Back Pain
It is estimated that around 60% of us will experience back pain at some time in our lives and it is one of the most common symptoms treated in our clinic.
The fear around back pain is whether there is anything wrong with the spine.
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Slipped or prolapsed disk
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Sciatica
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Tapped nerve
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Narrowing of the spinal canal
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Arthritis
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Stenosis
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Degeneration or wear and tear
These are the most commonly used descriptions for causes of back pain and may be explanations that have been used to describe your pain. The good news is even if you have had scans or diagnoses of any of the above, there is an awful lot that can be done to help alleviate and even remove the symptoms completely.
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The first step is to identify whether there is any likelihood that structural changes to the spine could be contributing to your symptoms.
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Please take a read of the Why Do I Hurt section of our site to discover the two main reasons why you may be feeling back pain. The main reason for your pain might not have been explained to you before.
What can I do?
- Should I stretch?
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- Do I need to do strengthening exercises?
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- I have tried both stretching and exercises but my pain still exists.
Sometimes a combination of stretching and strengthening exercises are enough to remove back pain, but often this is not enough.
A lack of strength is rarely the cause for back pain and stiffness is usually a sign that your brain wants to protect you from endangering something it deems to be hurt or an area that isn't safe; even if that may not be the case.
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So what does that mean?
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It means that your brain needs to be shown a way to see your back or movements of your body as safe. To achieve this you will need to desensitise areas that are seen as dangerous. When this is accomplished, your movement efficiency will improve and the causes for your back pain won't exist and hopefully neither will the pain itself.
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How do we achieve this?
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The techniques we apply in clinic have a foundation in kinesiology but use modern methods based around functional neurology. This is where we assess how your subconscious is processing the information it is receiving from all over your body. If it processes information as dangerous that should not be, we help to desensitise this so that joints that were locked up or muscles that were tight and painful, can relax and resume their normal jobs, free of pain.
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Alongside these methods we also utilise movement based therapy and biomagnetism to help target treatment in a complete package that takes into account any and all potential reasons for your symptoms
We have blogs on Sciatica and the Hardware/Software reasons behind pain that go into great detail about all of this. The sciatica blog in particular explains many of the underlying causes for it and also gives more insight into how we effectively treat it in clinic.
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Using an in-depth assessment and following our Four-Step Treatment Process, we plan to help diagnose and treat the contributing factors to your pain, helping you get back to normal and beyond, as quickly as possible.
Back Pain FAQs
Will I need a scan if I have back pain?
There may be a chance that a scan is required (if you haven’t already had one) but we will only advise this after a full assessment. If you have already had a scan, we would welcome seeing any imaging reports as these can aid with our treatment diagnosis.
Do I have back pain because my core is weak?
There are many things that can prevent back pain and having a strong, functional set of core muscles (the muscles of the lower back and abdomen) can help. However, a lot of very strong people also have back pain; It is too simple to just assume you have a weak core.
So many different variables will dictate whether you have back pain or not; Having a strong, set of core muscles is only one of them.
As part of our full assessment, the functional strength of your core muscles is one of the factors we take into account when diagnosing your unique symptoms.
Is my posture causing my pain?
Your posture may be contributing to your pain on a day to day basis. But the more important question is what is causing your posture to be as it is?
Working positions whether they include being seated all day at a desk based role, or bent over all day as a farrier may do, can contribute to one degree or another. The inability to maintain a balanced, even posture can be brought about by many things which could in turn affect your pain.
Subconscious posture, be it seated, standing or during movement are all part of the assessment here and are key indicators for progress during the treatment process.