Homer Simpson and back pain (How back pain makes you stupid)

You might not watch The Simpsons but you will know who Homer is.

Homer the loveable but pretty stupid dad. The thing is nobody wants to be Homer. 

Bart? Maybe. He’s the anarchic wee boy all wanted to be. 

Lisa? Maybe. Intelligent and cool. 

Marge? Again, maybe but definitely not Homer.

Homer is the one out of all the characters that you don’t really want to be even if you are shouting for him

The thing is back pain turns you into Homer.

Back pain does actually make you stupid. It does this in a variety of different ways. But let’s let’s define stupidity first.

Stupidity is the overlooking or dismissing conspicuously crucial information. Back pain does make you do this.

It does it both in your day to day life and also in how you view back pain itself.

Now, this definition isn’t mine, i found it in a really interesting blog post on Farnham Street called “How not to be stupid”.

The guy writing it talks about how there are 7 factors that go into making us stupid.

  1. Being outside your normal environment or there being changes to your routine. 
  2. Being in the presence of a group
  3. Being in the presence of an expert or if you, yourself are an expert.
  4. Doing any task that requires intense focus
  5. Information overload
  6. Physical or emotional stress, fatigue
  7. Being in a hurry.

Not all of these are required for there to be an effect. Any one of them on its own will have an effect. 

In the U.S., ad the U.K, all of these are present in hospitals but I just have the figures for the U.S. In the States there are 30,000 deaths a year from car accidents.  A big number. But there are between 210,000 and 440,000 deaths in hospitals from errors in treatment!

But what does this have to do with back pain and how does back pain make you stupid?

Back pain causes physical and emotional stress. 

It causes fatigue.

It will result in information overload as you seek answers for your back pain. (I appreciate I’m not helping you here).

You might well find yourself hurrying to finish tasks so you can sit down because of the pain.

The pain itself can mean you have to focus really hard to do simple tasks.

So you can see there are all sorts of ways for back pain to make you “stupid”. 

It comes into your life and wrecks havoc. 

Disrupting sleep.

Causing physical and emotional stress. 

Destroying focus and the list goes on,

If you would like to see what a path to being more intelligent would look like all you need to do is reply to this email and we can chat about it.

You can grab a copy of our FREE Back Pain Myths Busted eBook here >>> https://www.performancesportstherapy.net/back-pain-myths-busted-ebook

 

Sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite.

I think we can all agree sleep is pretty important. I have to say I’m not the best sleeper in the world. It’s not unusual for me to wake up several times during the night and to be awake for a while at some point.

It’s not been helped over, I was going to write the last few months but it’s actually been about a year with Andrew getting up during the night. Normally only the once but can be twice during the night followed by him coming through about 5 am. He doesn’t take any time to settle back down but it is a total pain when it happens. Continue reading “Sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite.”

Stuck in a rut – the power of questions

Up until quite recently I was convinced I simply just couldn’t lose weight. I tried and it worked for a little while then nothing. Counting calories was a pain so I tried other ways but the same results each time.

Couldn’t be bothered was more the reason than it not working for me. I couldn’t find the motivation until I asked the right questions of myself.

Questions are incredibly powerful when we get them correct. Continue reading “Stuck in a rut – the power of questions”

Making the time

We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with information, be it 24 hour news on TV or on our phones, which are more power in computing terms than the most advanced IBM mainframe of 30 years ago,  we get a stream of texts, emails, Facebook notifications to twitter and on it goes. You can add into this doing all the tasks that other people used to do for you. Going on holiday? You went to the travel agent and they sorted it out for you. Need to do some banking? do it online etc, etc.

Continue reading “Making the time”

The best recovery tool in the world.

All the posts and emails that I write are about trying to maintain a healthy, well functioning body, why it’s important to look after your body, and what to do when you’re sick of putting up with back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain, etc, etc… So you can do all the things you love…

When it comes to your health, there is one, very simple thing that you can do that will lead to the mythical instant results – and that is get more sleep. Continue reading “The best recovery tool in the world.”

Building a champions mind

This is a really interesting podcast from The Well Rounded Athlete. It is a discussion with Dr Jim Afremow and whilst it is looking at things from the point of view of athletic performance you could apply the principles to all walks of life. Dr. Afremow is a leading mental performance consultant, and the author of The Champion’s Mind: How Great Athletes Think, Train, and Thrive Continue reading “Building a champions mind”