META-Medicine^®:
Unlocking the Mystery Behind Back Pain & other MSDs

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), including back pain, shoulder pain, joint problems and neck pain, affect millions of people in the UK every year.

They are the most common cause of ill health in the UK workforce, affecting twice as many people as our second biggest health concern, stress.

Back pain alone is responsible for over 2.5 million people visiting their GP every year. According to research body The Work Foundation, 33% of the UK population are suffering from back pain at any one time, and the condition will affect 80% of adults at some point in their lives.

In the vast majority of back pain cases, GPs are unable to give a specific diagnosis. The cause of MSDs remains a big mystery. 

The Missing Link…

We are familiar with the symptoms of MSDs, most commonly, pain, aching and loss of movement. We also have many approaches to treating or ameliorating these symptoms, ranging from physical approaches such as painkillers, surgery, physiotherapy, chiropractic, osteopathy, massage, the Alexander Technique, strength training and yoga to nutritional approaches, energy work and even belief-change work – to name just a few! Sometimes, these approaches can work wonders, yet other times, the pain persists. What still remains a mystery, despite the fact that these conditions that affect most of us during our lifetimes, is what actually causes back pain and other problems with the musculoskeletal system.

The commonly-cited 'back pain causes'

Injury: Sometimes there is an identifiable trigger – a work- or sports-related injury, an accident, postural misalignment or repetitive strain injury. Yet there remain questions even in these seemingly clear-cut cases: why does one particular muscle get strained when a person falls, while another person who experiences a similar fall injures a different muscle? Is it simply to do with bio-mechanics? Or is it possible that one person may have a pre-existing weakness in one muscle and the other person in a different muscle? 

Even if we accept a bio-mechanic explanation for the initial musculoskeletal problem, there are questions around how and why the issue becomes chronic. Musculoskeletal pain may persist, or keep recurring, for years. Yet, we know from the work of Dr Deepak Chopra that our muscle tissue is replaced after several months.  

Ageing: This is another commonly-cited back pain cause! Certainly, the longer an organ is under stress, the more severe the symptoms can be. Yet the ageing process itself is an insufficient explanation. If it was, the older we got, the more back pains we would experience! Luckily, the evidence shows that there are an increasing number of people living active, healthy, pain-free lives well into their 80s and beyond.

Genes: This brings us onto the inevitable question of genetics. The work of Dr Bruce Lipton and other epigeneticists is demonstrating that genes are not causal in 95% of dis-eases (including MSDs); and rather than being fixed, our genes are affected by our environment. Dr Lipton explains how sharing the same environment as our families makes it more likely that we’ll share the same beliefs and thus be predisposed to similar health issues.

META-Medicine^®: A revolutionary explanation that makes sense!

There is a cutting-edge integrative medicine system that explains the mind body connection and uncovers the meaning and process of any illness. It demonstrates how the symptoms we experience are not a mistake, they are bio-logically meaningful. This approach, Meta Medicine, sheds light on many of the puzzling questions about back pain and other musculoskeletal disorders, including:

• What is the underlying back pain cause?

• What emotional patterns are linked to the physical symptoms?

• What's the meaning of the symptoms?

• Why do aches and pains frequently become chronic?

What Starts a Musculoskeletal Problem?

Meta Medicine explains exactly how and why the symptoms we have labelled ‘dis-ease’ begin. With the exception of poisoning and accidents, all dis-eases, including lower back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain etc, begin with a traumatic life event. Have you ever experienced a shock in which you temporarily froze, felt your stomach somersault or had an ailing, sickening feeling? For a shock to begin an emergency dis-ease process, it must be:

• Unexpected

• Dramatic

• And we don’t know how to deal with it, whether it’s a major trauma or just a minor social conflict

The nervous system switches into fight-or-flight, and changes begin within a specific organ. In the case of our musculoskeletal system, the affected organ (a specific bone, muscle, tendon etc) always follows a 2-stage process (see Figure 1):

• Phase 1: Cell reduction and function loss. This continues for as long as there are negative emotions about the shock. While the cells are decreasing, there is usually no pain.

• Phase 2: Cell and tissue re-growth and function  increase. This begins when the emotional conflict is resolved. It continues until the bone or muscle has repaired and normalised. It is during this re-growth that pain is experienced.

The Two Phases

What’s the Emotional Connection to Back Pain?

The type of emotional shock preceding a musculoskeletal issue is a self-devaluation shock: a feeling of a lack of self-esteem. Which part of the body (such as the back, arm, shoulder, knee etc) reacts depends on the specific emotion experienced at the time of the shock. The reaction is always bio-logically meaningful (see Fig 2 for examples).

For example: Johannes, a man in his 40s, experienced such a self esteem shock during an argument with his partner. He felt totally devalued and thrown off balance by his partner’s attack, and obsessed continuously about the argument for several days. When they made up, he felt exhausted and immediately began to experience severe lower back pain. This lasted for several days – the same amount of time he was under stress. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Every time they argued and he felt walked all over, he experienced the same lower back pain shortly afterwards.

The Emotional Meanings of Common Aches & Pains:

What’s the Bio-logical Meaning Behind Back Pain? 

It’s well-known among people who do resistance or weight-training that DOMS (delayed-onset muscle soreness) is a positive sign of muscle regeneration and re-growth. It is essential during this time to take sufficient nutrients to build muscle, so that next time, lifting the same weight creates less stress on the body. This is a systemic property of the self-organisation of muscle: a bio-logically intelligent response. Just like DOMS occurs a day or two after weight-training, the organ regenerates after the emotional shock is resolved.

The bio-logical meaning is in this regeneration: the strengthening of the organ in order to overcome the devaluation or weakness. The body is adapting to the needs of the situation.

Chronic musculoskeletal disorders occur when someone experiences ongoing feelings of low self esteem. An example of this is a young woman who experienced neck pain whenever she passed a test, as this resolved her feelings of not being clever enough. The pattern started with the shock of an exam failure when she was at school.

The body’s intelligent process in chronic cases, as also seen with bone breaks, is to make the affected organ stronger and less flexible than before the shock, in order to prevent it from happening again.  

How can this understanding benefit therapists, clients and society?

The Meta Medicine diagnostic process enables us to understand the root cause and triggers of any musculoskeletal problem. By understanding the two phases, you can work out exactly where a person is within the dis-ease cycle, and what has to happen before they return to normal health. This approach enables individuals to overcome the root cause of their problem, rather than simply masking, ameliorating or treating the symptoms.

Meta Medicine is an integrative, biopsychosocial model. It explains the mind body connection precisely - the interplay between the biological issue (for example, upper neck pain), the psychological and emotional shock (intellectual low self esteem – feeling stupid or unintelligent), and the social environment (perhaps the workplace, in which colleagues trigger off the feeling of intellectual inferiority). Once a Meta Medicine diagnosis has been made, the client and health coach can co-create a Meta Health plan for healing at all levels:

• Body – Healing the specific organ and the nervous system, through diet, exercise, bodywork and remedies

• Mind and Emotions – Clearing out the negative emotional patterns and triggers associated with the shock

• Spirit – Gaining learnings from the issue and growing through resolving it bio-logically

• Social and Environmental – Creating new strategies for interaction within the social environment

This approach enables practitioners to go beyond symptomatic treatment and help clients to truly overcome their issue. Meta Medicine gives clients, for the very first time, a definitive and meaningful answer to their questions: Why do I have this pain? Why in this specific part of my body? And why has it become chronic? This understanding enables individuals to heal – and grow - on all levels.

The societal implications are also huge. MSDs currently cost the NHS over £600 million per year. Along with the indirect costs, such as the impact on carers and absence from work, the HSE estimates that MSDs cost society over £7 billion a year. The profound understanding offered by Meta Medicine has the potential to benefit society as well as enable health practitioners to empower their clients. And MSDs are just one type of health issue. Meta Medicine revolutionises our understanding of all health issues, from colds to heart problems, digestive disorders and cancers.

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