I Saw a Patient Today with Back Pain and a Neck Problem.

Often, when writing about patients, we choose really unique people that have interesting stories or really surprising recoveries. But today, that isn’t the person who came through the door. This person’s situation was typical. We see it everyday at Core.

First, the complaint: They had intermittent back pain for years with no real injury. X-rays showed arthritis about five years ago but the pain comes and goes so life just moves on. They had been treated by chiropractors over the years and that got them through the bad times. About 6 months ago, they had the worst flare up of back pain yet. Nothing extraordinary happened but the pain was awful and hasn’t gone away. This time the chiropractor was not able to help. Acupuncture didn’t help either. They went to the surgeon and decided to try spinal injections but recommended they go to PT first. Did they go to Core? Not at first. They went to another practice that told them that the pain was because they had pirifomis syndrome and weak back muscles. They were given exercises that seemed to help for a little bit but the pain would quickly come back and over time it continued to get worse. This patient was hesitant to have the injections, so one of their coworkers recommended they get a second opinion at Core.

Taking the history, we didn’t focus on the back pain. We wanted to find the cause of the back pain. The pain they are having now started many years ago. No one every really fixed it, so naturally it just got worse.

Here are some things we found out that were very important. Twenty years ago, about ten years before the back pain started, this patient ran head first into a wall while playing lacrosse. They had to stop playing the game that day and had weeks of soreness after. After the soreness went away, they noticed that their neck was stiff but was never painful. They learned to live with it. The back pain was something that they couldn’t live with.

When we checked the neck motion, it was pretty bad. Looking left or right was very difficult and up was nearly impossible. I told them that they lost about 50% of their overall motion and they were surprised to hear it. They did notice that it was tough to look while driving but otherwise not a big deal.

The reason they didn’t know that they didn’t have a really bad problem in their neck was because they COMPENSATED by using their back. Every time they looked left, right and up, a majority of the motion was from the low back.

Try this at home. Pretend you have a stiff neck and look left, right and up. Feel all of that back motion? Imagine the result of that for about 20 years? This low back pain isn’t a mystery; it is common sense! The back is simply doing too much.

So what did I do? With hands on techniques, I fixed the neck. I treated the stuck joints in the upper two vertebrae of the neck and provided the patient with instant motion of the neck. Now when they looked left, right and up, the low back had to do nothing. It just relaxed.

Immediately after the visit, the patient realized that they got off the treatment table with no pain. They were then surprised to sit in the chair and feel pain-free and loose. They put their shoes on with ease. After the visit, the stiff neck and the painful back were fixed. We will have to see them a few more times to clear up the 20 years of damage but the worst is over. There is an end in sight.

When this person, and many like them, asked for help with back pain they received lots of treatment to their low back. At Core, we realized that the body is an amazing interconnected unit. We fixed the parts that needed help so that the painful parts could return back to normal.