Photo Credit: Jesper Aggergaard
Back pain is a commonplace condition that many people “just deal with” for years without addressing. There are different ways that patients try to deal with back pain before they typically come in to see me. Medication is often one and physical therapy is another. Although those two therapies can be effective in relieving or strengthening muscle, I often find that they do not solve the root cause, and result in a longer recovery time.
Back pain is the number one reason that patients come into my office. Even if you’ve had back pain for years it can be solved using these 5 techniques. Of course, this isn’t all-encompassing, but it’s about 90% effective.
1. Reducing inflammation:
many times, chronic back pain has “always been there” and people don’t ever remember it not being there. This could be due to injury or not. Even after an injury, your body should heal. If you are still having pain years after an injury, you probably have a different problem: INFLAMMATION. When patients come in for back pain, whether neck, mid or low back, we always address this component. Without it you will never get full and complete resolution. Typically, this involves addressing your diet as there might be foods that are aggravating your system and raising your inflammation. This includes processed foods, sodas, sugar, wheat, dairy, etc. It’s impossible to say here exactly what YOUR aggravating foods are, as everyone is different and your diet sensitivities will be individualized. Addressing blood sugar goes far in addressing back pain. There is a correction that we do in the office using muscles testing and acupuncture to reset blood sugar circuits. This makes a significant difference. If your blood sugar is unstable, your inflammation will be HIGH as the sky! This isn’t just for diabetics or pre-diabetics, most of my patients walk in with unstable blood sugar and aren’t aware of it!
2. Getting adjusted/ addressing the underlying trauma
as mentioned above, sometimes there has been trauma to your back; whether that’s a car accident or a fall. Of course, you need to rule out anything significant, but after you’ve assured yourself that there aren’t those components, there are a number of muscle/joint techniques that we do in office that help to reset the muscles, joints and ligaments to make sure that neurologically they are “on” or working properly.
Often times after an injury your body will temporarily “shut off” the use of certain muscle groups because they are weakened from the injury. Other muscles/joints will pick up the slack for the weakened one and overwork. This causes an imbalance in the system, which creates inflammation and ultimately pain.
Improperly moving spine and or extremities also send improper signaling back to the brain. Therefore, if you see a chiropractor and get your spine and joints aligned you’ll be on your way to decreasing inflammation in your joints and reducing pain. Did you know that a chiropractic adjustment stimulates endorphins, which not only cause you to be happy, but also reduce pain?
3. Adrenal gland health:
This seems like a very odd thing to mention, but once I explain it will make a lot more sense. Adrenal gland exhaustion, or adrenal fatigue, as it’s known, is INCREDIBLY common. Adrenal glands help to support life, from secreting hormones to regulating our fight or flight response during times of stress. Most patients walk in with high fight or flight mode without the ability to relax. This is due to adrenal gland exhaustion. If I was betting, I would say that most people suffer from some form of adrenal fatigue. Adrenal glands store a high amount of vitamin C in them. Why is that important? You need vitamin C for a many different functions in the body, from immune support to antioxidant support. It also helps to rebuild collage fibers, which are a foundational aspect of your ligaments. Why is that important? And how does that relate to back pain? Well, adrenal glands are sensitive little dudes. They are sensitive to the foods that we eat, to the amount of sleep that we get, to the hormone imbalance that we have, to INFLAMMATION in our body, to stress levels (no one has that, right?), etc.
When the barrage of stressors start to impact the adrenal glands they start to need more and more Vitamin C to stay in the game. When the supply ends in the glands and the blood stream they begin pulling from other sources (like ligaments) because, after all, that’s another great source of Vitamin C. So, over time your Vitamin C supply in the collagen fibers gets low and guess what happens? Your ligaments start to not be able to support your joints and you get too much motion, which causes inflammation and PAIN. So, when I address back pain in patients I ALWAYS assess adrenal health. It’s one of the most common reasons why back pain occurs, specifically for the neck and low back.
4. Mineral and vitamin deficiencies:
After we look at adrenals we always assess mineral and vitamin needs. Why is that common and relevant? Most of us do not eat balanced diets, which means that we’re not getting all of the vitamin and minerals from our foods, causing deficiency and weakening our systems. In order to reduce inflammation, support the adrenal glands, support blood sugar you need to give your body building blocks until it can heal. Typically when patients first come in they need more support and as they get healthy we only give them a few supplements to help support their systems.
5. Mental/emotional stress:
Yes, we can all agree that stress is bad. But did you know that you can continue to have a stress response from mental/emotional trauma, no matter how small, years down the line? That’s right, our brain and nervous system develops patterns that impact us down the line. So, what do we do about it? There are a couple solutions. The first one we think of very quickly. Counseling and therapy are great ways to deal with, examine and develop tools and healing from past pain.
However, we also need to reset the nervous system and the brain and help to rewire the firing patterns. So, now whenever you see a dog (let’s say you were bitten by a dog) you don’t flinch or have an irrational reaction. Now, let’s say a man/woman hurt you, whether emotional or physical. Your brain remembers it and down the line, and we struggle to have proper healthy bonding patterns with our friends and family. Doing mental/emotional treatments in my office is not a substitute for therapy but it allows us to down-regulate the fight or flight response of our nervous system by doing acupuncture and muscle testing so that you’re not constantly triggered by the outside world. So, in reality, we need both!
I hope this post was helpful in getting you to think of different reasons why people have back pain and of natural ways to approach back pain. If you’ve been struggling with pain without complete and total resolution give us a call or click below, there is hope and answers our there! There is no reason to continue to struggle and live with chronic persistent pain!
If you are interested in further addressing this topic, please feel free to reach out and schedule an appointment. Dr. V is a Chiropractor and Functional Medicine Doctor in Elmhurst, Illinois who evaluates patients from the inside out, focusing on areas including hormone imbalance, digestive health, anxiety/depression, autoimmune disease, and many others.