This book is really good. It's short, readable and takes a no nonsense approach to the issues of back pain, causes and treatments. It describes the back in terms of a mechanism, which is all it is really, a series of joints. The idea being that you can treat the problem yourself before it escalates too much. Treat Your Own Back by Robin McKenzie | Waterstones WWW.WATERSTONES.COM Buy Treat Your Own Back by Robin McKenzie from Waterstones today! Click and Collect from your local Waterstones or get FREE UK delivery on orders over £25. Personally I'd always go to a physio rather than a chiropractor or osteopath. The latter often seem to have a bad reputation for being no good, and money grabbers. Physios might also be more used to dealing with active, physical people like ourselves and sports people. Providing the issue is not too serious, one that requires surgery, you want someone to diagnose the problem and then give you some exercises to do at home, rather than asking you to go back to them every week for three months to be poked and prodded, at £50 a session. (That happened to my partner. She wasn't impressed and jacked it in after a couple). The most useful thing that I've taken from that book, and a couple of visits to a physio is the best way to treat a bout of acute back ache is to do an exercise to bend it the opposite way to normal, i.e. arch it backwards. A good way is do some press-up, but try to keep your groin pressed to the ground. A few days or weeks of that, a couple of times a day, really helps in my case. The rationale is that the discs get squeezed out backwards from bending and lifting over time. As they're flexible they can, to a certain extent, be squeezed forwards again to where they should be by bending the back over backwards. Works for me. All that said I think a certain amount of back pain is a sad consequence of manual labour and getting older. Mine always aches a bit after too much bending down or heavy lifting. Also, bad posture is a big culprit. I reckon there's as many desk workers or more with back problems. Swimming and cycling are good for stretching out and freeing things up. Hanging upsidedown too! I've never tried it but the idea is to stretch the back and open up the vertebrae.