HEAL YOUR DISC, END YOUR PAIN

Lutz, a physician, makes the case for a new treatment for back pain in this nonfiction work.

The author introduces readers to a process he developed that offers an alternative to surgery for treating back pain. The book explains, with the help of anonymized MRI images from Lutz’s patients, the physiology of back pain (“It’s nothing more than an unhealed wound inside a disc with a great deal of inflammatory proteins and nerve fibers that complicate the healing process”), and why standard treatments are inconsistently successful. The most effective treatment, Lutz argues, is platelet-rich plasma injections, in which a patient’s blood is drawn, concentrated in a centrifuge, and injected into the damaged spinal disc. Lutz writes about how he developed the treatment, which had previously been used for other types of injuries, placing it in the context of his own medical career and trends in medical education. He describes the iterative process of testing, refining, and sharing the treatment, and both peer-reviewed research and patients’ anecdotes are presented to demonstrate the technique’s viability. The author is a skilled writer who both tells an engaging story and makes a solid argument. As few doctors currently offer platelet-rich plasma as a treatment for back pain, the book’s advocacy for it naturally serves in part as an advertisement for Lutz’s services, but the science-driven narrative is persuasive; the text reads like a recommendation rather than propaganda. The book is informational, with plenty of easy-to-follow scientific detail, and is also thoughtful and personal, including passages about the evolution of the practice of medicine and Lutz’s own career. Readers with an interest in the development of science will enjoy this inside look at how a treatment innovation arose, was improved, and was debated by the medical community. Those who suffer from back pain will appreciate the clear explanations of what causes their discomfort, why they may have found little relief from standard care, and a potential new approach to healing.

A convincing defense of an innovative method for relieving back pain.