pain, is that it also has an effect on our emotional self.
It makes us more irritable, it makes any activity, even the most mundane activities, that much more distressing to carry out.
So during today's discussion, we will talk about how to ameliorate pain.
However, pain as a general topic was already covered on this podcast with an expert guest, Doctor Sean Mackey, who's a medical doctor at Stanford.
He's actually the director of our Pain clinic.
And on that episode, which we provide a link to in the show, note captions, he talks about the various ways to address pain, everything from pain medication to epidurals to electrical stimulation, and importantly, the biopsychosocial model of pain, whereby our thoughts and our perceptions about pain actually influence the severity and the duration of that pain.
So if you're interested in pain and the treatment of pain per se, I highly recommend that episode.
Today we will certainly talk about ways to deal with back pain, ways to reduce it and perhaps even eliminate it altogether.
But we are also going to talk a lot about how to pain proof your back and how to build a really strong back, not just for pulling things, because the back muscles are involved in pulling things, but also just for generating a really strong, stable core, strong spinal erectors, making sure that your pelvis and your spine are interacting correctly, that your shoulders, neck and spine and pelvis, and even your lower limbs and feet are working together in the proper manner to make sure that you have the strongest and most pain free back possible.
So what I'm going to do is first I'm going to describe a bit of back anatomy and physiology.
I'm going to talk about the neuromuscular components as well as the spinal and disc components.
I promise, even if you don't have a background in biology, I'm going to make this all very accessible to any and all of you.
And then I'm going to go into the ten or twelve specific things, in particular, six things that take very little time, that require no equipment, no purchase of anything whatsoever, and involve a very minimal time investment that will allow you to build a really strong pain free back.
What's covered are protocols from three of the world's foremost experts in back pain, but also back strengthening and building resilience into the back.
So they include a medical doctor expert in back strengthening and rehabilitation, a PhD researcher who has spent decades researching the spine and ways to strengthen the core and spine, and a world class PhD physical therapist who is expert not just in the spine, but in fact in the movement, rehabilitation and strengthening of the entire body.