"lack of consensus about how to treat some of the most common conditions in the human population (e.g. back pain)"
That one is obvious: question too broad ... does not compute ... out of cheese error.
Back pain is a massive, massive thing - it sometimes doesn't actually involve the back. Here's an anecdote:
I (50ish y/o male) used to have episodes of quite crippling to very crippling "back pain". To cut a long story short, I found at least two causes (can't remember the medical term - indicator?) and sorted them. One was putting my wallet in my back pocket - sounds innocuous but it puts pressure on the buttock involved and skews your posture slightly. The other was seemingly ridiculous: When turning over in bed, I used to flick myself over by performing a sort of torsion twist about my spine. That's fine when you are 10 but not 30, 40, 50 etc.
Nowadays I simply avoid silly lifting postures and all is generally good. It took about four or five years to recover from past habits.
I wouldn't call the latter a "fix". More like avoiding the problem. Let's pretend for as second the actual problem was some sort of muscular tightness you've developed, wouldn't the preferable fix be to identify the tightness, do some exercises regularly that alleviate it, and conserve the original function of your body? Otherwise seems like you're just slowly abandoning capabilities that your body used to have.
I'm a bloke what is going from 0 to n years old where n is hopefully undefined and roughly "later". I'm currently 51.
When I was a child/teen/young adult I had a habit of basically twisting myself in such a way that I stored energy and then released it to turn over - perhaps a bit like a rubber band being twisted. That's fine in a young body but not in an older one. Bear in mind that the same person (mind) is within both the young and old body and it took quite a lot of time to realise that I'm not as agile as I was.
I'm a lot more cunning these days and for example can actually ski far better than I used to as a child but if I fall, it bloody hurts!
Funnily enough the wallet thing is way more important to my wellbeing.
"Slowly abandoning capabilities that your body used to have" is inevitable. Everyone will do this at a different rate and on a different time profile, but everyone will do it, and everyone will eventually reach capability = zero.
That one is obvious: question too broad ... does not compute ... out of cheese error.
Back pain is a massive, massive thing - it sometimes doesn't actually involve the back. Here's an anecdote:
I (50ish y/o male) used to have episodes of quite crippling to very crippling "back pain". To cut a long story short, I found at least two causes (can't remember the medical term - indicator?) and sorted them. One was putting my wallet in my back pocket - sounds innocuous but it puts pressure on the buttock involved and skews your posture slightly. The other was seemingly ridiculous: When turning over in bed, I used to flick myself over by performing a sort of torsion twist about my spine. That's fine when you are 10 but not 30, 40, 50 etc.
Nowadays I simply avoid silly lifting postures and all is generally good. It took about four or five years to recover from past habits.