Do you even know why you have back pain? Hey guys, I’m dr Emil Tompkins and over the last 16 years we have been taking care of families and children and we’re going to talk today about the seven reasons why you have back pain. So reason number one is that you have a sprain or a strain. Now a sprain happens to a ligament. If something moves out of position abruptly, you bend and twist and array that way, that’s wrong in you lift really quickly. The ligament that’s holding the bones together or the tendons that are holding the muscles to the bones can get stretched too much. When that happens, it causes a lot of pain. It’s going to affect your movement and isn’t really going to get better until all that heals. And so typically what needs to happen for something like that, one, we need to get things into a better position to, if it’s a ligament issue, then we can strengthen the muscles around that area to over time to over time give you more stability.
If it is a problem with the leg, with the tendon, you actually need to arrest it until that tendon heals. Otherwise, every time you can track that muscle, then the tendon is going to be irritated. So those are the things that you want to think about. If you have a sprain or strain of a ligament, the number two thing that could be causing this pain in your back is degeneration. If your spine starts to wear down and you don’t have enough space in between the vertebra, over time they get closer and closer together, the disc wears down and then the bone start changing shape and you start getting additional bone growth. And what that will do is start to affect your ability to move. And some of those areas where there’s wearing down of the bones can start to put pressure on other important structures.
So we have to be careful of that. Typically, the ways that we want to deal with, with spinal degeneration is come up with opportunities to help create some rebuilding of the bone and also to relieve that inflammation. So fish oil is something that seems to work incredibly effectively for people who are dealing with a lot of spinal degeneration. It can be anywhere between three and four grams of fish oil a day can help with that. Some other things like some natural anti-inflammatories like tumeric and Buswell IA, those kinds of things have been shown to be helpful. The other thing with degeneration is movement. You want to make sure that you are moving as much as you can. That movement is going to make a difference in the degeneration that well in, in the way that you’re, you’re feeling. The next thing is it’s called Fossette syndrome.
Fossette syndrome is when the area where the spine connects. There are certain movements that we can do. They can really jam those facets together. I’m a little too hard and if you jam those four sets together a little too hard, you get a lot of inflammation in the Fossette capsule that connects those two vertebrae together. And then that can cause some very severe pain. It can limit your movement. And the way that we deal with that, typically with chiropractic, you get the spine back into a normal position that will relieve pressure off of the Fossette. And the good news is, is for set joints tend to heal fairly quickly. So that’s something that can get better relatively quickly. You just want to restore the proper position and then you want to be able to stabilize it. So this isn’t something that happens over and over again.
Here’s some other things that can cause the pain that you’re experiencing in your back. You can have an injury to the disc. So we talked about the degeneration in the spine where the bones start to wear down or the disc in the middle starts to wear down. Well that disc can also bulge or pieces of that disc and actually come out of where they’re supposed to be. Those disc injuries then start to put pressure on nerve roots and, and that can be a really a really serious problem. So when you’re dealing with a disc injury, which typically there are a number of tests to be able to identify that x-rays can help give certain signs. If we’re dealing with a disc injury, the MRI is actually going to look at the disc. So you’ll know for sure with a test like that. But when you’re dealing with a disc injury, you want to reduce inflammation as much as you can.
Rest and rest doesn’t mean complete bedroom, bed rest, but you really have to make sure you’re not doing the offending activity or this is something you’ll be dealing with for a really long time. So you want to rest, you want to have, I’m a really good source of, of natural anti-inflammatories. That’s a big one. And that will, that’ll make a big difference. Also, certain kinds of traction will give you more space in between the vertebra and that traction giving you more space will over time for some people can cause that disc to resorb. Now in some of the more incredibly serious cases of disc injuries where parts of the disc have maybe left the area and have entered the spinal canal and some of those kinds of things. Every once in a while those need surgery. And that’s something that, that that your orthopedic surgeon can, can consult with you about.
But the, those can be really serious and they take a long time. Even the minor ones can sometimes take a really long time to, to take care of, but reduce inflammation as much as you can. Create more space so that that disc, it can resorb. Those are the kinds of things that take care of that. Now, sciatica, the next one we’ll talk about sciatica is a pain that can start in the back because the psychotic nerves come from the lower part of the spine. Then they come together and form this very large nerve that starts in about the rear and then travels all the way down the leg. You can get sciatic pain because of a problem in the spine and one of those areas, L one through L four, you can have sciatic pain because of a muscle called the piriformis that the large sciatic nerve when it connects in your back in your rear it can get caught in that piriformis muscle and can start to cause that pain that travels down the back of the leg.
Typically to take care of that, you have to address the area of the spine that’s related. So typically somewhere between [inaudible] and [inaudible], you also typically have to address the piriformis muscle and there’s some really cool exercises that help the piriformis muscle. Stay tuned for that. Someday we’ll go over those, but those are some of the steps to help deal with sciatic pain. You want to make sure everything’s in the right position. You want to make sure that everything is really strong and stable. And then as you do that, then you’ll start to see changes in that side. EQ nerve. Now what else do we have?
Another thing we can be dealing with is a muscle spasm. How many times have you dealt with something in your back and someone’s told you, or maybe you felt like, Oh, it’s a, it’s a muscle that might, my problem is simply in the muscles. Well, I’m going to tell you if you have a sprain or strain in the ligaments, if you have a disc injury, if you have Fossette syndrome, those different things can cause enough pain that will then lead to those muscles contracting so that we end up having muscle spasms or, or tight muscles or something like that. It’s not always just a muscle that’s the issue. But you definitely, but, but the muscles are, are generally related to almost all the types of injuries that we’d mentioned before. So whenever we’re dealing with taking care of one of these things and working on improving the degeneration that we’re dealing with, we still have to address those muscles.
Typically we’re going to do that with a combination of things. Muscles tend to spasm because they’re weak. That doesn’t sound right, but because you think it’s contracting really hard, but the problem is it’s not strong enough to provide adequate stability. So then what happens is something in the spine becomes unstable and the muscle in the back then spasms because it’s not strong enough to just keep it stable during normal activities. So what we have to do is, is one, get everything in the right position so that the muscles don’t have to work so hard anymore than two. Those, those really tight muscles need to be stretched so that they can, they can remain at the proper length and have normal function, but then we have to strengthen those muscles so they can provide the stability that they’re supposed to. So when we’re dealing with a muscle spasm, there’s a lot of things that we have to, that we have to consider.
But if you do that, then you can help those muscles to function better, especially if we’re addressing the underlying causes of that muscle spasm, which could be issues with strains in the tendons can be issues with disc injuries, that kind of thing. You have to look at at the, the big picture, even when you’re dealing with something like a muscle spasm. The last thing we’re going to talk about is a subluxation because when the spine moves out of position, that puts pressure on nerves. When you put pressure on those nerves, that nerves affect every function in our body. So those nerves travel to the lower back. They can cause pain. Those nerves travel down the leg. They can cause sciatica anytime the spine or the pelvis, any, any vertebra. Any bone attached to a nerve is, is out of position. That nerve pressure and all the, the problems associated with it is a subluxation.
As a chiropractor, our main focus is to look for these subluxations because when the spine is out of position, it affects everything. We want to make sure that we get everything in the right spot and when we do that, then the nerves are able to function the way they’re supposed to. And if they do that, then you’re going to feel better. Things are going to work better and you’re going to be healthier because of it. When you, when you look at, at, at each of these different kinds of, of injuries, these different kinds of problems that can be happening in the spine. There’s a couple of things that we, that that is a very common theme in taking care of them. One, we we need to exercise in some way. We have to either either rest that area or we need to move that area.
And when we’re moving that area, we’re either stretching or we’re strengthening in some kind of way. We need to look at our nutrition and do things that promote relieving inflammation, not promoting inflammation. Because the standard at a standard American diet is something that’s going to promote inflammation. We need to do the opposite and relieve that inflammation. And lastly, we need to relieve pressure. So that happens with chiropractic. That happens with certain exercises, things to help get the spine back in a more normal position. If we follow those steps, exercise, nutrition, relieving pressure, then you’re going to see a change in how you’re feeling. Guys, I’m dr Emil Tompkins. I hope you have a great day. Follow these steps. Understand why you have back pain so that then you can take the steps to take care of it and we’ll see you soon. Have a good one.
Have a look at this article: Why Do You Have Back Pain?