The Best and Worst States for Back Pain

By Jesse Cannone

Two years ago I wrote a book, The 7-Day Back Pain Cure.

When the book was almost ready for publication, I decided to offer a little contest to give away 10 copies.

Literally hundreds of people from all over the country and around the world wrote to tell me why they needed help with their back pain.

Not able to pick from all the entrants who "deserved” to get rid of their back pain… they all did… I decided instead to give away the entire first print run of 1,000 books to the first 1,000 people who asked for a copy.

I figured they would all go. But not nearly as fast as they did. The entire first print run was snapped up in less than 12 hours!

So I decided to go ahead and order several thousand more copies from the publisher and give those away too. Gone in days.

What started as a small idea to give away a few books to generate some interest in my first book became a significant portion of the Healthy Back Institute’s mission "to completely transform the way back pain is treated so people can reduce or eliminate their pain and enjoy more of their lives.”

How? We plan to give away 1,000,000 copies of The 7-Day Back Pain Cure by 2013.

Which State Has the Most Back Pain?

Now that we’ve already given away over 150,000 print copies of my book, we thought it would be interesting to examine where all the requests for them are coming from to see which states have the most back pain and which states have the least.

First, we took all the requests for books we received and broke them down by the state we shipped them to. Predictably, states like California, Texas, New York and Florida with the largest populations also had the most book requests.

But that didn’t answer what we were really curious about. What we wanted to know was which states have the most back pain and least back pain based on a percent of the population? Are the most populous states really the worst states for back pain? Or was there some other pattern?

So we crunched a few more numbers and compared the number of book requests with last year’s Census figures to order the states from most back pain to least back pain as a percent of their population.

Here’s our revised list, ordered from the worst state for back pain at the top to the best state for back pain at the bottom:

1          Wyoming

2          Utah

3          Alaska

4          Montana

5          Hawaii

6          Colorado

7          Idaho

8          Oregon

9          Washington

10         Arizona

11         New Mexico

12         Nevada

13         New Hampshire

14         Florida

15         Kansas

16         South Dakota

17         California

18         Vermont

19         Virginia

20         Maryland

21         Iowa

22         Connecticut

23         Minnesota

24         Wisconsin

25         Nebraska

26         North Dakota

27         Maine

28         Massachusetts

29         Delaware

30         DC

31         Texas

32         Oklahoma

33         New Jersey

34         Missouri

35         Pennsylvania

36         Michigan

37         Ohio

38         Rhode Island

39         Illinois

40         Georgia

41         New York

42         Indiana

43         Arkansas

44         North Carolina

45         Tennessee

46         South Carolina

47         Louisiana

48         Alabama

49         West Virginia

50         Kentucky

51         Mississippi

The results turned out to be quite interesting.

The state with the least population of all states (563,626), Wyoming, turned up as the state with the most back pain.

Washington, DC, which actually boasts more population (601,723) than the entire state of Wyoming, shows up near the middle of the list.

And the state with the least back pain, Mississippi, which falls in at position #31 in overall population (2,967,297), shows up at the bottom of the list to indicate Mississippi has the least back pain per capita in the country!

What Do You Think?

Why do you think Wyoming appears on our list as the worst state for back pain? Why do you suppose Mississippi appears as the best state for back pain? Where does your own state rank?

Tell us what you think in the comments below. And if you have back pain, let us know what kind of pain you have and what state you’re from. And of course, if you haven’t already, be sure to ask for a free copy of my book for yourself.

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