First stop on our trip to Maui was Kite Beach where Anesthesiologist and surf guru Lance Whitney hooked us up with Kite legend Shawn Richman. Wind was howling at 40 knots. Shawn set out to show us one of his uber creative air shows but had to switch gears to rescue a kite surfer who bit it hard in the big winds.

These photos show Shawn first rescuing the kite, and then piggybacking the waterlogged surfer into shore.

Kudos Shawn!

Seek the help of your physician to find a personal trainer

If you suffer with back pain that is refractory to conventional treatments, it is important to seek a health care delivery team that centers on your best interests. This will likely include a physician, a spine specialist, and a fitness trainer.

You may have compounding factors to your back pain such as poor conditioning, excessive weight, poor eating habits, or tobacco use. Your physician should encourage you to stop smoking, get some exercise, and lose weight. They should consider referring you to a fitness professional who has the ability to take on the task of getting people into a regular, consistent, and lifelong exercise routine.
Such a fitness professional should be properly trained, be certified, and have the experience to help you.

Certified trainers are going to become a vital component of the health care team. It is the personal trainer who will see you more than the routine annual, biannual, or monthly visits with your physician. The problem may be finding a good trainer because at this point there is no regulation of the personal training industry.

Ice or heat for low back pain?

New recommendations make it simple. For acute (recent or new onset) low back pain, use ice for 20 minutes every hour as needed. Heat, for the same time and frequency, should be applied when you have chronic or a long-standing history of low back pain (LBP). However, when you have chronic LBP you may use ice for acute flare ups above your baseline of pain (i.e., if your baseline of chronic LBP is a 5/10 and you have an acute episode when your pain goes higher then ice should be used until your pain returns to 5/10 or your baseline). Heat wraps may be worn for 8 hours and increases blood flow to back muscles.

Extension based lower back exercises

Everyday, the average person flexes their lower back (bending, sitting, lifting, etc.) 6000-9000 times, while only extending backward 200 times. This has the effect of pushing discs, the cartilage between the vertebral bodies, backward causing lower back pain. http://tinyurl.com/cvtc59

Extension based exercises are frequently prescribed by spine specialists to help reverse this process and strengthen the lower back. http://tinyurl.com/bd8ge4