(Below has nothing to do with people who need surgery due to catastrophic injury or congenital defect.)
Most surgeries are followed by more surgeries.
And the hard truth is that most surgeries happen because most people do not have the discipline to do what's needed over many months to solve the problems they are having with the chronic pain they are in. They want a faster solution and are never really told by anyone that the only real permanent solution is one that will be difficult and take months.
Rather than change their habits and their environments and their bodies, people opt to do things that have surprisingly low rates of success and more often than not result in a state than can never be fixed.
Some people get past the point of no return. For those people, surgery may be the only option. But for most people the only real option is a change in lifestyle that is more or less like deciding you are going to get very fit. It takes months and in the mean time, theres a lot of effort and discomfort.
In addition, most people don't really get how much of their back pain and ailment is due to ergonomics. That their bed is wrong. That they are sitting in a bad office chair or couch.
But more than that, most people don't get how central exercise and core strength are for maintaining the health of your back.
So before you get back surgery, consider getting a new office chair, exercising more, and facing that pain for a few more months. Work toward a real solution.
There is an even stronger version of your argument, one that works without shifting to the same old "you don't need the expensive stuff, just get your life together" advice that already has kind of a bad rep for not fixing depression. You can accept that you cannot inject much more of necessary discipline and motivation into people after they leave school.. and still argue against many types of surgery in mostly the same way: by strictly comparing them to other costly endeavors that could bring about those probably-helpful life changes. Many more people could work towards that "real solution" by benefiting from some other spending.. which merely happens to be cheaper than surgery, while still not being entirely up to them.
Example: My town installed an outdoor "grown-up playground" in the nearby park. Probably cost a little over two complicated surgeries. Already saved 10 people from neglecting upper body workout. Just 10 people having a really low-barrier-of-entry gym available to them whenever walking their dog. I suspect its already been cost-effective. Plus, it is reusable and low-maintenance. Try to beat that in the operating room!
The thing is, the fitness level OP is talkign about is not going to be compatible with the grown up playground sort of activities. You need to get jacked basically. You need to be lifting to failure 3x5ish hitting all muscle groups 2x a week with compound lifts. You should be struggling to go up stairs after working legs.
Working out is good, yes, but you need to actually work the body and make it suffer so that it may actually be damaged enough for high rates of muscle growth. So many people do not do enough because they don't like to push themselves, they take it easy and they end up wasting their time in the gym. Even more true as you get older and natural testosterone levels start declining and limiting your muscle growth.
This is why people end up taking spin classes when they can just do it at home on their own stationary bike. For some people, they need a jockey who will kick their ass along with the peer pressure of a room full of people dumping out sweat.
Huh? Knowing that the ceiling of diminishing returns is that high should make us even more optimistic about low-effort progress in the right direction.
The 80/20 of weightlifting starts with no longer shifting your spine in a funny way for every slight inconvenience. That is a small distance from the feeble median status quo, and still very far away from jacked. To achieve meaningful reduction in injury risk and some forms of chronic pain, we do not need to focus as much on people going from already generally fit towards trying things that are naturally extremely difficult for them (or for their postmenopausal hormonal state). There is more net benefit per exertion at the very beginning of a resistance training voyage. Which could very well never reach the intensity of enjoying a proper "no please, no stairs!" moment that indicates maximum strength improvement per unit of time, and still have been best-in-class per unit of currency spent on nudging people into it.
Julesman · · focus · HN ↗
Most surgeries are followed by more surgeries.
And the hard truth is that most surgeries happen because most people do not have the discipline to do what's needed over many months to solve the problems they are having with the chronic pain they are in. They want a faster solution and are never really told by anyone that the only real permanent solution is one that will be difficult and take months.
Rather than change their habits and their environments and their bodies, people opt to do things that have surprisingly low rates of success and more often than not result in a state than can never be fixed.
Some people get past the point of no return. For those people, surgery may be the only option. But for most people the only real option is a change in lifestyle that is more or less like deciding you are going to get very fit. It takes months and in the mean time, theres a lot of effort and discomfort.
In addition, most people don't really get how much of their back pain and ailment is due to ergonomics. That their bed is wrong. That they are sitting in a bad office chair or couch.
But more than that, most people don't get how central exercise and core strength are for maintaining the health of your back.
So before you get back surgery, consider getting a new office chair, exercising more, and facing that pain for a few more months. Work toward a real solution.
edelbitter · · focus · HN ↗
Example: My town installed an outdoor "grown-up playground" in the nearby park. Probably cost a little over two complicated surgeries. Already saved 10 people from neglecting upper body workout. Just 10 people having a really low-barrier-of-entry gym available to them whenever walking their dog. I suspect its already been cost-effective. Plus, it is reusable and low-maintenance. Try to beat that in the operating room!
asdff · · focus · HN ↗
Working out is good, yes, but you need to actually work the body and make it suffer so that it may actually be damaged enough for high rates of muscle growth. So many people do not do enough because they don't like to push themselves, they take it easy and they end up wasting their time in the gym. Even more true as you get older and natural testosterone levels start declining and limiting your muscle growth.
This is why people end up taking spin classes when they can just do it at home on their own stationary bike. For some people, they need a jockey who will kick their ass along with the peer pressure of a room full of people dumping out sweat.
edelbitter · · focus · HN ↗