How Chiropractors in Rockford Diagnose Back Pain (And Why Most Miss the Cause)

Many people are treated for back pain without ever being properly evaluated. They’re told it’s “just a muscle strain,” given rest or medication, and sent on their way — only to have the pain come back weeks or months later.

In this episode of Ask the Chiropractor, Dr. Brant Hulsebus explains how chiropractors in Rockford actually diagnose back pain and why missing this step is the most common reason pain becomes recurring or chronic. You’ll learn what chiropractors look for beyond symptoms, including joint motion, nerve stress, compensation patterns, and lifestyle factors — and why proper diagnosis changes outcomes.

If your back pain keeps coming back or never fully feels resolved, this episode will help you understand what may have been missed.

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. thank you for tuning in to another episode., It seems like lately I've been getting a lot more questions than people responding to my last podcast. So this has happened the last couple weeks in a row. And so we're gonna keep going with this role as long as people continue to ask questions. And I love it, by the way. because as you know, the only person that can answer questions about chiropractic care or what chiropractors do is a chiropractor. Nobody else studies what we study. Nobody else has a curriculum that we have to understand fully what we do. They might have an idea of what we do. Like I have an idea. Idea what a dentist does, but I wanted to be able to answer questions about step by step of a root canal or whether or not you need a root canal. because I'm not a dentist, I'm a chiropractor. So today I want to talk a little bit about how chiropractors actually diagnose or look at your lower back pain and,. Why some people miss it, like other looking at, what they're not looking at. If you've ever been treated for back pain, but never was really evaluated by a chiropractor, this episode's for you because we're gonna talk a little bit more what we look at versus what they look at in order to give you a better idea., I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois, so a lot of my experiences I'm gonna talk about are my. What happens in my office? I can't comment what other chiropractors around the country do or different state laws or different state interactions., I just found out the other day that, we have to do so much continuing education, but in Kentucky that's, it's really strict rules how you do it. In Illinois, I can go to Kentucky and do a class, but they can't come here. So I'm gonna talk a lot about my experiences here in Rockford, Illinois as a chiropractor versus maybe something of a different chiropractor. But I don't think it's gonna be that different across the country. A lot of times people end up at urgent care or primary care telling 'em that they got this lower back pain and they get told it's just a strain, it's just a muscle take, a muscle relaxer,, maybe this will make it go away. And, I'm gonna let you know what we do here again in my office in Rockford that's different and maybe why this keeps coming back. Why is back pain often misdiagnosed? Because most people are looking to see the symptoms of it. What hurts? This hurts here, what's going on? Oh, it's got a tight muscle., Is it serious that we need imaging? Can we calm it down? These are the questions that a primary doctor, maybe urgent care might ask to see what's going on. And they might take an image of it. They might just give you a prescription. They just to get that angry muscle that's screaming at you to stop talking. But what's missing in this is emotion assessment. Like what other areas of the back are affected by this? Are the hips affected by this? Can you lift your legs, turn your arm, can you lift your head? Can you do other things? Oh, you're gonna look at other things. And then functional testing too. Can you do a squat if you lower back hurts? Can you lift your leg? Can you., Get up from a sitting position if you go to a flight of stairs where it hurts. Stuff like that. And, and as chiropractors, we always talk about compensating patterns too, because for every ying there's a yang, meaning that your eyes always stay level with the horizon is called the righting reflex. So if you get a very swollen joint in your neck and you're leaning your neck this way, your lower back's gonna sway the opposite direction. So maybe it's not even a lower back problem, maybe it's a neck problem that's been. Talking to you through your lower back, and that's what we look at. We need to look at the whole thing. This is what chiropractors go to the, I don't wanna say better, but I'll just say a deeper dive into what's happening. So what we're gonna look at when you come in here is we're gonna look to see which ones are moving, which ones aren't. This is when we laid the table and we put our hands up and behind your back, trying to feel what's tight. We're gonna ask ourselves, is this a. Upper, lower back problem, your L one L two that's taken a muscle on the inside and pulled on your hip and rotated your hip and caused everything to jam at your SI joint. Or is your hip actually misalign causing an SI problem? Or is it your L four L five that are misaligned and they're just talking at the SI joint? Because these are three different things that talk the same way, but they get treated three different ways. And if you treat 'em the wrong way, you tend to not make a lot of progress really fast. Or if you treat 'em the correct way, you get a lot more. Progress faster. So we have to figure out what the restriction is more than where the pain is. Also, are there nerves involved? Can we get this irritated? We can get the nerves involved. Do we have muscle guarding? Do we have weakness? Do we have reflexes aren't right? Are we walking different? Are we changing our gaits? because now we're getting the compensating patterns. Are you leaning this way, twisting that way? Talked about a minute ago is your lower back, so acute on the left side that you're leaning right, causing your head to twist the other direction. So we have to look at all these different areas and then we'll even go back now and do a little bit like what else have you done? What do you do for a living? Because you know it, I take care of the hockey team here in Rockford, the ice hogs. And if you have a hockey player, they have a high shoulder to low shoulder based on their job of how they carry the hockey stick. If I'm a postal carrier and I've always got a satchel on my one shoulder, that shoulder is gonna be higher just like a hockey player. Or if I have a desk job, I expect different things that can, causing issues with this along the way too. Or maybe though I had a new patient the other day, it's got on two horrific car accidents in the past but never saw a chiropractor and he only has degeneration changes where the injuries were near auto accident, nowhere else in the spine. So those are clues too. So by going in and trying to figure out the correct mode of , what's wrong, where the subluxation is, that's what we call those chiropractors. The misalignment is, , and being able to correct the primary subluxation and help with the other areas, we're able to get. Not just pain relief, but we're able to get correction and resolution with this. So this is why, people would take a lot of pill, just go home and rest for two days. I'm still having problems. I'm a, I took some NSAIDs, some non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. I've been doing that for a while now, but my back pain's getting worse. That's because those create chronic lower back pain and headaches as a side effect. Or I've had some injections, I don't see, I'm getting relief. If you're getting the injection in the joint that's reacting to an angry, let's, lemme start over. If your upper lumbar is rotated and it's pulling on your hip flexor on the front side of your body and it's causing your hip to rise, your foot to flare, and you jam the SI joint and you get this shot in the SI joint, is that gonna get rid of all the other issues? No, it's not. It missed a target. It's only getting the shot where the pain is not what's making the pain. So it's a much bigger, complicated issue than just, it hurts here. Put a shot here, make the pain go away. Not only that, but you're not having that pain from a lack of shots into your back. You're having that pain because something else is going on. We need to figure out what that other thing is. Who does this matter for? This matters for that person with that ongoing lower back pain or that it, , it's always on the same side. It's always just, whenever I do this, I have this problem. Whenever I do this, I feel like I can't do this. I can't r the yard anymore because every time I do my back hurts. I've had to change the way I do this because I have back problems. There's something going on that's bigger than just. I can't rake anymore because of my back there. There's a bigger question that we have to ask besides, I just can't rake anymore because of my back. So we as a chiropractor, we're gonna dive in deeper to figure out exactly where that misalignment is. What's causing that, that motion that irritates you. And then maybe how to work with other people in the community. Here at Rockford I'd send you down the street to my friends at Movement Fitness and they'd help you exercise and figure out where the muscles are wrong and help retrain you. Otherwise, if it's more advanced than that, we'd send you over to our friends at the PT place. Again, here in Rockford, we have a relationship with the physical therapy outfit. We had them work with you, make you better, or we baby send you a massage therapist at the muscles, this full scar tissue. So we have a lot of opportunities to help you out. If you've been having re recurring lower back pain, if it's been bothering you for a long time and you've tried shots, you've tried medicine, you've tried physical therapy, you've tried to exercise and stretch it out, and it just keeps coming back over and over again, it's time to come over here to the chiropractor and get your back evaluated., You remember, chiropractic is a non-surgical, non-medication approach to healthcare. So we're not gonna add into your body, but it's gonna work with your body, trying to make it work and function better. So there's very, very little side effects. You're working with a chiropractor, so if you've had this ongoing back pain for too long, it happens. It goes away, it happens, it goes away. Maybe it's creating, happening more and more frequently. It's time to come in and get your spine evaluated by a chiropractor. Again, don't ask your primary if you to see a chi. Because your primary's never been to a chiropractor, doesn't know what chiropractors do, so it's hard to ask somebody else if you should go see a chiropractor, just go see a chiropractor in your community that you know and trust. Again, if you're in my community, you're watching this, come on in. We'd love to have you here in Rockford. Okay, so thank you for tuning in. Remember to like and subscribe to this if you're enjoying this. And if you have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, feel free to leave a comment below and maybe next week you'll be the question of the week. And it seems this is a hot topic, so I might just keep doing this one for a little bit. Thank you.