Other Conditions

This is a rheumatoid condition that, over time, pushes your upper back towards an extreme hunch.  As a device and home program primarily designed to counter the problems from hunching, the Backpod is a perfect fit with the condition.  We genuinely feel that anyone diagnosed with ank spon should have a Backpod.  This also applies to anyone with radiographic and non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis, of which ank spon is the biggest sub-group.

Rheumatology doctors will treat the inflammatory aspects of ank spon - the Backpod treats the musculoskeletal consequences.  Just hunching by itself causes enormous problems, without any ank spon involvement.  The biggest upper spinal problem in the computer-savvy world is called the iHunch - the hunched upper back driving neck pain and headache, usually from much bending over laptops, tablets and smartphones.  Very few of these people have ank spon - but they're still sore.

So most upper back, neck and headache pain with ank spon is just from the hunching itself - which is exactly what we developed the Backpod and its home program for.  See our iHUNCH page to explain the problems from hunching, and how the Backpod addresses them, ongoing.

Of course we can’t straighten out an extreme, fused, decades-old hunch.  But they don’t start out like that, and the Backpod is probably the most practical and effective ongoing home package to slow or even halt that progression.  Even a patient with an extreme, fused hunch should get some relief from the massage, stretching and strengthening exercises that are part of the Backpod’s program.  For joints that aren't that tight, the Backpod gives an accurate, sustained stretch graded from mild to very strong - and you usually need that strength with ank spon.

Breathing difficulties and Costochondritis and Tietze's Syndrome chest pain:  These also happen with ank spon, as the rib joints round the back stiffen along with the hunching spine.  The stiffening rib joints mean you can't take a full breath in.  Costo and Tietze's pain on your breastbone can happen as the rib joints there strain to compensate for the restricted rib movement around the back.  This is NOT a "mysterious inflammation" no matter what you've been told - see our 'Costochondritis' page.  As far as we can tell, the Backpod is the only device around that does an effective stretch of tight posterior rib joints.

Also keep the sacroiliac joints free:  The other characteristic musculoskeletal problem with ank spon is a slow tightening and eventual fusing of the sacroiliac joints, where the sacrum glides inside the rest of the pelvis.  Lying back on the Backpod with it positioned under the sacrum gives a firm steady stretch to these joints, to slow and possibly halt the progression into immobility.  This is shown and explained in our YouTube video 'How to mobilise a tight sacroiliac joint with the Backpod'.

Overall, we think the Backpod is the best ongoing tool you can have for ank spon.  This isn't hype.  It's not a magic wand, but a carefully designed and constructed fulcrum with enough leverage for you to stretch and keep as free as is possible the specific joints that your ank spon is attempting to freeze up.  We can't treat the inflammation itself, and we can't fix everyone, but this is probably your best practical way of keeping yourself as well and free moving as your condition will allow.

Also called Scheuermann’s Osteochondritis, this is an inflammation affecting the thoracic spine, especially in adolescents.  The acute inflammation generally burns itself out after a few years, leaving a tightened, hunched middle back in its wake.  As a device and home program primarily designed to counter the problems from hunching, the Backpod is perfectly suited to sorting this out.  See our iHUNCH page for more detail.

Even the acute inflammatory stage is worth treating cautiously in the same way, as WHY the spine gets inflamed has not been satisfactorily explained.  Excessive sustained loading on the slouching adolescent spine is a good bet.

The Backpod can be used to free up a tight sacroiliac (SI) joint problem such as can commonly occur during or after pregnancy or from a fall onto the low back or tailbone.  The impact can often leave the sacrum ‘jammed up’ along the SI joints and not moving.  This leaves the tailbone more exposed to impact/pressure when sitting down and can create ongoing pain from the repeated banging on the tip of the tailbone.

This type of tailbone pain doesn’t respond to purely local treatment of the tailbone itself but clears when the SI movement is restored to normal.  The extremely tough mix of capsule, ligaments and fascia around immobile SI joints means that good results from mobilisation and manipulation techniques often don’t last, because the surrounding shortened collagen just tightens them up again.  The Backpod is ideal for quietly stretching this so the SI joints can stay free.

How to stretch tight sacroiliac joints on the Backpod:  The patient lies on their back on the floor, thighs vertical, shins horizontal, ankles crossed and heel supported on the edge of a table or chair.  The Backpod is positioned lengthwise under the sacrum and the patient relaxes onto it for several minutes, once daily.  This uses their own lower body weight to stretch the tight SI joints. 

It can still take weeks before the SI joint movement frees up reasonably, and often they are tight enough to also need the greater force of specific therapist mobilisation or manipulation techniques.  The Backpod is then the ideal follow-up, to stretch things further so they stay free - see our video below or watch on Youtube.

Clinical caution: The Backpod should be used to stretch only tight or frozen sacroiliac joints. Stretching already excessively moving SI joint problems will make them worse. The best test to clinically distinguish between the two is Andry Vleeming’s test for SI hypermobility. Briefly, the patient lies on their back and actively lifts one straight leg as high as they can. This is then repeated with the patient’s friend or therapist manually pushing both sides of the patient’s pelvis together (i.e., artificially compressing and stabilising the SI joints). If the leg raise is then clearly higher and without pain, it indicates an unstable, excessively moving sacroiliac joint. This should not be manipulated or mobilised, with the Backpod or any other technique. These problems are best treated by support muscle strengthening and stabilisation belts - see a physio (PT).

Sacroiliac pain during and after pregnancy is common. Usually it is explained as arising from excessively moving (i.e. hypermobile) and strained SI joints, due to the loosening and softening effect on the ligaments of hormones released during pregnancy to allow the sacrum to hinge open fully to let the baby come through the pelvic basin. This surely happens, however it doesn’t explain SI pain just on one side, since all the ligaments are presumably loosening equally. Unpublished New Zealand research and extensive clinical experience suggests that one-sided SI pain appearing partway through pregnancy is more usually from a tight or immobile SI joint.

These patients generally have a history of a fall or impact on the low back, pelvis or tailbone, presumably leaving the legacy of an adhesed and immobile SI joint. The interpretation is that as the pregnancy continues, and the surrounding ligaments get looser, the adhesed SI joint becomes relatively tighter and then painful.

These problems generally respond well and quickly to mobilising the tight sacrum with manual physiotherapy (PT) techniques, or simply by lying on the Backpod. This rather validates the model, as the patient is no longer sore - even though the pregnancy is continuing and the baby is getting bigger - so the pain can’t just be coming from the stresses and strains of pregnancy.

If SI or tailbone pain persists months after the baby is born it is then usually coming from SI joint immobility after the ligaments have tightened up again after the birth. The Backpod is equally effective in this situation to gently mobilise the tight SI hinges as described above.

The MS hug is a fairly common symptom with multiple sclerosis. It’s also known as banding or girdling, and feels like a constricting band round the chest. It can also be painful, sometimes sharply so, and can make breathing difficult.

It’s explained by neurologists as caused by the MS attack on the myelin sheaths around your nerve fibres - and that probably is where it starts from. The explanation given is that the nerves trigger a tightening spasm of the intercostal muscles between your ribs.

But hang on a minute - there’s a tendency to blame every ill you get purely on the MS; you may have noticed that. Also these specialists are indeed experts on the nerves, but they’re not experts on some practical musculoskeletal implications. We are.

MS hugs cause rib joints to tighten: When you’ve had MS hugs for months or years, the rib joints where your ribs hinge onto your spine can also get tight and eventually stop moving. This is unsurprising - the MS muscle spasm limits the rib cage movement, so the rib joints involved in that movement will also tighten and seize up.

When that happens, you get breathing difficulties, because you can’t fill your lungs fully if you can’t expand your rib cage fully, and you can’t do that if some of the rib joints won’t move. You usually also get some pain round the back at the tight rib joints, in your middle back area and under your shoulder blades.

Costochondritis with MS: You can also get a much sharper, scarier pain round the front where your ribs hinge onto your breastbone. This is usually called costochondritis or Tietze’s Syndrome. It’s not actually a “mysterious inflammation” as part of your MS, but is just the rib joints on your breastbone straining and giving to compensate for the rib joints round the back not moving at all. This is explained in detail on our COSTOCHONDRITIS page, and so is how we fix it.

There’s a simple home test for these tight rib joints. Just sit squarely back on a bench or desk and get someone to hold your shoulders and rotate your torso round to both sides. You should be able to twist round 90˚, with your shoulders coming into line with your thighs. You can still be tight on the rib joints even if you can do this okay, but you’re definitely tight if you can’t.

Painful or tight joints can readily trigger a reflex protective muscle spasm around themselves, in people without MS. So it’s likely that this happens more readily in patients with MS. Tight rib joints could certainly be a main trigger of the MS hug itself.

Lastly, hunching spines and tight rib cages are immensely common anyway, even without MS - see our iHUNCH page. So your upper back and neck pain, headache and breathing difficulties could all be from this - not every symptom you get is purely from your MS.

Release the tight rib cage joints on a Backpod: As far as we can tell, the Backpod is the only thing around that will do a really effective job on quietly stretching free tight joints around your back. It also comes with a simple home program of strengthening and stretching exercises, home massage and posture to pull you back towards perfect posture. We can’t fix your MS itself, but we can help a great deal with these effects from the MS hug.

Thoracic Outlet Syndrome (TOS) is essentially the nerves which run down your arms being pinched below the more common level of the neck. TOS is often confusing, because it shades into other common problems including costochondritis, pectoralis minor impingement, and the iHunch. Although these are all separate labels, actually there’s a large amount of overlap.

The iHunch is the name we give to the immensely common hunched upper back which drives most neck pain and headache. This is a tsunami - the numbers are going up like a sky rocket as more people hunch more over laptops, tablets and smartphones. It’s covered in detail on our iHUNCH page.

As the upper back hunches, your shoulders pull forward, and the pec muscles on your chest get tight and bunched. The nerves and blood vessels which run down your arms come out the low part of your neck and the upper part of your back and run out through this hunched, constricted, tight area. If some bits in the area are tight enough, they can partially cut off the blood supply (like someone standing on a garden hose) and also trap the nerves running down your arms (causing referred pain, tingling and/or numbness down the arms).

This is generally called thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) and is a sort of general term for enough impingement through the area to cause arm symptoms. Pec minor impingement is another term, for specific muscle tightness on your chest trapping the blood supply or nerves which run under it. It’s often just part of TOS, which is often just part of the iHunch.

The iHunch is now probably the biggest cause of new costochondritis chest pain. When the upper back hunching gets tight enough, the rib joints on your spine also tighten and freeze. When they can’t move, the joints at the other ends of the same ribs on your breastbone HAVE to move excessively, just to let you breathe. So these hinges strain, give, irritate, get inflamed - and welcome to costo. More detail on our COSTOCHONDRITIS page.

The point is that usually none of these problems happen in isolation. They all overlap and flow into each other. Basically, they’re all the sort of problems humans get when they start to get hunched and tight, and various specific structures start to trap nerves or blood vessels. So, sure, you can commonly get more than just the one problem.

Surgeons in particular will usually focus on just the one specific bit they can release with a scalpel. This may indeed be needed, but that bit is hardly ever just in isolation, and you usually need the whole interrelated hunching bundle sorted out to get a good and lasting result. There’s a good diagram on our iHUNCH page showing the collection of bits that need dealing to, and a home program for it which includes strengthening, stretching, massage, posture, the Backpod, etc.

The Backpod: You can hardly ever fix any of these problems with just one single, simple intervention - whether it’s surgery, a pill, manipulation, etc. They’re multi-factorial problems, so you need to get around all of the bits. The Backpod with its simple home program of stretching, strengthening, home massage and posture is a single package covering each of the wider basics you need to get straight and flexible again. This is the key to getting the full benefits of any specific treatments you may also have had, including manipulation and any surgery.

Precordial Catch Syndrome (PCS), also known as Texidor's twinge, is a non-life threatening condition with sharp stabbing pains in the chest. These usually hit just a small localised area, get worse on breathing in, and usually last less than 30 minutes. It is particularly scary because of course pain in that area could be the heart - even though sharp, stabbing pain hardly ever is.

This condition is almost certainly just a very brief version of the same rib joint sticking problem that causes most costochondritis chest pain. Most costochondritis is NOT a "mysterious inflammation” but simply strain and ‘giving’ of the rib joints on your breastbone, which happens because the joints at the same ribs round the back are immobile.

If the joints at the back of your rib cage can’t move, then the rib joints on your sternum HAVE to move excessively to compensate - every breath you take. So they strain, ‘give’, get irritated and locally inflamed - and there’s your costochondritis. This is explained in detail on our COSTOCHONDRITIS page.
Precordial Catch Syndrome is almost certainly just one or a few of these rib joints on the sternum ‘giving’ and straining - a bit like pulling your finger back as far as it will go, and then a bit further. This doesn’t happen for no reason - there is almost always some rib joint tightness around the back to cause it, as is the case with almost all costochondritis.

The answer in both cases is simple and logical - free up the tight rib cage movement around the back, which removes the excessive strain at the rib joints on the breastbone. The Backpod is ideal for this - lying back on it lets you give an effective stretch to tight rib joints. Free these up, and the PCS straining and giving should simply stop happening.

As with costochondritis, any chest pain should always be seen immediately by a doctor. They are very good at checking out dire possibilities like the heart; they’re not usually so good with costochondritis or PCS. Medically, PCS is seen as untreatable and of no known cause. From a New Zealand physiotherapist viewpoint, we think it’s perfectly understandable and simple to fix. As far as we can tell, the Backpod is the only thing around that will give an effective stretch to tight rib joints - this makes it the ideal treatment for Precordial Catch Syndrome.