Welcome to the Winter Edition of Chiro Chat for 2024.
If you suffer lower back pain, you’re not alone. Lower Back Pain is now of epidemic proportions with 4 in 5 people expected to experience it to varying degrees in their lifetime. Low Back Pain costs Australians more than a billion dollars a year in treatment, however the real costs are more staggering. A whopping $8 billion of lost earnings and productivity is due to low back pain every year in Australia. Low back pain can be caused by an acute injury to a ligament, joint or muscle or can be due to a disc herniation, often incorrectly referred to as a “slipped disc”. (Discs don’t “slip”, they bulge and push on nerves). Lower back pain can be due to more serious conditions like tumors, cancer or aneurysms; however, these are very rare.
Some people have joint or disc degeneration which can also be a source of low back pain, often referred to as “arthritis”. Sometimes low back pain can cause leg pain as well. The sad truth is that low back pain can be something that has been building up over years, like a disc bulge, or it can simply come on from a sudden awkward movement, even a bad night’s sleep. The good news is 90% of acute low back pain recovers in 2 weeks. The bad news is 60% of these people will suffer a recurrence at some stage without proper intervention. Intervention may be Massage, Pilates, Physiotherapy treatment, rehabilitation exercises from an Exercise Physiologist, Yoga and/or a course of corrective treatment from a Chiropractor. All of these modalities can be of great benefit.
The role of Chiropractic in lower back pain is to reduce inflammation and improve deep core muscle stability by improving nerve function through gentle adjustments to the spine, then follow up rehabilitation exercises to retrain posture and stabilize the area to prevent a relapse. Of course, as always, an initial thorough examination by any practitioner is crucial in determining the actual cause of the pain in order to tailor a specific treatment plan. As always, prevention is always better than the cure and some simple tips to prevent suffering low back pain are listed below:
1. Avoid sitting for too long. 2. Practice good posture. 3. Regular, gentle exercise (walking 15mins a day is great-it also helps us lose excess weight which means less pressure on the low back). 4. Careful lifting technique and not lifting anything too heavy- avoid combination lifting and bending movements when lifting. 5. Reducing smoking (smoking reduces blood flow to tissues which slows the rate of healing). 6. Sleep on a “medium-firm” mattress-not too hard and not too soft. 7.Correct ergonomic sitting posture at work by getting a proper ergonomic assessment done to ensure your spine is supporting you correctly. These tips can all help immensely. And of course, keep up with your Chiropractic maintenance adjustments, prevention is so much easier than the cure.
Written by Dr Mark Whitfield.
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