Serendipity - How Travel Fixed My Stuffed Back.

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Renato1

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I told this story tonight to friends, who thought it was amusing, so I'll pass it on here.

In August 2013 we were preparing for two months of travel overseas, and I was very worried. My bad back from bulged discs was really playing up. For 8 months I had been getting physiotherapy, and despite doing all the required exercises, I could barely walk 200 meters on flat ground before my back started aching badly (though I didn't have much problem walking around our sloped property). Just going to the supermarket would become an ordeal by the time I picked up the last of the groceries.

Anyhow, we landed in Singapore - and I was suddenly cured!
I was walking down Orchard Road, around the Bird Park and all over the Night Zoo without any difficulty. I was loving it - how come I could walk again? Something to do with Singapore's weather maybe? Anyhow, my back was fine for the rest of the trip around Europe.

After getting home, the back pain was erratic, but nowhere near as bad as before. But in the subsequent two years, my left leg got considerably weaker. It was becoming a real struggle going down our gully's slope, filling buckets of firewood, and binging them back up to the house. So I kept pinning my hopes that on our next trip, that when we got to Kuala Lumpur in August 2015, the miracle that had happened at Singapore would happen again on my back.

And the miracle did happen again - except that it happened the day before we left for Kuala Lumpur! My back was better, and my left leg noticeably stronger.

It was then that I figured out what had happened. I weigh suitcases by weighing myself on scales first, then weighing myself and with an around 30Kg of suitcase held in front of me (the difference being the exact weight of the suitcase). That exercise was what had rectified my back on the two occasions.

So now, when my back is playing up at home, I just grab an X5 Bullworker and pull on the straps, in a manner that replicates lifting the heavy suitcase. And when overseas, I routinely pick up the packed suitcase and hold it in the weighing position. Though I still get annoying sore backs from chainsawing and other activities.

If I hadn't been a travelling person, I'd probably still be visiting a physiotherapist and be unable to walk more than 200 meters - and probably limping while doing so.

I recently asked my Doctor, couldn't I get some surgery for this back condition? His response was that anyone who walks around half of Europe like I do, doesn't need back surgery.

Has the act of travel ever fixed, in full or part, any of your conditions?
Cheers,
Renato
 
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