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Osteopaths are famous for back pain treatment, but so many people wonder why they get the problems they do with all the different kinds of painful
Andrew Cotton explains back pain, what are it’s causes and what treatment is most appropriate for backpain.
Back Pain is something most people suffer with at some point in their lives. But why? We don’t all routinely suffer with elbow pain or finger pain, so what is special about the low back?
Any mechanism, including the human low back, is designed for its purpose. We developed over hundreds of thousands of years to hunt, swim, and farm. Our backs are good at that, and research has shown indigenous native peoples suffer very little with chronic low back pain (CLBP). We are perhaps not so well designed to sit all day, look at laptops in bed or spend hours gaming on a PC or Smartphone!
Here the back is in a long curve backwards which comes back level with a shatp kink in the neck.
See how the back is straighter, longer, and the neck is now upright.
As you can see the back can be bent and “strained” by how we use it. Some parts get squashed and compressed, while others get stretched and weakened. The spine is a complex structure, and as it moves off of it’s natural, upright balance, so it acquires strains, stiffnesses and pains, which sow the seeds for further strains elsewhere. The picture becomes chaotic, the spine a map or record of the accidents and maltreatments that we have all had. This process is of increasing “Entropy”, or disorder. This may require an external agent to evaluate and remedy the trouble, as the body’s natural powers of self correction are overwhelmed, or even contribute to the problem through overreaction.
It is the mark of a good treatment for your back, or a series of exercises like Pilates or Yoga, if it starts to smooth out these strains and reverses the process of accumulating trouble, so your back feels free, flexible and right again so you can get on with life.
It is not always obvious, but if your back in strained or injured it has to heal itself. We have a fantastic repair system that mops up damage, lays down support to protect the injury and then gets on with repairs. A treatment for your back must help this repair process, find out why it happened (cause), what it is (effect) and what is to be done (a plan!).
This is the art of the Physical Therapist, to read the situation in all its complexity and set the person on the road to recovery, safely and effectively.
Does the following list sound at all familiar?
Treatment for the back will usually involve elements from the following.
How is back pain treated? The approach of most therapies is similar. First, is the pain due to an injury, where some tissue is damaged, or is the pain due to sensitivity, where the body reports injury as pain but no damage has actually occured. There is often an element of both in many cases.
It may be in the person’s interest to overreact to a problem, so that the person takes it seriously and looks after themselves. This is a natural phenomenon, and encourages us to listen to our body and alter what we are doing. If one takes a painkiller in this scenario, the wisdom of the body is ignored, and you run the risk of aggravating the back pain. If the problem is due to hypersensitivity - neurogenic pain which is perhaps an overreaction to an innocuous problem, then sometimes pain relief, if it helps sleep and relaxation, may be helpful. Physical treatment can help more naturally, using techniques which listen and communicate with the body, and calm the nerves down without simply switching them off. This may include discussing stress and diet, as many things often add together to create a state of excitability.
Back injury treatment will depend on the tissue involved.
You may have had a diagnosis of Stenosis, perhaps after an MRI scan or X-Ray.
This rather scary diagnosis just means a bit of nerve pinching from compression in the spine or swelling around a small facet joint.
We usually have good success with this and it’s associated sciatica, if you have that. That is because we try to find normal in your body, and in normal conditions the body can heal itself.
Osteopaths are famous for back pain treatment, but so many people wonder why they get the problems they do with all the different kinds of back pain.
Principal Fulham Osteopath Andrew Cotton explains back pain, what are it’s causes and what treatment is most appropriate for back pain.
Back Pain is something most people suffer with at some point in their lives. But why? We don’t all routinely suffer with elbow pain or finger pain, so what is special about the low back?
Any mechanism, including the human low back, is designed for its purpose. We developed over hundreds of thousands of years to hunt, swim, and farm. Our backs are good at that, and research has shown indigenous native peoples suffer very little with chronic low back pain (CLBP). We are perhaps not so well designed to sit all day, look at laptops in bed or spend hours gaming on a PC or Smartphone!
Here the back is in a long curve backwards which comes back level with a shatp kink in the neck.
See how the back is straighter, longer, and the neck is now upright.
As you can see the back can be bent and “strained” by how we use it. Some parts get squashed and compressed, while others get stretched and weakened. The spine is a complex structure, and as it moves off of it’s natural, upright balance, so it acquires strains, stiffnesses and pains, which sow the seeds for further strains elsewhere. The picture becomes chaotic, the spine a map or record of the accidents and maltreatments that we have all had. This process is of increasing “Entropy”, or disorder. This may require an external agent to evaluate and remedy the trouble, as the body’s natural powers of self correction are overwhelmed, or even contribute to the problem through overreaction.
It is the mark of a good treatment for your back, or a series of exercises like Pilates or Yoga, if it starts to smooth out these strains and reverses the process of accumulating trouble, so your back feels free, flexible and right again so you can get on with life.
It is not always obvious, but if your back in strained or injured it has to heal itself. We have a fantastic repair system that mops up damage, lays down support to protect the injury and then gets on with repairs. A treatment for your back must help this repair process, find out why it happened (cause), what it is (effect) and what is to be done (a plan!).
This is the art of the Physical Therapist, to read the situation in all its complexity and set the person on the road to recovery, safely and effectively.
Does the following list sound at all familiar?
Treatment for the back will usually involve elements from the following.
How is back pain treated? The approach of most therapies is similar. First, is the pain due to an injury, where some tissue is damaged, or is the pain due to sensitivity, where the body reports injury as pain but no damage has actually occurred. There is often an element of both in many cases.
It may be in the person’s interest to overreact to a problem, so that the person takes it seriously and looks after themselves. This is a natural phenomenon, and encourages us to listen to our body and alter what we are doing. If one takes a painkiller in this scenario, the wisdom of the body is ignored, and you run the risk of aggravating the back pain. If the problem is due to hypersensitivity - “neurogenic” or nerve created pain which is perhaps an overreaction to an innocuous problem, then sometimes pain relief, if it helps sleep and relaxation, may be helpful. Physical treatment can help more naturally, using techniques which listen and communicate with the body, and calm the nerves down without simply switching them off. This may include discussing stress and diet, as many things often add together to create a state of excitability.
Back injury treatment will depend on the tissue involved.
You may have had a diagnosis of Stenosis, perhaps after an MRI scan or X-Ray.
This rather scary diagnosis just means a bit of nerve pinching from compression in the spine or swelling around a small facet joint.
We usually have good success with this and it’s associated sciatica, if you have that. That is because we try to find normal in your body, and in normal conditions the body can heal itself.
Back Pain, You are not the only one…
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