People talk about stress a lot, but they don’t really know what it is. Stress is not what happens to us but our response to what happens and for how long. Believe it or not our response is something we can choose. Stress is anything that promotes a response in the body. Sometimes we thrive on stress we call this Eustress - being 'on it' and excited 'in the moment' when it matters prepared and ready to perform, but malignant Distress - when you can't cope or feel like your life isn’t going anywhere - is becoming a chronic problem. Understanding the source of your stress and how it is affecting you is often the answer to curing your back problem.

Communities are withdrawing from each other and isolation contributes to low mood, which creates stress and ultimately pain. Reaching out to friends and family is vitally important to happiness and has proved to be so by Harvard University. Relationships allow for the sharing of problems and prevent them mounting up. Social media is not enough and in fact can have the opposite effect.

A lot of people who come to the practice with back pain are often not suffering from a structural disorder, but the manifestation of stress in their tissues. It is very often easier to bury a hard to manage psychological worry and manifest it as a physical one. If you're in a very high-pressure job the constancy of the stress and inability to show it takes its toll. It's called somatisation - you bury in your tissues anxiety and stress that you don't deal with because it seems like a weakness. This is a bad reflection on society, because people who are vulnerable and share things manage stress a lot better.

Stress has also been shown recently to actually cause inflammation. It promotes the production of molecules called cytokines which irritate joints and nerve endings. They also cause flare-ups in preexisting conditions like arthritis.

Indeed, stress is the biggest driver to illness in the world now, and 40 - 60% of people who present to a GP have a stress-related disorder. 43% of the UK population now have a chronic pain disorder of which 80% is back pain, and no one is talking about it in a coherent fashion. Doctors know this, but they have on average only 7 minutes with you, and the quickest and easiest thing is to prescribe a tablet. We offer answers which aren't drug-related, it's about recognising what stresses you, and understanding it.

80% of the population sit all day in corporate jobs, not moving, hyperventilating (see breathing) and shortening all the same muscles. Many now indulge in the 'laptop-latte' culture with poor ergonomics and as 'netizens' we use electronics too much. About four year's ago we realised we were giving patients various pieces of equipment to use to release their spines along with advice about how to recognise and treat stress.