Natural remedies for back spasms

Doctors had been medicating Lori Allen with drugs for years for her back spasms. But she got rid of the spasms in just one week by adding spicy raw ingredients to her raw recipes!

How I Healed Painful Back Spasms with
Raw Garlic, Ginger and Hot Peppers

By Lori Allen

Several weeks ago (in absolute desperation because I was in a tremendous amount of pain), I asked if anyone had any brilliant ideas on healing nerve spasms in the thoracic area of my back. I have had this problem since 1985 and I had pretty much eradicated it soon after I started eating raw foods, but it came back with a vengeance and I thought, "If this is a healing crisis, it's a crisis I can't deal with" and temporarily had to go back to muscle relaxers and pain medication. I was advised (by Dr. Bernarr) to fast, but I knew that in my situation that wasn't a realistic option at this time.

Since I'm a single parent with a special needs child, I simply had to be able to function, and I was in such pain that it took my breath away and I couldn't even rinse the dishes; simply turning, or just moving my arm wrong, or having the wind hit my back, or having fabric rub my back the wrong way would set off the spasms.

Of course, the drugs made me so sick that I eventually just flushed them down the toilet and went to a couple of alternative healing practitioners just to find out what was going on. One did an electrodermal screening test in Atlanta, Georgia (that I really wasn't all that impressed with because they wanted to put me on homeopathic remedies, and to me that's also violating the law of nature). My spleen kept appearing in the test results as a problem area.

I then went to an acupuncturist here in the Chattanooga, Tennessee area. After I described the pain I was having, he immediately said that it sounded like a problem with my spleen. He confirmed this by looking at my tongue.

Dysfunctional Spleen

He suggested that my spleen was dysfunctional because I wasn't getting enough "heat" in my diet. I explained I was a raw foodist (and was not interested in cooking my food again) and he suggested that I use garlic, ginger and hot peppers in some of my raw dishes to give them some heat. I realized that I did this a lot during the winter with my cold soups (which is why I was doing so well physically at that time). For some reason, I had gotten away from using any kind of spice and I guess that started these painful spasms again (although at the time I didn't make the connection).

So, I decided to give it a go, and started making my cold soups again and made a point of adding one or all three of the above items (garlic, ginger, and hot peppers), and it really started making a difference! I made this really yummy soup in my veg-o-matic with: carrots, celery, cucumber, macadamia nuts, ginger, garlic and jalapeno pepper. I have been adding "heat" back into my raw foods for about a week. It took less than 24 hours for those awful spasms to finally diminish.

I am basically a huge lover of hot (as in spicy) food and tend to crave these items. I stopped using them over a month ago thinking that, for example, garlic and jalapeno peppers aren't good because they are too irritating to the system. Apparently, I'm one of those people who needs spice or "heat" (or needs a supervised fast -- but that won't be realistic for another couple of years). I'm pretty sure I was going through a healing crisis with my spleen, and if I had fasted and stuck with it, it would have eventually resolved itself. However, because it was so debilitating, and because of my responsibilities as a parent, and because it had been going on for a horrifying several weeks and getting worse, I felt it best to keep things uncomplicated and simply start adding some "heat" (hey, at least it's still raw) back into my food.

The Amazing Part

So, once again, I am doing wonderfully and am still happily raw. But the whole thing that amazed me was that for years and years I thought I had a "back" problem and it turned out to be an "organ" problem. For years and years, western medical doctors--and I had gone to every specialist under the sun--had never done anything except tell me there's nothing wrong with that part of my spine, and gave me muscle relaxers and pain pills (which probably exacerbated the problem instead of healing it).

I swear that all the doctors learn in medical school is how to push pills for the pharmaceutical companies, and healing isn't even an issue with them anymore. I don't think a doctor has looked at my tongue since I was a child, and yet the evidence was all there for him or her to see.

Note: Lori Allen is a 45-year-old mother of two who has been living on raw foods since December 2000. She is presently ending a 20-year career as a legal secretary and relocating to Salt Lake City, Utah to attend massage therapy school. She loves being outdoors, but her real passion is hang gliding. She is an advanced-rated hang glider pilot and has been flying since 1993.