Ask the Chiropractor- Lower back and flank pain, the chiropractor should be your first stop. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud
www.rockforddc.com
Ask the Chiropractor- Lower back and flank pain, the chiropractor should be your first stop. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud
www.rockforddc.com
- Hi there. I'm Dr. Brant Hulsebus, chiropractor here from Rockford, Illinois. And welcome to our podcast of, "Ask the Chiropractor"."Ask the Chiropractor", is a podcasts that we started because all too often, whenever I read or saw any chiropractic on the internet or TV or wherever I saw it, whenever they finished talking to the chiropractor about whatever amazing thing the chiropractor was talking about, they always ended it with,"Make sure you check with your healthcare provider first". Well, I'm friends with a lot of primary healthcare providers and they have no idea what I do, most of them. So checking with your primary healthcare provider never made any sense to me because they don't know what chiropractors do. So why would you ask someone who knows nothing about chiropractic, whether or not you should go to a chiropractor? I would never ask my primary care physician about my teeth or my dental hygiene, I would ask my dentist. I would never ask my primary healthcare provider questions about my feet, I'd ask a podiatrist. So we started this podcast called, "Ask the Chiropractor", so when you have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, you can, "Ask the Chiropractor". And so people send us messages, they send us emails, they hit us up online with questions. And this question came in from somebody who was talking about the fact that we live in Northern Illinois, where my practice is, and we just had another big snowstorm. And when they did the snowstorm, of course that involved shoveling or using the snowblower or even driving a tractor with a plow on it or driving a truck with a plow on it. But the next day after this happens, we always see people coming in. So today I want to talk a little bit about lower back pain and lower flank pain, coming off from the side of your spine. A lot of people deal with this. So as a chiropractor, how would we deal with this? So if you're at home and you're having lower back pain, especially after done shoveling, or an activity like shoveling and maybe you're having some flank pain going on the side, as chiropractors we look at this really interesting, what we'll do is whenever you go to a chiropractor the chiropractor will almost always take x-rays of you. I would never become a chiropractic patient without somebody taking x-rays of me prior. There are certain things in your spine that could be negative about giving an adjustment to, if the chiropractor's unaware it's there. Some of these things, especially in the lower back, it's a thing called a spondylolisthesis. And what that is, is the vertebrae slips forward and there's no way for us to know that the vertebrae is forward unless we have an x-ray. There's no test, there's nothing else you can do except for taking an x-ray. As the chiropractor pushes on your back to do a chiropractic adjustment and your vertebrae is already forward, that could become real hazardous. So I would never go to a chiropractor, personally, who didn't take x-rays on my spine first to make sure it was safe to adjust me. Now the chiropractor usually will take x-rays of you then he'll lay you on the table, probably do a bunch of different leg checks and chiropractic exams to see what's going on. Now typically when I have somebody with lower back pain, I can see this from many different areas. I might see a rotated pelvis or hip bones. I might see a tailbone that's rotated. I might see a problem in one of the five lumbar vertebraes, L one, two, three, four, or five. Now it could be L one and two causing all the problems, because they go down and they attach to the pelvis. So usually when you see an upper or lower back problem, you can also see a pelvis to go with it. But when you see a lower lower back problem, sorry to keep using the same words, but if you see the L four, L five, usually then we'll just see a really misaligned or issues going on there. There's all different kinds of muscle tests and things we can do to confirm which levels, how many levels are involved, but in reality, we try to adjust all the ones that need to be adjusted or corrected. So when we take your x-rays and we do your exam, we're able to start putting our fingers on things and trying to figure out where to start and how do we make sure we got them all?'Cause we're not going to x-ray you, do an adjustment then re x-ray you, that's not how it's done. We x-ray you then we do our post checks to make sure they're all free and moving again. So when we look at your spine, that's what we look at. We're also taking a look at maybe some of your bottom free floating ribs, the bottom couple ribs just kind of hang out, they're attached your cartilage. And if you have a thoracic issue, a little bit rotated, that'll take that rib and move it a little bit here and there, puts an extra- Basically, it'll put some stress on it, that's probably the best way of saying it. It'll put some stress on it and that'll come right down attached to your hip and that's when you start getting that pulling it down the whole flank. Now these activities are usually aggravated by shoveling. You see, I always tell my patients, try to keep your nose and toes point the same direction. Always try to squat. You see, if you study evolutionary biology, we used to be much better squatters before the invention of modern plumbing. So as people were meant more to squat than anything else. So when you bend and twist, what happens is you put a lot of stress on those little joints in the back, they're called facet joints, F-A-C-E-T, facet joints. And what you'll do is you'll irritate a facet joint, you'll pull it apart, bring it back together again and that's why we talk about, don't bend and twist, because when you bend, you come forward and then you twist and you open that joint up, then when you come back you can pinch it. And that's what happens, you pinch that joint capsule on there. And when that's irritated, when that's being pinched, you'll lean away from it. Then when you lean away from it the disc starts to pop the other direction because a disc is a lot like a balloon, if I have a balloon in front of me and I put a foot on the balloon, the balloon will herniate or bulge the other direction. Does that mean the balloon's the problem or is the foot the problem? So when we're talking about the foot and the balloon, the analogy there would be that the irritated facet joint, the back is the foot and the disc is the balloon. We don't really want to go after the balloon all the time, sometimes we want to see what's going on with the foot and fix that and then the balloon will go back into place better. And honestly, I tell almost everybody, if you did an MRI of everybody right now walking by, including myself, you would find little disc bulges, because that's what the disc does, it shifts left and right based on the stress and that's why it's a shock absorber between the two bones. So when patients come in and tell me,"I went to the doctor, a primary healthcare provider and they told me I have a disc bulge". I don't really care, I mean I do care, because if it goes the wrong way, it causes problems. But in most of the cases we find, in all reality, it's an irritated facet joint and by doing a chiropractic correction around the facet joint, the disc goes back in. Now it's real interesting to me to learn this, I just learned this the other day, listening to a piece of research, did you know when it comes to lower back pain, headaches and neck, the international journals and scientists they all agree, spinal manipulated approach, we call chiropractic adjustments, is hands down the best treatment option for lower back and neck pain. It's more successful than any other thing they do. It's cheaper than everything else they do. It's got next to no side effects. And compared to going to get pharmacology, today we know the pharmacology that there's a lot of problems with opiate addiction. You will not get opiate addiction at the chiropractor, this will not happen. So opiate addiction's a real problem, they give you pain meds, they give you muscle relaxers sometimes too, because what happens is you're hitting this joint really bad and they'll give you muscle relaxers and the muscle relaxers let you hit the joint more, because the muscles were tight protecting that joint. You take a muscle relaxer, now it's gone, now it's hitting harder. That's why I've always wondered why they don't do anti-inflammatories, because it's the inflammation swelling that facet joint that's causing the problem. It's not so much the tight muscles, the tight muscles are protecting you. But don't worry, we'll follow that up with some gross big hip physical therapy. Not focusing on the little muscles between the spine but the big muscles instead, which really don't stabilize the spine, it's the little muscles in between that only act by testing your balance. Test your balance, can make those stronger, have less problems. And if that doesn't work, there's always a cortisone shot. But don't worry, that cortisone shot's not FDA approved for the spine. It's not. And even the manufacturer does not recommend them for the spine. But they'll try that next and then they finish by telling them,"Well don't try the chiropractor, they're unscientific", always makes me laugh. And the science actually shows that chiropractic's the best choice. So if you have lower back pain, if you have right side flank pain, come see the chiropractor. If you have more going on, the chiropractor is trained and we are professional healthcare providers, we will refer you to where you need to be. Sometimes this pain can be mimicked by a kidney stone, other things too. But that's why we have the tools that we have to see what's going on. If you're not getting better right away, the chiropractor's responsibility is to refer you to somebody else where you need to go. That's a lot of information in a short amount of time about lower back pain and lower back issues. Can you go see the chiropractor if you have lower back pain? Yes. So the chiropractor would probably be your first stop. We are the safest, we are the most effective and we have the least amount of side effects are negative, so. If you know someone having lower back pain, maybe before you go to the primary healthcare provider and you ask him if you should go see a chiropractor and that primary care provider says, "No" Check what they're going to do, if they're going to give you muscle relaxers, which we know makes the joint more inflamed, doesn't protect the joint at all? Are we going to maybe follow it up with other stuff that's not FDA approved? Or are you going to go see the chiropractor and you ask the chiropractor if they have research on lower back pain? We have it coming out of our ears, all right? We have more than we want as chiropractors, we're asking to study other things, stop studying lower back pain. Let's look to see how it affects the overall nervous system. But we get grants for lower back studies all the time and we have hundreds and thousands of them. Otherwise, go to chiropractic, lower back pain at PubMed and do the research there. If you don't know how to do research, if you're watching my podcast, I did podcasts on how to do research in previous episodes, take a look at it. All right, well I hope I answered the question about,"Does chiropractic help a lower back and flank pain?". Absolutely. Absolutely. So if you have a question about chiropractic or want more information, go ahead and go to my website at rockforddc.com, R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D-D-C.com. You'll find all kinds of good information there, previous podcast, we do this every week. And if you have a question for me, go on the website, leave me a message there, leave a message below wherever you're seeing, reading or hearing this and we'll get back to you too. Next time, maybe you'll be the question of,"Ask the Chiropractor". Thanks everybody.