This year’s Back Care Awareness Week runs from 4 – 10 October. It’s theme and focus for 2008 is ‘staying positive and believing that ‘you can do it’ and get through your back pain’ which is important given that 52% of the population now gets back pain – a 5% increase on last year. Spring cleaning and housework are cited as the most common causes with 47% of sufferers saying they have caused problems. Worryingly from a recent study, between 13% and 50% of teenagers have already had episodes of back pain and as many as two in every class of 15-18 year olds experience back pain on a recurrent or chronic basis. This is often due to inactivity and the increasing ‘couch potato’ syndrome. It is estimated that inactivity costs the NHS £1 billion a year.

BackCare Awareness Week is a great opportunity to raise awareness of the options for the management and prevention of back pain. Back pain as well as physically causing imobilisation, can cause mental imobilisation and many people feel trapped by back pain. Even something simple like getting in or out of a car – an everyday activity taken for granted – can become an enormous and painful challenge, so much so, that some people stop doing it and become housebound. So begins a downward spiral of pain, depression, lack of self-belief and loss of positivity. Garry could talk about not only how one can look after one's back on a daily basis but also offer tips on how to continue to do those everyday activities – gardening, child care, housework – whilst managing pain.

Sir Paul McCartney says of Garry Trainer D.O. B.Ac. “Garry has always been ahead of his time and has a special talent, which I have enjoyed for years.” What’s more, most of his celebrity clients have been happy to supply glowing testimonials to promote Garry Trainer’s new book ‘Back Chat’ (Aurum Press) billed “the ultimate guide to healing and preventing back pain.”

Garry, a fiercely proud New Zealander at heart, has been an expat in the UK for over 27 years where he is regarded as a pioneer and one of the foremost practitioners of osteopathy, acupuncture, massage, complementary and natural therapy. For all his clinical expertise though, surfing remains one of his greatest passions! A career in sports was his ambition but, at 17, his back was nearly broken in a rugby accident. After 18 months in recovery, he reconsidered his future and realised that being mobile and free of pain could be the most important thing in life. He trained first as a nurse and then came to the UK in the late 70’s and trained as an acupuncturist, funded by stints as a masseur at the famous UK health spa Champneys.

Trainer was still in search of something to relieve his own back pain and had found that acupuncture “knocked his socks off!” He decided to train as an osteopath and ever since, he believes his success has been based on combining the strengths of acupuncture as a painkiller, with osteopathy, massage and conventional diagnostic techniques.

Backs are literally the ‘backbone’ of his practice, based at his flagship clinic in Primrose Hill, North London. His first book ‘The No-Nonsense Guide to a Healthy Back’ was published in 1999. His second book ‘Back Chat’ came from a realisation that he found himself saying the same things to patients everyday, so decided to write it all down in an accessible, immediate and chatty way – literally a chat about the back. “Often what feels like being stabbed in the back can be a sign of a trapped nerve. By understanding and acknowledging the natural healing process that many backs get better by themselves, one feels so much more in control of the situation. Fear of the unknown is the worse thing in back pain. I understand backs and I know what it feels like. I’ve learnt backs from the inside out ” says Trainer.

Garry is an experienced and regular contributor to broadcast and printed media features as the voice for complementary and natural health issues in the UK as well as being appointed in 2008 as a regular columnist in the Mail on Sunday’s Health section. For the third year running, Garry will be training the celebrities in massage and dry needling for the BBC’s Children in Need series ‘Celebrity Scissorhands.’ He recently got married on Waiheke Island in New Zealand, has 3 sons, lives in Marlow in Buckinghamshire and in 2004 was crowned World Worm Charming Champion, beating the English in their own back garden! Garry Trainer counts amongst his clients Gwyneth Paltrow, Johnny Depp, Kate Winslett, Jude Law, Brad Pitt, Emma Thompson, George Michael and Sir Paul McCartney. Garry says “I think there’s something in the New Zealand personality not to be so bound by rules and regulations, and I think that helps me to relate to celebrities. People in the arts had a more open-minded attitude to natural health at the time when I was starting up, and maybe that’s what opened doors for me.”