Starved Backs
Dolors & Sense
by Sanford Rose
KISSIMMEE Florida—(Weekly Hubris)—1/2/11—Blood heals.
It supplies oxygen and essential nutrients to the body.
If tissues don’t get enough blood, they die. It’s called anoxia.
In the end, anoxia gets us all. It is the leading cause of death.
What might be called progressive anoxia is also the leading cause of much morbidity while we survive.
Most people think back pain is the result of mechanical wear and tear.
But that is just a superficial view.
At a deeper level, back pain is usually the result of circulatory ischemia.
X-rays of people with lower back problems routinely reveal calcified aortas.
The aorta is the major artery supplying blood to the lower limbs.
A calcified aorta is one that has been stiffened by calcium deposits.
These deposits are usually the same sort of clots that build up in the heart and lead to attacks. Or build up in the brain and cause strokes, which are frequently described as heart attacks of the brain.
Most research shows a statistically significant correlation (an association with only a very small possibility of being caused by chance—in most studies, less than 3 percent) between aortic calcification and lumbar disc and bone injuries that result in disabling pain.
Deprived of adequate amounts of oxygen-rich blood, the bones, cartilage and ligaments of lower backs are falling apart.
We eat in order to nourish ourselves. But when we habitually consume foods rich in saturated fats, we are doing the reverse. We are clogging the arterial system.
A backache is a just a cry of pain from blood-and oxygen-deprived lower limbs.
What we eat is, in effect, starving our backs.
Sanford Rose
Sanford Rose, of New Jersey and Florida, served as Associate Editor of Fortune Magazine from 1968 till 1972; Vice President of Chase Manhattan Bank in 1972; Senior Editor of Fortune between 1972 and 1979; and Associate Editor, Financial Editor and Senior Columnist of American Banker newspaper between 1979 and 1991. From 1991 till 2001, Rose worked as a consultant in the banking industry and a professional ghost writer in the field of finance. He has also taught as an adjunct professor of banking at Columbia University and an adjunct instructor of economics at New York University. He states that he left gainful employment in 2001 to concentrate on gain-less investing. (A lifelong photo-phobe, Rose also claims that the head shot accompanying his Weekly Hubris columns is not his own, but belongs, instead, to a skilled woodworker residing in South Carolina.)