Dr David Johnson develops successful functional movement program to treat back pain
Living with back pain can be debilitating and sufferers have been known to spend tens of thousands of dollars on treatment. But one leading spinal surgeon says there is one thing they must try first.
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People suffering back pain have been known to spend the equivalent of a house deposit seeking a cure.
But there is a cheaper and surprisingly simpler way to find relief, says a leading brain and spinal neurosurgeon.
Tired of seeing clients waste money on multiple treatment options, Brisbane’s Dr David Johnson has made it his mission to treat as many patients as possible without surgery.
Credited with launching three clinical functional movement training centres as well as The Back Pain Centre – a world-first in-hospital facility – Johnson says he has witnessed hundreds of lower back pain sufferers, aged 15 to 90, turn their lives around simply by learning how to move correctly and efficiently.
The realisation for Johnson came while working as an Australian Weightlifting coach and led him to develop an eight-week course called NeuroHAB, which aims to cure the disease of movement dysfunction.
“The problem is patients get side tracked into hundreds of different types of symptom-based interventions that don’t address root cause for long periods which only serves to increase the risk of requiring a structural surgical intervention,” Johnson says.
“The precise biomechanics of being a competent weightlifter … transfer over into proficient movement for everyday life activities and this is relevant to the health of everyone’s spine, not just athletes.
“This is a functional rehabilitation for the condition of back pain which is primarily a functional disease of biomechanics. The structural problems that affect the spine and sometimes require surgery are all secondary.”
He says recent and current lower back pain flare-ups can be attributed to lockdown due to people’s activity levels decreasing.
“More important than ever COVID-19 should refocus our attention towards several fundamental pillars of health with quality movement being one of them,” Johnson, 47, says.
He says treatment will fail if the patient does not treat the biomechanical cause of the problem.
“Even when it comes to surgery, good outcomes also depend on patients being directed afterwards to reversing the cause of why they needed the surgery in the first place,” he says.
Business owner Josh Hill, 33, suffered debilitating back pain for years, resulting in loss of work and the inability to do things he loved.
“I was renovating a house and I had to stop that. I couldn’t mow the lawn or clean the house. I was a keen soccer player and had to stop that,” Hill says.
“I shudder to think where I would be had I not come across this program.”
Now training three times a week in the advanced NeuroFIT program, Hill admits he too sought alternative forms of treatment including physiotherapy, Chinese medicine, hypnotherapy, osteotherapy, psychologists, injections in his back and massage.
After suffering a herniated disc in 2015, 75-year-old Murray Brims felt almost hopeless until he started the functional movement training program a year later.
Fast forward to 2020 and he can complete 80 burpees in 10 minutes.
“I had to sleep in an arm chair because I couldn’t lay down. It was very debilitating,” Brims says.
“At first I thought I can’t live with this pain and thought I might need surgery.
“I’m a convert, I never thought I’d be 75 and being fitter than ever before because of my back pain rehabilitation.”
Griffith University School of Allied Health Sciences Professor (Physiotherapy) Julie Hides says with more people working from home and still using couches and poorly set-up work stations, back pain is expected to be on the rise.
“While this may be comfy in the short term, over time we would expect an increase in lower back pain due to these situations,” Hides says.
“Exercise programs such as motor control retraining, which include functional movement and retraining have been shown to be effective at decreasing pain and disability in people with chronic low back pain.”
Originally published as Dr David Johnson develops successful functional movement program to treat back pain