Most Back Pain Could Be Cured Without Surgery or Drugs if Doctors Treated Muscles - Not the Spine - Says Leading Pain ...( NEW YORK April 8 2008 /- If you'r...),Health

NEW YORK, April 8, 2008 /PRNewswire/ -- If you're suffering from back pain and unable to find relief, it may be because the real cause of your pain -- weak, stressed and damaged muscles, not your spine -- has never been recognized or treated, says Norman Marcus, M.D., one of the nation's leading pain specialists.

Back pain is the most disabling pain experienced by Americans, and, according to the National Institutes of Health, eight out of ten people will suffer from it at some point. "With nearly one million spine surgeries performed in the U.S. each year, and a failure rate as high as 50 percent, too many patients either undergo spinal surgery that is doomed to fail, or are put on mind-altering drugs to manage, but not end, their pain," says Dr. Marcus.

"The reality is that muscles are the primary source of chronic back pain. And muscle pain can almost always be successfully treated without surgery or drugs," says Dr. Marcus, the founder of the Norman Marcus Pain Institute (http://www.nmpi.com), which is dedicated to eliminating pain, not just attempting to manage it.

Dr. Marcus, a past president of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, is Clinical Associate Professor in Anesthesiology and Psychiatry and Director of Muscle Pain Research at the NYU School of Medicine. He co-founded New York City's first pain center, at Montefiore Hospital, and developed and served as Chief of the Pain Treatment Service in the departments of Medicine and Psychiatry at New York's Lenox Hill Hospital for fourteen years.

Dr. Marcus's pioneering protocols for diagnosing and treating muscle-related pain have brought back pain relief to thousands of long-suffering patients, many of whom had given up hope.

Muscles represent more than 50 percent of the body by weight, but are rarely even considered as the source of pain in such common problems as low back pain, neck pain and headaches, says Dr. Marcus
'/>"/>