It’s no secret that low back pain is one of the most common reasons people seek chiropractic care. With 80% of people experiencing low back pain in their lifetime and it benign the #1 cause of disability in the U.S., chiropractors care for patients with low back pain daily to get them back to doing the things they want and need to do. Chiropractors are experts at diagnosing, treating, and preventing low back pain. Whether it’s caused by an injury, a history of poor posture, or even stress, chiropractors have a variety of therapies available to help get rid of low back pain for good, including adjustments, massage, functional exercise, spinal decompression, and deep tissue laser.
How We Treat Low Back Pain in Boise, ID
Comprehensive Consultation and Exam
A comprehensive consultation and exam is the first step in chiropractic low back pain treatment. This visit allows us to assess your condition and develop a treatment plan unique to you. The consultation will include a review of your medical history and symptoms. We’ll also perform a physical examination, which may include tests of strength, flexibility, and range of motion.
Essentially, we want to make sure that we have gotten a full picture of your health to help us better determine the root cause of your condition. Many times pain is a symptom of a larger issue, and we want to make sure we’re treating the source of your discomfort, not just the symptom.
Specific Chiropractic Care
Low back pain is one of the most common reasons people seek chiropractic care. It can be caused by several different factors, including muscle tension, ligament strain, vertebral misalignment, and nerve compression. Chiropractic care is effective in treating low back pain and it can help restore mobility and reduce inflammation.
Chiropractic adjustments are our most powerful tool to fight low back pain. We will work to identify subluxations, misalignments in your spine, that create spinal dysfunction and interferes with optimal nerve communication. By correcting those subluxations we can restore spinal function and mobility, and relieve pressure on the nerves that may be causing dysfunction throughout the body. The best part about chiropractic care is it’s a natural way to relieve pain, inflammation, and stress without any side effects.
Custom Therapeutic Exercise Plan
A custom therapeutic exercise plan is an important part of recovering from a low back injury. A good exercise plan will help you regain strength and flexibility. It will also help to reduce pain and inflammation. We will design a plan specific to your goals and needs to improve functional deficiencies, address muscular imbalances, and strengthen the stabilizing muscles of the spine.
Your exercise plan should include low-impact exercises that focus on strengthening and stretching the muscles of your low back and core. Exercises like Pilates and yoga can be especially helpful, as they emphasize spinal alignment and flexibility.
Spinal Decompression
Spinal decompression is an especially effective low back pain treatment when the issue originates with the spinal discs. This therapy can restore bulged discs to their proper palace as well as rehydrate and flood the disc with nutrients, restoring it to health. By tractioning the lower back, spinal decompression relieves pressure on the discs, creating negative pressure, relieving stress on the nerves and damaged discs.
Flexion-Distraction
The spine’s natural curvatures help to support our torso and head. When that curvature is distorted that affects the way our muscles work and forces our body to compensate causing tension, pain, and dysfunction. Flexion-distraction works to restore proper structure and support healthy muscle and joint function by gently stretching the spine and relieving pressure on the discs.
Deep Tissue Laser
Deep tissue laser therapy is a treatment that uses low-level lasers to penetrate deep into the tissue and stimulate energy at the cellular level to reduce inflammation and accelerate healing. This therapy can be used to treat a variety of conditions, including pain, inflammation, and nerve damage. Deep tissue laser therapy is a non-invasive, painless treatment. It is also a relatively quick treatment, and most people report feeling relief after just one or two sessions.
Common Causes of Low Back Pain In Boise, ID
There are a variety of causes of lower back pain from muscle and joint problems to disc and nerve issues. Finding the root cause of low back pain is critical to designing an effective care plan. Pain is a warning signal that something is wrong in the body, it isn’t the actual problem. Our goal is not just to chase the symptoms of pain, but to deal with the underlying issues which are inhibiting function. Correcting that issue will result in long-lasting, natural low back pain relief.
Chiropractic care is a natural treatment for back pain. It can be used to relieve pain, improve function and mobility, and even stop the progression of disc herniations. It relies on spinal manipulation that’s designed to reduce pressure on spinal nerves by releasing any muscle tension in the spine. This may also help with conditions like sciatica and slipped discs.
Bulged or Herniated Lumbar Discs
Our spinal discs are like jelly donuts, with a cartilaginous fibrous exterior and a gelatinous interior. A bulging lumbar disc is a condition in which the gelatinous nucleus pushes against the outer portion of the disc and expands beyond its normal boundaries. A herniated lumbar disc is a condition in which the nucleus actually pushes through the outer fibrous layer. The unhealthy disc irritates the nearby nerves causing low back pain, radiating leg pain, and numbness or tingling in the extremities. Chiropractors hope to get to a condition like this as soon as possible to avoid the use of surgery or medication.
Degenerative Disc Disease
Degenerative disc disease is a condition that affects the spinal discs. The discs are the pads that separate the vertebrae in the spine. They act as shock absorbers for the spine and allow it to move. Over time the discs can become damaged due to aging, injuries, or disease like arthritis. When the discs are damaged, they lose their ability to cushion the vertebrae causing pain in the low back as well as into the neck and arms. These types of arthritic conditions are not reversible, but chiropractic care can help manage them and prevent their progression.
Subluxation
Chiropractic focuses on correcting vertebral subluxations in the low back. A vertebral subluxation is a misalignment of one or more spinal bones that can cause pain, nerve interference, and reduced joint mobility. We use a variety of techniques to correct subluxations, including manual adjustments, spinal traction, and low-force instrument adjustments. When subluxations are corrected, the body and brain can communicate effectively through the vast nervous system network.
Spinal Stenosis
Spinal stenosis is a condition that occurs when the space within the spinal column becomes narrowed, putting pressure on the spinal cord and nerves. This can cause pain, numbness and tingling, even organ dysfunction in the most serious cases.
There are several treatments available for spinal stenosis, including chiropractic care. We can help to relieve pressure on the spine and improve mobility, also providing exercises and stretches to help you keep your low back pain under control.