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Les Woodland's book Sticky Buns Across America: Back roads biking from sea to shining sea is available as an audiobook here. For the print or Kindle eBook versions, just click on the Amazon link on the right.

John Neugent probably knows more about bicycle wheels than anyone else alive. Maybe more about bikes as well. He's spent his life in the bike business, at every level. He now owns Neugent Cycling, a firm devoted to delivering world-class equipment at the lowest possible price. If you are in the market for a set of wheels, please, check out John's site. He really knows his stuff. —Chairman Bill

Author John Neugent

One should never take medical advice from a bicycle wheel builder. I have no qualifications whatsoever to give any medical advice. Except one – this worked for me.

Getting comfortable on a bike for the vast majority of riders is a challenge. A good aerodynamic position for going fast almost always means you are going to bend over too much for comfort. Of course there are exceptions but they are not the norm. Outside of saddle sores, back pain is probably the biggest issue for comfort. That’s why I was amazed to find this “cure.”

I have a bad back and I am not alone. In studies, the prevalence of disc degeneration ranged from 37% in asymptomatic individuals in their 20s to 96% of those in their 80s. Disc signal loss was present in over 50% of individuals older than 40 years and by 60 years, 86% of individuals had signal loss of scans. Yet many people with severe disc problems are asymptomatic.

Dr. Sarno was a doctor specializing in back problems and he grew frustrated that all of the conventional medical practices only worked in a small percentage of his patients. There’s a tremendous amount of information available on either YouTube or with Google searches relating to his discoveries and they are much too numerous for me to document here. But in a nutshell, he found most back pain was caused by the mind. I know what you’re thinking, this guy might know how to twist a nipple (spoke nipple that is) but he’s got to be nuts. I won’t comment on either of those perceptions but I can tell my story.

I read his first book somewhere about 10-15 years ago and figured I would give it a shot. It worked (I will get into more of the details later). But then things got in the way and I forgot it and my back pain returned just as I expected it would. Fast forward to a few months ago when I happened to see a video on YouTube and I was brought back to my first successful trial. He’s written more books and recommends you do not read the first one but go directly to the last two.

One of the hooks that got me interested was his comment about ulcers. For decades lots of people got ulcers until, when it became unfashionable, it went away. By that I mean that when there was stigma associated with ulcers, they went away. How many people do you know with ulcers?

After seeing the video, I put the practices to work and within a day I was mostly pain free. To describe my state, putting dishes in the dish washer hurt my back. Vacuuming was torment (but, honestly that may not have had a lot to do with my back). I am pretty much pain free most of the time and when there is a pain it’s generally minor.

To describe the process is very simple. Once you realize that you are the one causing the pain, it goes away. It much more complicated than that but that’s the core. The key is that you have to believe it – which is not easy. There are all kinds of documentation online or on YouTube about all of this. Howard Stern said his back was so bad he had to do broadcasts lying down, of course with Howard, that may have been his preferred position anyway, but he called him a Rock Star.

John Neugent was was one of the first to establish quality hand building in Taiwan around the turn of the century. He now owns Neugent Cycling, a firm devoted to delivering world-class equipment at the lowest possible price.

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