Selling Relief

Big bucks from bad backs

The tens of millions of Americans who suffer sporadic or chronic backaches spent some $5 billion last year for treatments, ranging from surgery to bone-rattling manipulations. Many people will try almost anything to get relief. They will hang upside down, or turn to acupuncture and electric stimulation. Some sufferers have invested in sandals covered with tiny bumps designed to massage the nerves in their feet as a way of easing back pain.

Such desperation has spurred the ingenuity of tinkerers and entrepreneurs, who are bringing out an astonishing array of chairs, pillows, massagers, stimulators and other back aids. The devices can now be found not only in medical-supply stores but also in sporting-goods and health-food shops and even department stores. In Needham Heights, Mass., a Boston suburb, Jeffrey Grossman has opened the Back Store, which he claims is "the first shop in the country to specialize solely in back-relief equipment." In its first nine months, he says, the one-room operation had sales of $500,000. Grossman predicts that revenues will reach $1 million next year, and he has visions of franchising his store across the U.S.

One of the most popular, and controversial, types of back-relief products is so-called gravity-inversion equipment, which began selling fast after Richard Gere was shown hanging heels over head in the 1980 film American Gigolo. Gravity Guidance of Pasadena, Calif., introduced the first inversion product: ankle straps now known as Gravity Boots (price: $60 to $84) that enable a sufferer to dangle from a chinning bar and relieve pressure on the spine. To go with the boots, the company sells steel-and-canvas support systems (up to $1,200) that hold users in a topsy-turvy position.

Though researchers at the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine warned this summer that using inversion gear could be dangerous for people with histories of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, glaucoma and several other ailments, sales have not been hurt much. Gravity Guidance expects its revenues to surge from $12 million in 1982 to at least $25 million this year. The success of the company's products has spawned several imitations, including a Japanese-made device called the Gravitator Inversion Gym, which sells for $498.

People with no desire to hang around may prefer chairs designed to take pressure off the back. Among the hottest sellers are Balans chairs, Norwegian imports that retail for $180 to $550. They are actually stools with a seat and a padded knee rest sloped in a way that forces the user to have proper posture. One Chicago distributor expects to sell 15,000 of the chairs this year, up from less than 1,000 in 1979. Another popular item, particularly favored by truck drivers and police officers, is the Sacro-Ease, a plastic or velour car seat that provides support for the small of the back. Made by McCarty's of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, the Sacro-Ease retails for $68 to $80.

A more exotic approach to alleviating backaches is the transcutaneous nerve stimulator that is made by numerous manufacturers and sells for $500 to $600. Usually clipped onto a belt, the small battery-powered device sends very mild currents through electrodes to the skin. Though the idea seems like quackery, researchers at Montreal's McGill University have found that electrical stimulation helps reduce back pain in two-thirds of patients tested.

Many back-relief products are a bit more mundane. Matrix International of Boston offers the Ma Roller ($19.95), a massaging device that looks like a giant rolling pin with two ridges in the middle. Creative Wood Specialties of Kalamazoo, Mich., has come out with wooden massagers (up to $25) that can be rolled across the back and, for aesthetic value, are carved into the shapes of smiling animals. The moose model is the most popular. Other imaginative offerings include elongated shoehorns ($1) for sufferers who cannot bend over and minitrampolines ($40 to $175) that allow stricken joggers to get their exercise on a soft surface.

Some doctors complain that many home back treatments are a waste of money, but others are more tolerant. Says Augustus White, chief orthopedic surgeon at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital and author of Your Aching Back: "There are certainly devices out there that can alleviate back pain." As long as sedentary life-styles continue to put strain on the spine, the back products are likely to keep generating healthy profits for a growing industry. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.