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Home » Pain Symptoms » Back Pain

Back Pain in Madison, OH

Located in Madison, French Chiropractic and Wellness Center specializes in treating the most common causes of back pain to help restore mobility and reduce discomfort for the residents of Painesville, Mentor, and the surrounding communities in Ohio.

What is Back Pain?

Back pain is the most common reason why men and women seek chiropractic care. As we get older, most of us will suffer from occasional back pain. Staying active and seeking chiropractic treatment, however, can be the perfect resolution.

Understanding Your Condition

Many studies have been conducted, and many articles have been written about back pain and its causes. Unfortunately, authors often over-simplify the problem in an attempt to explain the topic in layman’s terms, which can be extremely misleading.

As chiropractors, we provide our patients with accurate information that is easy to understand. At French Chiropractic and Wellness Center, we explain the details of your condition before we recommend treatment so that you can make an informed decision about your care.

Because your back is such a complex part of the body, you may experience back pain for a variety of reasons. The spine is comprised of a number of pain-signaling structures that play a prominent role in your pain. The most common of these injuries include ligament and joint injuries. These injuries are often referred to as “simple back pain,” though if you have an injury like this, you’ll agree there’s nothing simple about it.

Disc injuries, on the other hand, are less common. Roughly only 5% of back pain is related to disc injury, with only 5% of those cases requiring surgery. Though the diagnosis of a “slipped disc” is fairly common, the phrasing can be misleading because discs do not actually “slip”. Likewise, they cannot be “pushed back in” though they can be favorably re-positioned with proper chiropractic care.

The Spine

The human spine is an intricate, fascinating piece of machinery. Though people often throw phrases around like, “we’re not made to walk upright” or “if we walked on all fours back pain would never be a problem”. However, both of these proclamations are incorrect. The human spine and pelvis are very different from that of the chimpanzee. Unlike us, this animal was not made to walk upright, though they do often use the aid of their arms and hands while walking.

As humans, the only thing we have to blame for our back pain is ourselves. Back pain is on the rise because we are sitting too much, exercising too little and making poor eating choices.
Lifting objects is another problem. We often lift the incorrect way or lift too much. In reality, backs suffer from quite a bit of abuse, and most people don’t give their back a second thought until it begins bothering them.

Although the spine is strong, it needs to be cared for in order to ensure that it never gives you any pain or discomfort.

The Anatomy

The spine is made up of 24 vertebrae with discs between each one of them. Two spinal nerves jet out from each vertebrae, and the entire spinal cord runs through the spinal canal. Between each vertebra are two facet joints and ligaments and muscle used for active and passive support. Because of all this support, the spine is incredibly strong. It is also flexible, which allows us both mobility as well as a solid set of protection when it comes to the spinal cord and nerves.

So Why Do We Feel Pain?

Each of the components that make up the spine – bones, vertebrae, joints, muscles, nerves, ligaments, discs, and blood vessels – are all incredibly sensitive to pain, though each component’s pain tolerance varies.

Though it might not seem like it, pain sensations are actually your body’s way of protecting you; without it, we would constantly be doing detrimental things to our body and never know any better. This would ultimately lead to injury and a much shorter life span.

Pain nerves are not distributed equally across the entire body. If there is great injury risk for a specific body part, that portion of the body is going to have more pain fibers. Our fingers and toes, for example, are much more sensitive to pain than our torso.

The areas of the spine with the most pain nerves are the joint capsules found on the facet spinal joints. Because of this, it is reasonable to assume that the joints will be subjected to more injury than other areas of the body. The joints, muscles, and ligaments of the spine are also budding with mechanoreceptors, which are nerve endings capable of sensing movement and position. The nerve endings provide the nervous system with activity feedback and help to protect each of the factors that make up the spine.

Why Do Injuries Occur?

In basic terms, the spine is a lengthy chain of joints that are protected by fellow ligaments and muscles. If some components of the chain stiffen up after injury or growth of the anatomy, other components are forced to work harder to compensate. The overuse eventually causes a sprain, as well as pain. The majority of injuries are caused by something called recurrent micro-trauma, or small, constant injuries. This is why you might end up hurting yourself by doing something seemingly trivial, such as bending over to tie your shoe. Your back pinches or seizes up before you even have a chance to tie your shoe. Back injuries do not have to involve any heavy lifting – in fact; they are most often caused by small movements you have done thousands of times before with injuring your back.

When your body experiences and injury, the nerves signal pain, and the surrounding muscles to go into a protective spasm, which works to provide a splint to the area of injury. Over time, these muscles become more and more pained. Eventually, the muscle pain increases and takes the place of any of the original symptoms. This is why we often describe the pain as being in a muscle, while, in reality, the pain resulted from an injured joint. This is specifically true about recurring pain problems.

Why Does Back Pain Recur?

When a patient suffers from reoccurring episodes of spinal pain, chiropractors generally see that as a strong signal of what we call functional instability. The healing of joint and ligament sprains create scar tissue as part of the healing process. The scar tissue is, unfortunately, less flexible, and it breaks down more easily. Injuries leave the surrounding muscles permanently weakened, even after the pain subsides. The only real solution for muscle recovery is exercise and chiropractic treatment.

The nerve endings that send signals to the motor control portion of the nervous system are embedded in each of the spinal ligaments. Therefore, your nerve endings are also affected by injuries, which renders them much less able to do their job, warning the muscular stability system, and telling them to respond in order to protect the spine’s joints and ligaments.

What Can I Do to Stop Recurring Back Pain?

Countless treatments are available to help resolve back pain. Recent studies, however, show that coupling chiropractic treatment with daily exercise can be the most effective type of treatment for both acute and chronic back injuries. As chiropractors, our goal is to deal with any and all of the underlying neurological, mechanical, and muscular problems surrounding the issue. Relying only on painkillers and little movement only puts the problem on hold. The pain will return, possibly more severe, because of any unresolved underlying problems.

My Pain Usually Lasts Only a Couple of Days

Even the most minor injuries create more of weakness in the injury area. Therefore, after each injury and perceived improvement, you are more likely to experience another episode of pain later. These episodes will become more frequent, last longer, perhaps be more painful, and before long the pain will be a constant. These frequent back pains and recurrent injuries in the same area are what ultimately can cause a disc to herniate.

Chiropractic Back Pain Treatment

Normally, back pain will resolve itself on its own without the need for any type of special treatment. For some people, however, the condition becomes chronic and can virtually disable them for months or even years. Back pain can be very difficult to properly diagnose and treat. Dr. French and Dr. Cradduck of the French Chiropractic and Wellness Center have more than 30 years of combined experience in providing chiropractic care.

We are proud to provide safe and effective spinal manipulation or vertebrae adjustments, as well as spinal decompression techniques and physical medicine techniques to allow our patients to resume their daily lives without the need to resort to painkillers. If you have been struggling with neck and backaches, you owe it to yourself to contact us to learn if chiropractic care can help you.

Medical History Evaluation

Your Madison chiropractor will begin by conducting a thorough physical examination and receive your medical history. This is done to help diagnose the source of your back pain.

Comprehensive and Individualized Treatment Plan

Once we have carefully and completely assessed your back pain condition and learned the source of the pain, we can formulate a comprehensive plan tailored to meet your own individual needs and offer you relief for your back pain.

Chiropractic Adjustments

Chiropractic adjustments work by relieving pressure on your nervous system, while promoting spinal health and general health. These techniques help offer relief from back pain and manage chronic pain due to various types of spinal misalignments or herniated discs.

Therapeutic Exercises

Your Madison back pain specialist may perform chiropractic manipulation or adjustments combined with a specific course of exercises and treatments to treat problems with muscles and encourage them to support proper posture, as well as promoting thorough healing and back pain recovery. A course of spinal decompression treatments may also be recommended to help heal ruptured or herniated discs.

You will be presented with a wide range of back pain treatment options. One choice is pain medication, although this only deals with your symptoms, not the source of your back pain.

Simply doing nothing is another choice to learn if your condition will resolve itself on its own. Unfortunately, this rarely works.

In order to have the best possible chance of success, we will guide you through each of three steps:

  1. Pain phase: Here, the goal is to simply relieve your pain.
  2. Corrective phase: This step involves making needed changes in your spinal structure to encourage the proper functioning of your nervous system.
  3. Rehabilitative phase: This step involves strengthening the muscles that support your spine to enhance their ability to support you, preventing future difficulties.

Learn more about various back injury types here:

Isn’t it time you tried chiropractic care for you and your family? If you are experiencing any of the common symptoms of back pain, please contact our office now to schedule an appointment.