I've probably received more relief from chiros than anybody, to be honest. If my insurance covered the treatments, I would have never stopped going to my chiro. Instead, I ended up going to a neurosurgeon, getting prescribed Lyrica, nearly ended up committing suicide, almost was committed for my own protection, and now have to go through withdrawal.

We're all individuals. Some things work great for me; those same things might not work well for you. Keep a journal, track your results, and keep striving to get better. I know it's hard. I know there's times the pain is overwhelming. Don't give up. Your life is much too valuable to give it over to pain.

The PT approach has taken me about 18 months to really help. And I was not in terrible shape to start with - I'm a strongman competitor, and in the summer of 2010, I deadlifted 725lbs, and competed in 3 contests in a 1 month period. So it's not like I had a "weak core" when I started.

Studies of NFL players have borne this out. The NFL has, in response to increased downtime from lumbar pain, increased core training to 4x/wk at a minimum. This has helped linebackers greatly - and you can bet that since there's so much money involved, they've tried just about everything.

I do wish you nothing but the best, and I hope that you find some relief.