We often get clients that come into our office who have tried everything but cannot get rid of their back pain. They want to avoid medications, injections, surgery and procedures, but they are given no other options.
They are hopeless because the injections and medications that the doctor recommends are not helping. The pain keeps returning.
Why does this happen? Why do medications not give you resolution for Back pain?
Because the drugs and injections are treating a symptom. We feel pain in several ways, and you have to understand the body to get to the source of the pain. Drugs are often NOT getting to the source of the problem on why your pain is happening in the first place. Therefore, you are not getting relief.
The doctors are stumped at what to do, and their next step usually is to say you need to have surgery. SAY WHAT???
Our clients do not want that, so they turn to other options.
One option is they try massage because their muscles are tight hoping that will help, but it either makes them worse (we literally had a client that got drop foot from a deep tissue massage on her back) or the pain comes back within hours or days.
Why does this happen? Why does the Pain return after a massage?
Because the tissue that is tight is just a Symptom. Much like drugs are treating the symptoms. The muscles get tight due to something else that is happening in the back and the muscles tighten up to protect that area.
So if you do not get to the source of your problem, the muscles stay tight and that is why massage does not help keep the pain away and why the pain returns.
Another options is doing physical therapy, but often are given just strengthening and stretching which does not work until you can get to the source of the problem. If you do not understand the body and how to evaluate the body to fix it you cannot go to strengthening before doing that first phase of care which is to go to the source of the problem.
Here is the deal. I always say where the source of the problem is not usually where the site of the pain is located…
Most healthcare professionals including doctors and physical therapists go to the site of the pain and only look there.
The body is connected! You have to ask the right questions and understand the body and do a thorough evaluation and that is what we do at mPower physical therapy.
It is really what sets us apart from other healthcare providers because doing a thorough evaluation takes time and that is what we can give you! Doing a 10 min evaluation will NOT get you the results that you want. It just is not possible.
We had a back pain client that had been to the chiropractor, did ART (a type of massage), physical therapy, and acupuncture.
The doctors already tried doing injections that did not work. And they gave her two options to either go to pain management which means more drugs that won’t work or have surgery!
Well, she did not want surgery and was completely frustrated that she did not have answers. She thought she was going to have to live with back pain for the rest of her life.
She wanted to get back to exercising because not only did that help her mentally with stress management, but also it was apart of her social circle.
Can you relate to not getting results?
It is not a fun place to be in.
Luckily, she had coworker that told her about our office. She decided to come in for our Free Discovery visit to help her understand how we could help, discover why the other treatments were not working, Discover what we are going to look at to help her resolve her problem and get back to exercising and living her life!
She said, yes sign me up! So, we spoke with her and she decided to move to an evaluation and this is what we found!
Her back pain was not coming from her back which is what everyone was looking at. No one check other areas like her hip or thoracic spine as possible sources.
She had thoracic spine tightness (an area where her ribs are attached to) that was creating tightness in her muscles that were tight due to protection. These muscles attached from her ribs down to her pelvis and was creating her back pain.
Without improving her joint mobility in that area, her tightness would never go away. But without even doing soft tissue work on her muscles. Because when we started getting her joints to move her protection went away.
Do you want to learn more about how we help our clients get their life back after suffering with back pain? We have several options for you.
