When Back Pain Isn’t a Muscle — What Chiropractors in Rockford Check First

If you’ve been told your back pain is “just a muscle strain” but it keeps coming back, there’s a good chance the muscle isn’t the real problem.

In this episode of Ask the Chiropractor, Dr. Brant Hulsebus explains why back pain is so often misdiagnosed as muscular, what chiropractors in Rockford actually check first, and how joint restrictions, nerve irritation, and compensation patterns create ongoing pain. Learn why treating muscles alone fails — and how chiropractic care fixes the cause instead of covering up symptoms.

If your back pain never fully resolves or keeps returning, this episode will help you understand why.

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask The Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs Let's dive into it. hello and thank you for tuning in. Hopefully you listened to last week's podcast as well. This isn't a part two, but this kind of is a part two. Last time we talked about when your lower back pain continues to come back over and over again, and why other things might not make it go away and why chiropractic might be a good choice if you have reoccurring lower back pain. But today I want to talk about when back pain isn't a muscle and what a chiropractor looks at when you come in and tell us that you had ongoing back pain. The first thing I wanna say is chiropractic is so much more about back pain. Chiropractic is a lot about how the nervous system works, but I wanted to discuss back pain because that's how most of you meet us., You think of chiropractic for back pain, and I'd be wrong to say that chiropractic doesn't do great things for back pain, but the good news is a lot of bonuses. So let's talk about that. A lot of times when I meet a new patient, they're like, I don't know if I'm in the right place., Just might be a muscle. This might just be inflammation., Here's the deal. Anytime you have an angry muscle, it's because of inflammation and you have inflammation because something's out of alignment. You would never just have one or the other. It's always a combination of all these things. This is why a lot of times when you've been told that, just take a muscle relaxer, you find it doesn't work. So here where I live, Rockford, Illinois, we have a lot of people that come in from a factory job. We actually have a contract with a trucking company here in town called Meiborg Brothers Trucking. A lot of people today have desk jobs. We see a lot of Rockford employees who are, , even our police officers that come see us. They have to spend a lot of time in front of the computer filling out reports. We have a lot of people that are the trades that are doing a lot of manual labor, and so we see all kinds of walks of life coming in that come to tell us, , I think this time it might just be a muscle. And again, if it was just a muscle, a muscle relaxer would work, it would make the muscles stop being angry. But we find as soon as a muscle relaxer wears off, there's still bigger problems. So today I want to talk about what would happen if you came to a chiropractor, why maybe the muscles are the victim and not the cause of what's going on, and how we would go about diagnosing or trying to figure out what's wrong with you and how we go about helping you. So if you've been curious about going to see a chiropractor, but assume it's just muscle pain, but maybe you think it's more that's you're my audience today. So why is the muscle strain a default diagnosis? There's no doubt when the spinal bone's misalign, there's inflammation. When there's inflammation, the joint gets swollen, irritated, and most people assume it's the disc. Reality is mostly the backside of the joint. You see the backside of the joint. There's two little joints called the facets, and these allow the joints to move in different directions. They line up different in your lower back and your lumbar spine. Then they do in your thoracic spine, then they're doing in your cervical spine. You see a cervical spine in your neck, they lay flat but almost somewhat horizontal. That allows you to turn your head and look both direction. It also helps distribute the weight of your head even and your thoracic spine. They sit flat front to back and that's why this part of your spine could dip left and right, but not really supposed to twist and turn and your lower back. Then they take a turn and they go, , perpendicular to your spine, coming straight out. This is why you don't bend and twist down there because you irritate those. And these little joints are on both sides, the left and the right side, and they're in the back right by the spinous process. That bump you feel, you rub someone's back and they have a joint capsule around them that keeps a synovial fluid in there. And a lot of times when we've been in twist the wrong way, like I said before, in Rockford, the different jobs that people have, whether it's a hockey player for the ice hogs, whether it's someone that sits behind a desk, whether it's a labor all day outside working or crowning, the small spaces, I take care of a lot of HVAC guys and a lot of plumbers. They get themselves in some weird situations, but these joints then get opened and they get stretched, and when they get stretched, that creates inflammation and what other muscles are doing. When that happens, they lock up. They try to stop you from preventing more injury. See, every time that joint smacks together, there's more inflammation. So if the muscles can contract, they keep you from slamming that joints. You're gonna have less inflammation, but what do we feel the most? The muscle's talking to us. We feel that muscle pain. That's the first thing. And see the body's sending us a signal there to tell us to knock it off. Something's not right. So the muscles get tight and they lock up and they scream. Stop. Stop. Stop. And so then we go take something for the muscle pain and we get some temporary relief, right? because , that's what's screaming at us, right? So we take that muscle relaxer, whatever, over the counter medication we take maybe an nsaid, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. Side note, the research shows those chronic use of those leads to chronic lower back pain, different talk different day. But we take an nset or something like that to help us get over this pain. And it gives us temporary relief., The next day we're right back where we started or after a couple hours we're right back when we started. because the muscles are actually trying to save us. The muscles are our protectors. In a, when the joint's nice and stiff and doesn't wanna move or twist, it won't let go., And some people will say, maybe I just need a massage. Maybe something goes in there and massages that and helps it. And again, that gets rid of the angry muscle temporarily. But the reason why the muscle's angry is still there. So you'll get relief after a good massage. No doubt about it. But the problem is as soon as you start moving and twisting again and go back to work, that muscle's gonna lock up again. Right? We see this all the time. So what are we gonna look at when you come in? If we know the muscle's more than that? We're gonna try to figure out where the inflammation's coming from., What's causing this inflammation to. The fire like this, what nerves are involved? You know , what nerves are shooting to tell these muscles to spasm up. So how do we go about doing that? We're gonna look at your history. I'm gonna go through your medical history, see what's happening in the past. I just had a new patient come in the other day. They've been in two horrific car accidents in the last 10 years. That's giving me some major clues or areas to look and where to examine them. Or if you've had a fall or an injury or like here in Rockford, if you're an ice hockey player, that tells me a lot about your history, right? You know they have hockey back and one high shoulder. And one high hip from the way they carry the stick. But let's say you're upholster carrier, right? You carry a bag on your shoulder all the time. That's what I need to know because I need to know how you're carrying that bag. So we want to get your whole medical history. Then we're gonna take x-rays of your spine. We want to see what your spine looks at. For two reasons. One, is it safe for us to take care of you? Is there anything that we need to change about our technique or alter our technique for your safety? because maybe your bones grew funny , or they're lined up wrong or there's an old injury there that we need to know about. And two. Your x-rays are a major clue in, in the technique that we want to use to get you better. And it also tells us how much arthritis you have or don't have. It tells you how healthy you dis look or don't look, and it tells you the severity of what's going on, right? I had a patient come in today, he had a lower curve and his lower back. His former chiropractor told me his scoliosis, he doesn't have a scoliosis. He has a little curve in his lower back. And so the chiropractor had never X-rayed him before, so he just guessed that was going on. And we don't like to guess we take x-rays of you here. So once we do that, then we're gonna go through an examination, see where you're bending and twisting, which joints won't you allow me to load because they're inflamed and angry. Then I know which muscles are firing to protect that joint, and I know a better way to take care of you. Not only that, but if you tell 'em you have a numbness in your fingers, in your hands, or maybe down your legs, or burning down your legs, I'm gonna know where that burning comes from. Maybe check your reflexes and see which nerves are involved. because you could trace those nerves back to a vertebral level. So if I have an x-ray and exam, finding a nerve, finding a muscle, finding a reflex finding, and everything's yelling at me L four, it's pretty good for me to guess. It's probably L four. So we would start working on your L four. So again, this is why some of these. Problems don't work. As you're starting to see, it's a bigger deal, right? It's a bigger deal just putting ice on a massage on it, or taking a muscle relaxer, and that's why these things alone fail. The chiropractic goes in there, we find that vertebrae that's stuck, and we go in there and restore the motion. We do the chiropractic adjustment, which restores the motion, gets it moving again. Starts pushing that inflammation out. Once the inflammation's gone, the nerve will heal and the muscle will start to relax and see. Only chiropractors are uniquely trained to do this. Nobody else knows how to do this. You might have a physical therapist that can. Pop a bone or make a noise out of it, or maybe I put a trainer that can twist you and make your hip pop, but maybe it's not the hip, right? Maybe the hip's out because the upper lower back's out, and that's why the athletic trainer or the physical therapist gives you some temporary relief but not fixing it. And you're like, I don't really want to go to a chiropractor because the physical therapist already popped my hip and it didn't work. Trust me, if you go to see a quality chiropractor like us here in Rockford,, we're all Palmer College graduates. We're gonna look a deeper dive. Maybe to say, okay, just because it hurts you doesn't mean this is the problem. It could be something up higher. It could be pulling on it and creating the issue. And that's why we look at your whole spine when you're here. So we really want to get down there. We wanna break the cycle of what you're going through. We want to get that adjustment and make that correction and get that moving again. Now, why is it so cool to come to the clinic here at Hulsebus Rockford Chiropractic? Because we're non-surgical, we're not gonna do anything permanent. Nothing's gonna, we're not gonna do any surgery on you. We're not gonna. Medicate you. In the state of Illinois, we are not allowed to give you medications. And actually there's no state that's allowed to. Chiropractor allowed to medicate. They have medical doctors for that. We don't need chiropractors doing that. Chiropractic is a holistic, natural, non-medical approach to taking care of you. And the best news is when we do these adjustments, the nerves gonna start working better. So we're gonna prove your overall neurological function at the same time as we do the chiropractic adjustment. So you might be coming in and telling me your lower back hurts and I'm adjusting you, hoping to fix your digestive health, hoping that maybe fix the prostate issues. And in my grandmother's case, , she had the lower back issue and she was infertile, she couldn't have children, and Dr. Palmer took care of my grandmother and next thing you knew, she was able to get pregnant. So sometimes when we adjust you for your lower back pain, man, we're happy. Your lower back pain's better. But we're really excited. Your nervous system's working and functioning better, and that's gonna be a different talk for a different day, how we change a nervous system. There's tons of cool studies out there to see it all though now. All index on PubMed. But yeah, chiropractors are making a huge change in your nervous system too. So that's our goal. When you come in the office, you're gonna get an exam, you're gonna give us your history. We're gonna see how you move or don't move. We're going to do, , the full x-rays on you. We're gonna do neurological testing on you. We're gonna do posture checks on you. We're gonna get to the root cause of what's making that muscle hurt. We're gonna do the chiropractic adjustments that it takes to get that muscle to calm down, get it so it stops pulling on. Its. So once we corrected the subluxation, once you're starting to hold your back into place better, then we're going to give you some really cool stabilization exercises to put the glue on this so you don't continuously reinjure it. We'll probably talk to you about a maintenance plan because if I'm a postal carrier, I carry that bag on my shoulder all the time. I can make it stronger, I can make it better, but you're still doing the thing that made you bad. But we can make it much better, but we can take it from time to time. So if you've ever thought about trying chiropractic for ongoing muscle strain or you think it's musculature, I hope this answers your question. I hope this gets , to your root cause. You know I'm here in Rockford, Illinois. I don't know where you're listening to this, but if you're listening to this and you're in the area, come on in. If you're listening to this somewhere else and you want some more help, go to chiropractic.org. chiropractic.org. That's the International Chiropractic Association. That's where you'll find more chiropractors like me all over the world. So wherever you're listening to watching this, go to chiropractic.org. You'll find more chiropractors if you're in Rockford or my neck of the woods, feel free to stop in and talk to me. And again, this podcast is called Ask the Chiropractor. If you have questions about chiropractic or chiropractic care, there's only one qualified person to answer that would be a chiropractor. You would never ask your podiatrist questions about a cavity. And you would never ask your dentist questions that you would ask your general practitioner. You'd ask the questions about dentistry to the dentist. So you ask a medical doctor about chiropractic or a physical therapist about chiropractic, I gotta tell you the truth, they never studied chiropractic. They really don't know it. Ask a chiropractor. All right, so if you have a question, leave a comment. Wherever you're watching, listening to this, maybe next week you'll be the question of the week. And you know what? Come back next week. If we might just keep building on this topic, keep a good thing going. Thank you.