Smoking and back pain:
As if I needed yet another reason to convince my patients to quit smoking- a new Finnish study finds a link between smoking and back pain. The study does not suggest that smoking causes back pain, but that it potentially exacerbates already existing pain. The study suggests that the pain-augmenting effect may have to do with decreasing the blood supply to the spine. It is also likely that there are some analogous functions shared by pain receptors in your nervous system and those receptors which respond to nicotine.
Long and short of it- if you have back pain, and you smoke, now you have more reasons than ever to quit.
Philadelphia Eagles: When you cut the heart out of your team, you are left with a heartless team….
Saturday saw the Philadelphia Eagles’ painful loss to their arch-division-rivals, the Dallas Cowboys. Now it would be reasonable to think that the Eagles could lose 1 or 2 games to the Cowboys, but until now- 3 would have been unthinkable.
I have already elaborated on my thoughts on how the team did this to themselves. You can have a team full of competent players, but in the absence of locker room leadership, no amount of raw talent is likely to help. Sorry to harp on this, but allowing Brian Dawkins to finish his career in Denver was the leadership equivalent of cutting out your own heart. THEN to make matters worse, bringing in dog lover Michael Vick injected a hearty helping of bad Karma into the mix. Perhaps he can help secure a trade for a draft pick for a quarterback replacement for #5- but who’s really out there worthy of cultivation? Now we can look forward the team management rewarding quality play with allowing players to leave. Leonard Weaver was something the Eagles have needed for a long time- and he proved his worth again and again this season. I wonder who he will be playing for next season?
The Eagles management makes it so hard to be a fan…
As always, best to you and yours,
-Andy
Eagles Training Camp- Lehigh University, Lehigh Pennsylvania
