“AAAAAAAAGH!!”
A wave of excruciating pain ran through my lower back. It felt like getting stabbed in the bone by a rusty knife. The pain was sharp, searing and unbearable. I screamed so loudly that everybody in the streets stopped and looked at me to see what’s going on.
I felt immediately on the ground in agony, on the verge of passing out. And before I knew it I was in an emergency room…
Hi, my name is Josh Saunders, and in this article I’m going to share with you how a humiliating trip to the emergency room led me to discover a solution to finally overcome my back pain, after 11 years of excruciating, never-ending pain.
Before I made this fortunate discovery, I tried literally everything: painkillers, massage therapies, acupuncture, massage guns, yoga – you name it.
If I may still feel some occasional discomfort in my back from time to time, this solution has at least dramatically reduced my pain, to the point where I can now run three times a week, walk for miles with my wife, and play with my grandchildren while enjoying every single moment.
It has nothing to do with drugs, surgical procedures, stretching rituals, or creams. It’s a solution that is relatively popular with pain therapists in Singapore, but not well known in Europe at the moment.
I was extremely skeptical when I first heard about it, but looking back I’m glad I tried it. I have never felt happier than when I finally regained that feeling of freedom of movement, and being able to enjoy the simple pleasures of life without pain.
If this solution has helped me so much, I think that maybe it will be useful to other people in my case. But before I tell you how I discovered this solution, let me tell you:
How my life became a never-ending nightmare once my back problems started
Up until my mid-forties, I never had any issues with my back, despite sitting in front of a computer pretty much all day. But in my late forties, I started to feel a sudden feeling of searing pain in my lower back, as if something was pinching my spine…
A few weeks later, I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis, according to my doctor. And from that moment on, my life quickly became a living nightmare…
The pain had spread throughout my lower back to my hips, to the point where I couldn’t think of anything else but the stabbing sensation in my bones.
I couldn’t tie my shoes without wincing in pain. I couldn’t sleep at night because no matter which position I tried, my back hurt like hell. I couldn’t think of anything else but the pain. I gained over 26 pounds of fat because I could no longer exercise.
Despite my best efforts, the pain got worse and worse.
I tried yoga, but unfortunately it did nothing to ease the pain. I spent hundreds of dollars on massage therapy, and although the massages felt good at the time, the pain always returned a few hours later. My therapist had me try a massage gun, but it didn’t do much for my back problems…
I thought I was destined to live with back pain until the end of my life.
So I started taking painkillers so that I could at least have some semblance of life… It allowed me to breathe a little. The problem was that the pills were having less and less effect.
Every week I increased the doses to drown out the pain as best I could, but after a while I ended up suffering undesirable effects that ruined my quality of life: diarrhea, stomach aches, extreme fatigue and so on.
I was taking so many pills that I felt like a drug addict. I wasn’t living, I was slowly and painfully dying.
But little did I know that the worst had yet to come…
One day, while I was slowly walking with my wife to pick up a good bottle of red wine, something terrible happened…
My wife and I were in the middle of the street, when suddenly, I felt a bolt of excruciating pain running through my lower back…
“AAAAAAAAGH!!”
I had never felt such an acute feeling of pain in my entire life. It felt like getting stabbed in the bone by a rusty knife. I screamed so loudly that everybody in the street stopped and looked at me to see what’s going on.
I felt immediately on the ground in agony, on the verge of passing out. My wife knew I had to get to an emergency room, so she called an ambulance.
After a few minutes of agonizing pain, I was transported into an ambulance bed, and before I knew it, I was in an emergency room in a hospital.
When I arrived there, they gave me pills to numb the pain. Then I was taken to an MRI. I waited nervously with my wife for the results.
A few minutes later (which felt like an eternity), the doctor came back with a grim look in his face.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news”, he said.
My heart thumped in my chest. My palms were covered in sweat. I felt like I was drying inside.
“Based on the MRI results, it seems that you have spinal stenosis”.
“What does it mean???,” I asked, nearly suffocating.
“The spaces in your spine are extremely narrow, which compress your spinal cord and nerve roots in your lower back. Given how advanced your stenosis is, there is a risk of paralysis if the nerve gets snapped. As a result, you may consider surgery to relieve pressure and pain,” he explained.
I thought I was going to throw up at the office.
The surgery would last up to 12 hours, they would cut through my belly and drill holes in my spine, and the recovery process could take up to a year…not to mention potential complications.
Given that this was a complicated operation, the doctor gave me a few days to think about my decision. He gave me his number and told me to call him if I wanted to undergo surgery.
I was prescribed a few painkillers to numb the pain for a few more days.
I was absolutely devastated. I thought my life was over. And I was only 59…
My wife and I went on a quest to find an alternative to surgery
Undergoing surgery would have been my worst possible nightmare.
Just the very thought of getting my spine butchered made me sick. We HAD to find another option.
We spent days with my wife looking online for alternative solutions to solve my back pain issues. We called therapists, chiropractors and doctors to see if they could do anything to help me. I called so many therapists that my ear started to burn after a few days. My wife had cramps in her fingers because she was literally typing 14 hours a day. We went all in.
Unfortunately, I quickly realized that I had already tried everything. There was nothing really novel that popped out from all our research efforts. When you’ve suffered from back pain for 11 years, trust me, you’ve pretty much seen everything.
I started to lose hope, and prepared myself to accept the fact that maybe going under spine surgery was my destiny.
I felt terrified and incredibly sad at the same time. And just as I was about to give up…
An old friend told me that his pain therapist, a Stanford-educated doctor, discovered a strange form of therapy to relieve acute back pain…
A few days later, Stephen, a colleague and good friend of mine, came over to our house for dinner. He used to suffer from chronic back pain as well, which is hard to believe when you see him. He’s playing golf and tennis every week, he’s in athletic shape at 63, and he has the energy of someone 25 years younger.
I obviously told him about my back pain issues, all the things I tried in the past, and my quest to find an alternative to surgery.
And to my greatest surprise, he had a lot to say…
“Like you Josh, I tried almost everything to get rid of my chronic back pain. But one day, I went to a chiro specialized in a new form of vibration therapy to relieve tensions in the back, and I must say that it worked. The guy studied medicine at Stanford, and spent 7 years developing a pain-relieving technique called ‘deep fascia release’. This is what he did on me and it was extremely effective. My back pain is completely gone now.”
I was extremely skeptical about what he had to say, because over the past decade, I already tried many hyped therapies that ended up being a disappointment for me. But I let him continue:
“According to my chiro, deep fascia release is a technique originating from Singapore that can be used to relieve very strong tensions in the back by immediately relaxing the fascia. The fascia is basically a thin layer of tissue that envelops almost every muscle and bone in our body. My chiro explained to me that when the fascia is relaxed, we don’t feel any pain because muscles and bones have enough ‘space’ to move flexibly. However, when the fascia is tight and dry, joints and muscles are pressed against each other, creating bone to bone friction and excruciating pain. So if you have intense back pain, chances are that you have a very tight fascia, although not the expert here, I’m just speaking from experience.”
“Okay. But what did your chiro do to you to release your fascia?,” I asked, out of curiosity.
“As mentioned before, he used a technique called ‘deep fascia release’ to relieve the fascia in my lower back. By experimenting multiple therapies and analyzing hundreds of scientific papers, my chiro discovered that there was a specific amount of physical pressure that could release the fascia in the back almost immediately. I can’t remember the exact details, but I think he told me that to release the back fascia, you need to apply a constant force of around 30 lbs on the lower back. The massaging force also needs to go around 12mm deep below the skin to allow complete relaxation of back joints and muscles.”
I had never heard of this deep fascia release technique, so I asked him:
“Does he do the fascia release with his own hands?”
“No, he’s using a device for that. According to him, the human hand is not capable of applying such a deep and constant pressure on the fascia, so we need a device to deliver a deep fascia release. By testing hundreds of different vibration devices for years, my chiro realized that there were a select few models of massage gun on the market that can be used for deep fascia release. These therapeutic massage guns can apply at least 30 lbs of pressure, and massage about 12 mm under the skin. They represent less than 1% of all of the massage guns available, so you probably never heard of those.”
“I tried massage guns already, but it didn’t do anything to solve my back pain. It felt good at the moment, but the pain would always come back shortly after. What massage guns did your chiro use?” I asked him.
“My chiro told me that there were two main models of massage gun that could be used for therapeutic deep fascia release in the lower back: the Power Plate Pulse and the Hydragun. He used the Hydragun to relieve my back pain, and after 2-3 sessions, my back pain was basically gone. The good thing is that I don’t even need to see my therapist now, I could just massage myself with the Hydragun and it works just as well.”
I was intrigued. I called his therapists to see if I could book an appointment, but unfortunately, he was completely booked for the next three months. I didn’t have that time.
So I decided to give this Hydragun massage gun a shot, to see if I could relax my lower back by massaging myself. Since the product came with a 30-day money-back guarantee, I could always order the massage gun and get my money back if it didn’t relieve my back as promised.
I ordered the gun on Hydragun’s website, and received it 4 days later. I opened the package, turned on the massage gun, and applied the head of the device on my lower back.
And I must say…
This was the most relaxing massaging experience I had ever felt
From the first few seconds, I felt a firm but pleasant pressure in my lower back. Some of the massage guns I’ve tried before felt just as pleasant, but this one felt like it was massaging deeper than usual.
After a few minutes of massage, I could feel some of the knots in my back slowly loosen up, and the pressure coming off my joints. This was one of the most relaxing and satisfying massaging sensations I’ve ever felt in my life.
Although I was pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of the massage of this device, I always feared the worst: that the back pain would come back a few minutes later.
But to my surprise, after using the gun every day on my back for two weeks, the pain did not come back as strong as usual. I could still feel some discomfort in my spine occasionally, but I still felt way more flexible and comfortable than I used to be.
My muscles and spine are naturally more relaxed, and I don’t have the shooting pains that used to prevent me from doing anything. After three weeks of massaging my lower back every morning with this powerful device, I called the doctor and told him that surgery wasn’t needed. The pain was largely gone, and I could now finally live normally.
I can now go to restaurants with my wife, walk for miles, and even bend over without too much pain. My insomnia is gone. I exercised again (I lost 21 pounds of fat). And I now have the energy of someone 15 years younger.
I still have some discomfort in my back from time to time, of course. But my mobility has improved a lot since I started massaging with this device. I really feel like I’ve regained some of my freedom without having to go to surgery, and that feeling is priceless. Whenever I feel the slightest feeling of pain in my back, I just apply the device to my back and the pain usually vanishes after 2-3 minutes.
I therefore think this massage gun may be useful for other people like me who suffer from chronic back pain. It may not suppress the pain entirely, but it can at least strongly reduce it and greatly improve mobility, from my humble experience.
I hope this story will help other people dealing with back pain, and regain the freedom I used to enjoy.
All the best,
Josh
Click here to check the availability of Hydragun