Backnobber® II Simple Pain Relief Solution

Backnobber II - Simple Solution Spells Relief

It’s just an s –shaped piece of plastic with rounded knobs at each end, made in the USA and shipped from a small workshop in rural Pennsylvania.

But its first cousin was displayed at the Smithsonian Institute as part of an exhibit on ancient and modern techniques used to treat pain and the updated plastic version is used by thousands of patients and health professionals worldwide without a prescription.

Both tools go by the unassuming moniker of The Original Backnobber® and Backnobber® II and the physicians and therapists to whom it is sold claim it relieves many forms of chronic pain in the neck, shoulders, upper and lower back.

Pain sufferers do not use it like a backscratcher; they very simply place either of the two knobs on the point of the sore muscle and apply gentle and sustained pressure using the leverage of the tool. Imagine walking around behind yourself and using your finger or thumb or knuckle to massage your own back. While it would be better to have a trained pair of hands do the work, they are not always available to apply that massage and, they are rarely around when you need them.

The fledgling Pressure Positive Company was formed in1982 by Bernard L. Gladieux Jr. Gladieux, a long time athlete, health and fitness enthusiast and a long distance runner, had quite a bit of back pain and, also like other runners, had to learn how to manage it by himself.

That led to an introduction in 1977 to Hans Kraus, one of the foremost researchers in “trigger point” therapy. Although Western research on trigger point therapy dates back more than a century and the East far longer, since World War II it has gained a wider interest in the United Sates and Europe because of the groundbreaking clinical studies documented in the medical text, “Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual”, By Dr. Janet Travell and Dr. David Simons.

Simply put, trigger point compression therapy is merely hand pressure on a sore muscle, pressure that breaks what Gladieux calls the cycle of pain, spasm and swelling responsible for much of chronic muscle and back pain. The pressure restricts the blood flow, causing the muscle to release natural pain suppressing endorphins which allow the muscle to relax, and be stretched without damage.

Through Kraus and other researchers, Gladieux began studying trigger point therapy for use on himself until he experienced an epiphany while stuck in traffic in the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel.

He was kneading his neck because of a muscle ache and his hand gave out. Being somewhat of a tool aficionado, he wondered if using some sort of tool might make it easier. Although an umbrella handle pulled from the back seat broke on the first try, he thought something stronger might work. When he returned home he sought out a local blacksmith to make a prototype Shepard’s crook with a knob on the end. The smithy came up with an s-shaped double Shepard’s crook that provided the leverage needed and Gladieux began making them, by hand, one by one and marketing them to athletes just like himself.

It wasn’t long before rehabilitation clinics contacted him wanting to by wholesale for their patients. It is now 23 years later and The Original Backnobber® and The Original Backnobber®II are fixture self care products in hospitals, clinics and health professional offices throughout the United States, Europe and worldwide.

Gladieux stresses that his tools are no cure-all and no substitute for good medical treatment of injury or disease; they simply help manage muscle aches and trigger point pain.