Following the Mayo Clinic’s study, we found that at least 1/3 of Americans reported having some type of joint pain. This joint pain can be caused by various conditions including osteoarthritis—the most common form of arthritis in the US, which often worsens with age because of daily activities and the repetitive use of certain joints. While osteoarthritis can affect any joint in your body, it most frequently affects the joints in your knees, hips, hands and spine, these are the joints we need to use in order to perform simple functions, such as walking, typing, driving, transitioning from sitting to standing, and all of the movements we participate in with school, work, and sports, and leisure activity.

Back problems win third place in reasons for doctor visits in the US. Each year, millions of Americans suffer from back pain, making it one of the leading causes of disability, resulting in a major personal, financial, and even public health burden.
Back pain could present itself as a dull ache, shooting pain or a burning sensation in the neck, middle back or lower back. Treatment for back pain varies based on the type of injury as well as the nerves and joints affected, while some severe cases require surgery, more often than not, chiropractic care can help alleviate this back pain through manipulations that help to move the muscles and nerves into their correct position, and therapy to decrease inflammation of the soft tissue and speed up the healing process. The big difference with chiropractic care combined with good physical therapy and traditional western medicine is that chiropractic care gets to the cause of the problem (preventing worsening arthritis and inflammation) vs just masking the symptoms with pills or shots that could have negative side effects and don’t address the root cause of the pain, inflammation, arthritis, etc.

Lower Back Pain Causes and Options
If you suffer from lower back pain, you have a few treatment options:
Give it time- unfortunately, this only allows your body to learn how to get used to the problem, time doesn’t really fix the problem, your brain learns to adapt to its new “normal” and in the meantime, the problem continues to worsen.
Take an over-the-counter pain killer- In some cases this is helpful to allow you to function without feeling the pain, however this is not a real fix to the problem. A pain killer only numbs your body so you don’t feel the pain, but the problem remains, and because pain acts as an alarm to let you know “something is wrong, fix me, don’t keep bending over because it hurts”, if you don’t get that alarm, you will most likely keep on bending over and over and over, making your condition worse. It’s like when the check engine light goes off in your car, and instead of taking your car to a mechanic to take a look and find out what’s wrong, you take a piece of black tape and cover the check engine light, and you think the car no longer has a problem.
Go to the ER- Guaranteed you’ll get 2 prescription meds: a muscle relaxer and an anti-inflammatory, and you must take them every few hours, and if you are lucky, every few days, but why? Because pain is a sign of inflammation and muscles get tight around it. They might take an x-ray of your back and tell you “Everything looks normal, no broken bones or fractures” (even though you’re in pain, and you’re trying to get help) or an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) which will identify potential disc issues.

When you have pain you’re feeling a nerve, and for you to feel a nerve it must be pinched. Since the nerves are the cables that communicate your brain with the rest of your body to allow it to function and feel, when they get pinched it happens at the spine, the bones move out of alignment and press the nerves, causing you to get a sensation (an alarm to do something, pain). And the muscle relaxer helps, you guessed it- to loosen up a tight muscle. Muscles tight up as a defense mechanism to protect what is beneath it, for example, if someone tells you they’re about to punch him on the stomach, you automatically tight up his stomach, your abdominals become tight to act as a shield and protect your organs from pain and getting the air knock out of you. Just like that, when a bone of the spine is out of its normal position (out of alignment), it presses the nerve that travels in between the vertebrae, and the muscles around that area tighten up as defense mechanism to protect that pinched nerve from further damage.

Taking a pain killer to numb the pain and a muscle relaxer for your tight muscles, will work, but only for a few hours or a few days, because it covers the symptoms but doesn’t address the root cause of the problem. Neither pill moves your bones to place them in the correct alignment to take the pressure off the effected nerve(s). It’ll be like putting a tight rubber band around your finger (your finger represents the nerve and the rubber band the bone pinching it), this will make your finger get swollen, warm (increase of blood supply to the area, raises the temperature, causing inflammation), and if you take 2 pills without taking the rubber band off the problem still remains, you just covered up the symptoms! It makes more sense to remove the rubber band and fix the root of the problem, taking away your symptoms too. This is an example of what chiropractic manipulation can do for you!

Chiropractic care- a doctor specialized in the joints and spine will apply movement to the bones to put them in the correct position and allow normal function, taking the pressure off the nerves and allowing your brain to send messages through your nervous system to communicate properly with the rest of your body, by doing so, the muscles surrounding the area won’t be as tight because there’s no need to guard any pinched nerves anymore if the bones are in alignment. Your posture and movement will improve, inflammation fades away, and pain decreases. All these benefits without the use of harmful medications that: damage your stomach, kidneys, liver, and other internal organs, make you sleepy and/or weak, and create chemical dependency. Physical therapy can help the muscles heal faster and stronger and keep the bones in their correct positions.

Mid-back conditions & treatment options
Two articles by Physical Therapist Brent Sears, and Meshell Powell identified some of the common causes of mid-back pain could include: Back spasms, poor posture, disc malfunction/malformations, arthritis/osteoporosis, strains and hyper extension & flexion from sports injury, and direct trauma from accidents. Muscles and nerves that do not originate in the mid-back area can still put a strain on the muscles there and cause pain. For instance, the multifidus is a deep muscle group that originates in the lumbar (lower) spine, if any of these muscles are strained or irritated, they could further agitate and cause swelling of surrounding nerves and muscles up throughout the mid-back, because although it’s a lumbar muscle group they are connected to many muscles in the mid-back region. Example: You are playing with a child and you bend down to pick them up sending a sharp pain up through your lower back, the next day you may wake up with tightness/pain between the lower portion of your shoulder blades. Slouching plays another big role chronic pain as it puts a strain on, really all of the muscle groups in the back from the neck down to the tailbone.

With conventional medicine and care, surgery will be a primary option for chronic pain. Surgery can be expensive, difficult, scary, entail many risks, and can also have a long and grueling recovery process. Surgery should be a last resort for when conditions are extreme and you have attempted other methods of relief. Topical medicines and other drugs that just cover symptoms or offer temporary relief are often prescribed for pain, but it is important to get to the root of the problem to help prevent further damage.

Chiropractic manipulation combined with therapy can help relax and alleviate pain from pinched nerves and overworked or injured muscles. This works by essentially “plugging” the muscles into their correct position to relieve inflammation of nerves and muscles. Also, manipulation helps with mechanical back pain due to bones and joints. The middle part of the spine, called the thoracic spine, consists of 12 vertebrae that run from the collarbone to the bottom ribcage. These vertebrae are commonly injured and may also grow abnormalities leading to conditions such as spinal stenosis. We offer manual manipulation, therapeutic deep massage, ultrasound, and more! We also have all-natural supplementation to support holistic care and health.