My Precious Spine and I

PREFACE

This edition, of My Precious Spine And I -- A Self-Care Manual For You And Your Spine, is the next, an enriched, patient request, demand driven, follow-up on my previously published book with the same title.

In this edition, I address many of the Mounting, Present-day Issues, that are Demanding More and More of Our Well-informed Self Preservation Attention. Particularly, on the Socio-economic front, where so many folks have become the Victims of the Down Trending Financial and Retirement Fronts. It might even be That Your pension scheme has Gone in to ‘Liquidation!!’

Patient Liza farmer's wife Friday February 15, 2008 : People who don't listen or learn, line themselves up for future problems!

The retirement investment consultant may be prepared to experiment with your retirement! even now, many years later, still so true! Remember that Self-empowerment Knowledge can be everywhere; it can be in people, in fellow workers; friends and family; it can be in books; it can be in libraries; it can even be in computers! You only have to be keen, enthusiastic and pro-active to harvest it!

Apart from not being loved, our greatest fear is to be poor. Particularly, being poor in retirement! For some of us, it's our greatest worry; no one wants to have money worries. Therefore, it is most important, that we get our money life in order.

I've found, that encouraging my patients to become self-empowerment health and investment Knowledge enriched, at an early age, builds up survival endurance. The only limit is our enthusiasm and imagination.

I continue to believe, that one should continue to learn; with the emphasis on health and financial self empowerment. Failing that, you simply, must urgently enlist the help, advice and on-going association, of one or more reputable, health care accredited, and registered, financial and investment advisor or advisors.

Why quality advice and investment experience is important

This is one of the many services, a good and trustworthy qualified and registered financial planner should do for you, if you cannot do it yourself.

In your health and financial life, you are the driver and head coach. It is your important and vital job, to surround yourself, with the best health service providers and financial advisors, that are available to reach the present and future level of health and success, you desire for you, your family or your business.

I cannot overemphasise this: Ideally, you should find a true Financial Planner or Financial Advisor who works on a fee-only basis. This means that he/she will either create a financial plan for you and charge a flat hourly rate, or charge a percentage fee annually, based on the value of the portfolio he/she is managing for you.

These two approaches tend to weed out the inherent conflicts of interest that are typically associated with the traditional commission-based pay of a Financial Advisor or Stockbroker. In a fee-only relationship, the advisor gets paid more, if the clients portfolio increases. It is very important to check the credentials of any professional advisor, before taking them on board and adding them to your team.

Similarly, I think it is important, that people have trustworthy and experienced mentors through their life, because they can get encouraged, in new and different stimulating and enriching directions.

Keep in mind, that you can find many mentors, by simply consulting with books, about any subject of your choice. Just develop a liking for books -- either in paper or electronic format.

With books, you will find there is always that stimulating, mind opening and uplifting debate.

Now you appreciate the nice and rewarding thing, when you start investigating and bringing valuable bits and pieces of information together. You always find, to your horizon-broadening delight, that you know considerably less than you started off with.

To be financially literate, and financially intelligent, means being able to understand the big picture of money.

Cash flow, particularly during retirement, not money, relieves anxiety.

In order to get where you want to go, you need to know where you are. This is the first step to take, control of your present and future life, and spend more time minding your own welfare and business.

Underlying this manuscript is the challenge of fellow citizens back-care awareness empowerment. This book is not an anatomy knowledge book, but a book about behavioural changes.

With reference to my experience-based book: There are books similar to it; reading them too, can only broaden your base of back caring experience.

A number of additional factors, that have been distilled over the years, have now been incorporated in this latest edition.

The material contained herein, is information only and should not replace the counsel and advice from your personal physiotherapist. The book is simply an additional key to opening the better quality of life door to even more extended horizons.

These are self-evident principles, perhaps not yet acquired habits. They are guidelines -- safety lighthouses and beacons. We already know many of them. But what's common sense is not necessarily common practice. So let's learn them, re-learn them, until it automatically becomes part of the software of our brains. Then teach them -- by example -- to our family, friends, co-workers and to other people. They are natural mechanical rules and laws. We cannot break them. We can only break ourselves, or our backs, against them. We might as well learn and accommodate them, utilise them and be grateful for them. Then it too, empowers us and emancipates us from the drudgery of backache and deprivation of quality of life.

Physiotherapists have intimate knowledge of functional anatomy. They are thus in a good position to determine, by assessment, the need for radiological, surgical or orthopedic intervention in the case of Recent Trauma (particularly sporting injuries).

To be a successful physiotherapist, you almost always have to deliver pain-relief on demand.

In change of habits; there can be pain. In change of either home or country; there can be pain. In staying where you are, there can be even more pain!

Yes, there are changes in the air, but change is not always a bad thing. Therefore, take advantage of the horizons and potentials offered by change; for change of location with pain, offers new stimulating open doors!

Acquire the habits and techniques of successfully decanting physical, as well as relocation pain.

How to read this book

If you want to get the most out of the material in this book, you'll need to really become pro- active. You'll need to re-examine your body- care mindset and habits; preconceived ideas; your future quality of life objectives and goals.

Bear in mind that your sound body is the only instrument through which you operate and implement your dreams and objectives in life. Therefore, if you don't get control of your body and mind's health, how can you expect to control and direct the expressions that come through your body and mind?

To acquire the back awareness habits, to integrate them as part of your every-day life, you have to be willing to do three things with the information in this book; learn it, teach it to your family, friends and co-workers; and then do it yourself -- which means, apply it to your life.

Remember, the quality of good health and life cannot be achieved by taking the right shortcut. However, I am convinced that the principles underlying this material, can empower you to minimise the risk of spinal abuse.

My Precious Spine and I can be read all at once -- in one comfortable sitting. However, it is structured in such a manner that individual chapters can be read in relation to one's particular needs, at the time in question. Nevertheless, it is preferable to obtain a holistic overview by taking your time to reflect upon the impact and implications of each chapter upon the quality of your spinal-care and life.

When you have read this book, and realise to what practical extent the information contained is of help to you, ask yourself the following: Who else needs to read this book right now? Which of my family, friends or colleagues' quality of life can I help improve by getting them a copy of this book?

A staggering 60 to 80 percent of adults suffer back problem every year -- most aged between 16 and 60.

At the lower age group, surely our back care education is lacking the necessary pain and possible future discomfort saving attention.

Internationally, back injury is the largest single cause of long-term sick leave.

Fortunately, only a very low percentage of back pain investigations ultimately result in surgery.

When sustaining a spinal, or any other injury, the key to success is prompt action. The longer it's left unattended, the more frustrating and complicated it gets. After three months, what began as something straightforward, and easy to treat, may have become a chronic problem, often just as painful but more difficult to treat satisfactorily.

It’s never too late to get better health ways of living. You can try and reverse a lifetime of bad habits. Regrettably, particularly, when we are young, and very actively involved with competitive sport, we assume that we are indestructible. In later life, we think that any accumulated damage we inflicted on ourselves can be undone when we desperately try to clean up our act.

Fortunately, the heartening conclusion: the body has, given continuous support, an amazing ability to heal itself, provided the damage is not too great. With the rehabilitation to better health program, if you Make enough changes, you'll soon discover you've adopted a new way of quality of life. But you'll never know how much possible further long term damage you can undo if you don't try.

Promptly consulting with your physiotherapist, is the most cost-effective and pain-time reducing path, to a quick and successful resolution, of any treatment-amenable electro-musculo-skeletal trauma conditions.

The manuscript is the harvest of many years of practical international experience; pushed by patient need and pulled by leading edge technological developments and "evolution. I have been continually mining an ever- changing experience and expertise database.

I have a few missions, a few goals.

One of my missions in life is to channel, particularly young kids -- with the emphasis on young girls, to become Investment and Financial literal as soon as possible in life.

My goal is always to help the people I work with, move forward, adapting to their own changing health challenges, and learning to use it as a strength, in their personal and professional lives.

Once one obtains Self-control, you realise it is strength and power!

Why?

My patients are relying upon my empathy, expertise, experience and my ability.

My real motives, for writing this book, if you want to know, is that I didn't ask for this job. I took it on as a personal challenge, to help others in my peer group: back owners, retirees, seniors, and fellow savers just trying to successfully survive.

Further, I hope, with your active assistance, at enthusiastic grass-roots level campaign, to change the course of international back awareness and care!

You may well ask, somewhat tinted by a mounting degree of skepticism, how does the plan to distribute one particular back care book, square with the prevailing minimal information about back care Reality education?

Maybe there is no simple way of changing the world. But, then, for us optimists, maybe there is!

The important part of the story, is that my wife and myself, realised what might happen down the employment and financial track, and dedicated ourselves to study in this health and investment self-empowerment area, more than four decades ago, and now have a lot to share -- and an independence track record, to back up its value. We often tell, particularly the younger patients, that when we were younger, there was a common saying: How come there is so much month left at the end of the money? It was funny then. Now, with inflation and the diminishing purchasing power of the currency, it's become: How come there is so much life left at the end of the money? This is not the least bit funny; for many older folks, who are not financially prepared for retirement, it's terrifying.

I mean that most of my conservative generation played by the rules; we paid our taxes, saved our nest eggs, and did everything else we were supposed to do for the last 30 or more years. Retirement projections were based on a conservative projected investment yield of 6 % vs. inflation of 2 %. Now those numbers have reversed -- yield is 2 % and inflation is 6%.

Many in our generation realised that living within -- and below -- your means, is a good thing when we retired; pay yourself first, and learn to live on the rest.

Savers will always find a way to save; the important key is to get started now, and to persist.

When you run out of money, stop spending.

After all, if a person has enough sense to save and invest for the long term, that person usually has enough sense to take care of his health.

My Valuable Service, is that I make people feel better, maybe more optimistic, important and reliable.

I don't want any of my friends, or readers', to ever say, Why didn't you warn me?

Picture yourself and your parents in this now more frequently occurring dilemma: your safe and dependable sources of decent income have been taken away from you. You now have to put the bulk of your life savings at much higher risk, than you are comfortable with, and your day-to-day cost of living is skyrocketing. you are afraid, and very anxious, because you really cannot afford to lose your nest egg. Your parents are no longer working, and they don't have the ability to earn it back if they lose it.

This is a very real financial anxiety, generating pressure, that a lot of elderly people feel.

Is it ever too late to start with a self-empowerment wake-up call?

Certainly not!

That implies a massive self-education process; it might mean joining an investor's empowerment club or group.

Unless you have a lot of money, enough to warrant paying a true expert money manager -- you are going to have to become less passive, and more progressively active as an investor.

Important: Bottom line: self-education is a continuous process.

No one -- maybe other than your heirs -- is more concerned about your life savings than you are.

Stay on top of things, by continually reading, learning, and monitoring your investment skills and investments.

That will equip you to ask the right questions; what are the sources of advice?

Soon you will note that you’re only as competent till you meet your level of incompetence.

Today is part of your life's curriculum. Learn as much as you can, and tomorrow will look after itself.

Your Finances

The important question here is not, Do you have enough money? Rather, it is, can your funds take care of your life style and it's requirements?

Years of active learning and investigating, has revealed, that to expect a regular monthly, quarterly or yearly, reliable and safe income stream, requires an early disciplined and on-going involvement with our choices of investments.

Has it worked?

Well, fortunately, for us, it is yielding most gratifying results during retirement.

We have also been guided, particularly in the early days, by advisors, who, so it seemed, were really concerned about our future financial safety.

Nevertheless, being very observant, even at that very early phase in our lives, we noted the upmarket luxury vehicles in which the two advisors made their appearances at our home!

Did we take note of that fact? You bet! Indeed we did.

This motivated us to begin learning, how money and investments work. So, more than 40 years ago, we took the necessary steps to become financially literate, by implementing a program of investment self-empowerment. Although, almost nothing is totally certain, the wisdom of international diversification still holds true and rewarding for us!

This morning, a very concerned patient reflected that, "the fear of being retrenched, or dismissed from your job, is now always there!

In view of this, possibility, please take note in chapter 24, where this matter is addressed: Chapter 24: MY PRECIOUS SPINE AND MATURITY

Well, the delightful truth is, there is always another way to do, what you now do for a single person, at one time.

When you're selling hours for bucks, you are experiencing little to no growth: you are completely dependent on yourself. If you get sick or injured, or have a personal problem that keeps you from working a period of time, you can't make any money.

Sad to say, too, you're not getting any younger. Also, there is always the younger and more up-to-date generation, on its way in to the already overcrowded work force.

You can only do what you successfully do for a certain number of years and you're using up more of that valuable time every day.

So whatever you do, don't kill valuable time! Please don't procrastinate!

Of course, we want to set up a recurring, safe and regular income stream from our current business, investments or customers, so we don't have to generate, new investment formulas or events, every few weeks.

This is where it becomes stimulating, interesting, and, self-empowering. Opening new doors and avenues.

Start Focusing on linear income instead of passive income:

By now, you too, will realise that not all income is created equal. Some streams are linear and some are passive.

Linear income, is what you get from a regular paycheck and day to day job. You work for an hour and get paid once for that hour's work, and that's it. The sting in the tail: If you don't turn up to work you don't get paid.

The beauty of Passive income, is that when you work once, but continue to get paid over and over again, from work you're no longer actively doing, you are still getting income.

The way to become wealthy, is having passive income, coming in, whether you go to work or not.

Wouldn't it be nice, exciting and rewarding, to be paid hundreds of times for every hour you work?

Of course, there are choices! That's what happens if you invest in property and top international quality regular income yielding companies.

Initially, you do research and work long hours, save up a deposit and then invest it into a property or any number of selected international companies.

Now your money starts working for you and your family, and keeps giving you sound investment returns passively in the form of capital growth and rental returns.

Above all else, it requires an appreciation of self-engineered wealth. Self-engineered wealth is wealth you create for yourself... without depending on a long list of costly financial advisors.

It also requires that you develop an appreciation of money-talk and capital.

We have also noticed, that The truly wealthy, never trust all their savings to stocks.

The best thing you can do, for yourself and your family, is to start early and build capital and invest it wisely.

Most people only wake up -- if at all -- to this simple strategy, almost too late!

They are energy takers, not asset makers. They are keen and undisciplined spenders, not savers. They are hefty consumers, not asset producers. They are being drained from borrowers, not asset generating lenders. They are the conventional follow me thinkers, not the thinking beyond the wall and unconventional thinkers.

In fact, often, sadly, they have also outsourced their common sense, much to their health and financial disadvantage!

When it comes to your money, particularly during retirement, surprises are something you don't need. Avoid surprises, by expanding and knowing your circle of competence, and staying inside it.

Unfortunately, most people are financially and mathematically illiterate, so they don't understand, that the odds are way against big, fast gains in stocks. And that, is why an early understanding of the great power of compounding, the single greatest tool an investor can possess, remains, and is likely to remain, unexploited by the vast majority of investors.

Remember - this is very urgent - and take note: You only get one shot at compounding your wealth over decades.

As all of us are aware, particularly when interacting with aggressive retail therapy, it’s not human nature to delay gratification. Nor is it human nature to want to spend time studying self-empowering material to make life easier down the track!

Now, I hope that you will take your first step down the road of self-engineered wealth.

Also, don't forget, that You are also constructing an income stream, that can add to your capital.

Many years ago, we noticed, and took note of, the fact, that, rather than getting another job, the wealthy people know, they have to send their saved money out to work for them.

To put it simply: If you're not making money while you sleep, you'll never become rich.

Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich said, Anything the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve and When you're ready for a thing, it will make its appearance.

Today, 28 January 2013, I am reading, and certainly enjoying, Peter Male's -- Acquired Tastes, a must to-be-read book for all the particularly young and enthusiastic entrepreneurs, who still wish to acquire the necessary trimmings of success, and then, how to possibly squander their newly gained fortunes!

Don't forget, that through the often untapped power of your mind, you possess the ability and capacity to draw to yourself, the things, people, and circumstances, necessary to achieve your dreams and objectives.

Is it, therefore, beyond your imagination and capacity, to see what you can experience by sometimes relocating?

There's a dream keeps returning, like rain to the sea. There's a fire ever burning in the souls of the free. There's a lifetime of learning that it's all been in jest. And at the end of your journey, it's like you never left. Dave Mason

Informed proposed health procedure consent, can be effectively exercised only if the patient possesses enough relevant information, to enable an intelligent procedure or medication choice.

This is Your right to dignity

It is part of your PATIENTS' Rights!

It's never too late to visit your NATIONAL Patients' Rights Charter.

In the long run there is no constituency for bad information. In the short run, all sorts of moneymaking and other groups want to bend the facts their way.

The physiotherapist can guide you, point you in the right direction but certainly cannot travel the road on your behalf.

Helpful information needs to be in jargon-free language and given in informal and pragmatic ways that are separate from, but complement, healthcare intervention. The language gap between patient and health service provider is often kept wider than need be, either by lack of empathy, or occasionally, by the deliberate use of jargon in order to preserve dominance over the uninformed patient.

Some healthcare professionals, who invest their ego into their position, are wary about patients who want to be well-informed. However, the mystique and mystery of medicine and healthcare, has, to a large extent, evaporated. In particular, thanks to the advent of rapid and relatively cheap electronic communication via the Internet. Such progress has drastically scaled down the egos of many healthcare "service providers.

Sometimes, "These health care providers are big-money people with big egos and well-payed careers to protect.

The previously influential and power wheedling gatekeepers of information and knowledge, are becoming less relevant. That voice of authority is now taken away from them!

The investigating information-seeking public is by-passing them.

They avoid practitioners who were taught and brainwashed by conventional, pharmaceutical and surgical-bound clinical conventions.

Sooner or later, to their relief, the chronically pain experiencing patient, will encounter a service provider that did not fit expected conventional healing patterns or standard dogmas.

The pharmaceutical companies created the morphine market; the market that should have no pain.

I'm against annual doctor visits for healthy people. No known scientific evidence, shows annual physicals help anything other than fill the pockets of doctors. And, often, some doctors are much too quick to prescribe pills, to fix whatever ails you.

Fortunately, by acquiring the necessary apparatus, you can monitor your own blood pressure.

I have always been of the school that you're better off having the information and trying to use it intelligently and judiciously to your advantage, as opposed to not having it at all.

The only -- and most important -- beneficiary of open medicine and healthcare is the patient! You must, however, be wary of jargon -- face-saving tickets such as arthritis, fibrositis, lumbago, rheumatism, old age and sciatica.

This book is dedicated to you, back-owner, and a potential back-pain sufferer.

The text was compiled and written to enhance the quality of life of my extended family, patients and clients who have been so instrumental in its creation with their positive and questioning input.

This book is spiced with apt and to the point patient quotes.

CONTROL risk by knowledge and understanding.

The tyranny of distance from quality healthcare services is no longer an issue. The power of the printed word -- either on paper or electronically -- is extremely empowering, if only we wish to take advantage of it.

Fortified with knowledge, insight and an appreciation of some of the more frequent strain-disposing factors, you can be in command of the quality and well-being of your spinal column and life.

If back care isn't learned, it isn't earned.

Never stop being inquisitive about your health, illness and financial well-being. A culture stifling inquisitiveness is detrimental to a free people. There is growing consumer-led demand for non-drug solutions to health restoration care, under laid by rapidly improving media dissemination of information, pertaining to the adverse side effects, often associated with medication.

The growing awareness of the progressively health-informed public, that they are entitled to play an active part in determining the nature and course of remedial action, to improve their health, has similarly encouraged this trend. The result is that the health-restorative and pain relieving value of non-drug treatment approaches, such as those provided by physiotherapy, have risen in popularity.

There is also growing awareness that treatment by physical means, for trauma and body-abuse conditions, is the first option! The prescriptive practitioners, who do