Healing lower back pain
Unfortunately, there is no ‘one size fits all’ answer to this question but, this blog will help you begin to understand and kickstart the process to improving your spinal health.
What Causes Low Back Pain?
The spine, like any part of the body, can get injured and this is typically through different types of trauma – emotional and physical. Emotional traumas can be related to stress fore example, after a stressful day in the office, the shoulders start to creep up towards the ears and the head slowly drops forward – this is a physical response to an emotional trauma. Physical traumas are more common, these are you falls, surgeries, accidents etc!
Physical, emotional and chemical changes in the body and traumas can lead to the spine not sitting quite where it should, so it may lean towards one side or, move lean forwards. This causes irritation on the nerves which all our body to function correctly. Imagine like a straw you drink from – if there is a dent in the straw or you squeeze it, the drink wont flow through, a similar principle relates to nerves.
How to get rid of Back Pain
Unfortunately there is no ‘one size fits all’ answer to this one. What we can provide are 3 top tips to helping you kickstart the process:
Step 1
Get to understand where the problem is coming from. This is where we recommend seeing your Chiropractor who is specially trained to understand and recognise where the problem originates.
A lot of people determine their health on how they feel – ‘no pain, no problem’ however, we know that this isn’t always the case. After a thorough assessment, many of our low back pain patients we see here at Pure Wellness come to understand that their back pain originates from their neck! So it is important to understand the root cause of the problem so you can take steps to prevent it from happening again, as opposed to a ‘quick fix’.
Step 2
Movement is medicine! We understand that when in pain your day-to-day movements or activities can be impacted. Try not to climb mountains or run marathons every day whilst your body is trying to heal**. A general rule of thumb is to try and avoid aggravating movements, but to keep moving little and often, every 20 minutes if possible to ensure that energy and blood can flow around the body to encourage a healing state – switching on the parasympathetic nervous system (will explain this a little more next!)
**This can be dependent case by case and ensure to talk to your Chiropractor on recommended activities.
Step 3
Reduce stress as much as possible. Our body has many systems within it to help it function, one system being our Parasympathetic Nervous System which is our body’s system to promote rest and healing. The other side is our Sympathetic Nervous System which is our stress response (you may have heard of ‘Fight or Flight’). When our bodies are stuck or are more frequently in a stressed state, our ability to heal and restore function is inhibited which means our body’s ability to heal can be slower.
This is why here at Pure Wellness we measure each of our patient’s Heart Rate Variability to understand the state in which their body is currently in as to how long we allow them to heal.
Simply put, the cure to back pain is getting into a state of wellness and optimal health. If you do not allow your whole body to function correctly then there is an increased likelihood of other problems coming to light and reoccurring. Regular check-ins with your Chiropractor to ensure your body is functioning optimally so that you can heal properly.
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