low Back pain, neck pain, auto accident, back or neck surgery recovery

 Low back pain often results from overuse or injury of the back from activity or an accident. It can even come on gradually from poor postural habits or sleeping on the wrong mattress. Chronic, long standing degenerative changes to the spine can also cause low back pain. Once the associated spinal tissues are inflamed, the muscles begin a splinting process and lock down the spinal joints. Muscle splinting in and of itself can be a very painful condition! This splinting creates spinal joint dysfunction, swelling and inflammation. With chiropractic treatment, restoring function to the spinal joints breaks the splinting cycle and healing can begin. The nervous system and muscles calm down and you feel better. 

 Sciatica‎ is a painful irritation of the sciatic nerve. It is characterized by pain radiating down the back of your leg. It can start in the lower back and radiate down to the foot. Pressure and irritation begin in the nerves of the low back and can be caused by an irritated spinal joint, tight muscles or a swollen or herniated disk. Chiropractic treatment restores function to the spinal joints responsible for causing the irritation and relieves the pressure and irritation of the nerve. Medication may relieve the symptom but chiropractic treatment resolves the root cause of the condition. If your body is functioning at 100% there will be no pain 

 Headaches are not normal! You should not have to suffer with what people consider the normal daily, weekly or monthly headaches. They are brought about by tension in the muscles of the upper neck and the muscles of the upper back and shoulders which cause irritation and inflammation of the nerves exiting the upper neck area. The types of headaches include: tension headache, cluster headache, cervico-genic headache and migraine headache. Tension headaches are the most common and are due to the body’s reaction to stress and anxiety. 

 Neck pain is simply a pain in the neck. My patients report to me anything from the shoulders to the back of the head as neck pain. More often it appears on one side and is due to the daily stresses we put on our bodies. Repetitive stress from work, bad posture, mental or emotional stress, micro trauma or auto accidents are all causes of neck pain. If left untreated for a period of time, it can lead to radiating symptoms down the arms, upper chest or upper back. When the joints of the neck are kept compressed from muscle tension, they stop functioning properly and neck problems soon follow. Unfortunately, people are not aware that they are keeping this tension in their necks for weeks, months or years. Chiropractic adjustments restore proper function to the joints of the neck eliminating the cause of the problem. 

 Herniated disc, sometimes referred to as a slipped disc, disc protrusion, disc lesion, etc, is a condition that may or may not produce pain. It can be the result of serious physical trauma or something as simple as sneezing or bending to pick up a pencil. It is a condition where the internal disc contents bulge or push backward into the nerve space. This can cause numbness or pain down the course of the nerve involved. Typically looked at as a surgical problem, countless numbers of my patients have recovered completely through a course of chiropractic treatment. Decompressive chiropractic techniques restore proper function of the disc, joint, nerve complex and we improve elasticity of the damaged connective tissues and muscles. As a result, pain goes away. 

 Spinal degeneration is typically characterized by loss of intervertebral disc height and changes to the integrity of the bones and joints, referred to as bone spurs. This degeneration is always progressive, and as I’ve always said, “the worse it gets… the faster it gets worse.” Why does the disc lose height? The loss of function of the spinal joints limits the movement of the vertebra above and below the disc. Once the disc stops ‘being moved’ or ‘pumped’ by the vertebra above and below, the disc will begin to dehydrate and degenerate. The degeneration causes a loss of disc height. This is the reason you see so many old people shrink in height as they get older. If you maintain proper function of the vertebral joints through regular chiropractic maintenance care, the degeneration will be kept at bay. I have countless x-rays that prove this phenomenon. I love the old adage… a rolling stone gathers no moss. The same can be said of a functioning spine gathering no degeneration. 

 Whiplash is a term used to describe a neck injury resulting from an auto accident. Typically, this occurs from a rear impact collision but can also be from a side impact collision. The muscles, ligaments and tendons are over stretched from the sudden movement and injury occurs. Maintaining proper functional movement throughout the healing process gives these damaged structures the best possible chance of returning to normal. Without chiropractic treatment throughout the healing process, adhesions and dysfunction follow and spinal degeneration begins. 

 ​This condition, otherwise known as CTS, results from a compression of nerves that pass through the “carpal tunnel,” made up of the bones of the wrist and the transverse carpal ligament. I have seen many patients in my practice who have been scheduled for carpal tunnel surgery. These patients recovered through manipulation of the wrist and adjustments of the cervical spine. The root of the problem was not that they needed surgery… they just needed for the wrist and neck to function properly again and thereby eliminate the irritation to the nerves that go to the wrist and hand. Conservative treatment is always a best “first” option. Surgery should only be performed when all else fails.