The Truth About Back Pain
Have you tried to get rid of your back pain, but can’t seem to get a handle on it? The truth will set you free! Keep reading to learn what it takes to fix a chronic back problem.
“Time is not a cure for chronic pain, but it can be crucial for improvement. It takes time to change, to recover, and to make progress.” – Dr. Mel Pohl
So, how will you spend your time?
The Problem
Chronic back pain is very difficult to overcome without strong leadership. With time, pain can get worse, medication less effective, and treatment more invasive. In severe cases, the pain never completely goes away.
“The longer you have pain, the better your spinal cord gets at producing danger messages to the brain, even if there is no danger in the tissue.” – Dr. Lorimer Moseley
Most people with chronic back pain have been around the block already. They’ve seen many doctors and therapists and tried different treatments. They’ve lost confidence that there is anything that can help.
It’s frustrating to feel like you’re making all the right choices and not getting results! But, once you know the truth about chronic back pain you can use time to your advantage.
If this sounds like you then keep reading because you need to hear the truth.
The Solution
“Even if you’ve been experiencing back pain for years you can still make progress.”
The truth is that you need to understand chronic back pain to know what it takes to resolve it.
Even if you’ve been experiencing back pain for years you can still make progress. You can move away from being in or on the edge of pain all the time, and get back to loving your life.
You don’t need to book a consultation with us to get the truth. We’re giving it away for free right here. This is information that all chronic back pain sufferers need to know.
Truth 1: Pain is the last symptom to appear and one of the first to disappear
Don’t stop your efforts when the pain lets up. The pain phase is only the first phase of recovery. Underlying causes, like scar-tissue, chronic tightness, or weakness, take longer to resolve. These are much better to deal with when you’re not in pain.
The truth is, the best time to deal with your back problem is when it’s not at its worst, ie. when you’re in the most pain.
Truth 2: It takes time to make lasting changes to the tone and texture of the muscles
We have lots of techniques and tools to help reduce pain and tightness in the back muscles. But, lasting results take consistency and time. Muscles can become hard and inelastic over time. These changes to the muscle often take years to build up and aren’t resolved overnight. We want muscles to have a healthy supple texture with no pain when you push on them.
The truth is, it takes months to get adaptive muscle changes like it does through exercise.
Truth 3: Structural damage on MRIs and X-rays don’t equal pain
Disc bulges seen at L4/5 and L5/S1 on your MRI taken when you were in pain were likely already there before you were in pain. 90% of bulges happen at these levels in the low back. The likelihood of finding a disc bulge on an MRI is 30% up to 90% of the population even if you have no back pain! Like arthritis, these have more to do with how our spine ages and tell a story about how we stress the back over time.
The truth is, even if you have structural changes to your spine you can still get better and don’t need to be in pain.
Truth 4: Strengthen weakness not pain
I’m a huge fan of strength training and devoted a good part of my career to it. But, if you load sore and overworked muscles, tendons and joints, guess what? They get more sore! It takes time to settle pain before starting strength exercises.
The truth is, strengthening exercises are not pain relief exercises in the short-term. They’re best used after the pain phases to resolve weakness and help prevent future episodes.
Truth 5: Healing and repair go far beyond the pain stage
Remodeling happens over long periods of time. If you break a bone you have pain and spend the next 6 to 8 weeks laying down fibrous and calcified scar tissue. After the cast comes off it still takes months to years to replace scar tissue with stronger bone. Unlike a broken bone, back pain sufferers repeat their injury in small doses daily. They’re constantly damaging and laying down more scar tissue in their back. Disc bulges and arthritis seen on MRIs are the body’s attempt to repair this!
The truth is, it takes a long time and consistency to remodel your back so it’s healthier and more resilient.
The Challenge
“You might think that because your back has arthritis or a bulging disc you’ll always have back pain. That’s not true.”
But, there’s a big difference between letting time pass and working to make real change over time.
When I first met my patient Mike he had chronic lower back pain for years. It was not getting any better on its own. He tried several different treatments over the years whenever the pain got to be too much to handle. His MRI from a couple years ago showed two bulged discs. He figured this was his back now and would manage the bad episodes with pain meds.
The truth is, I worked with Mike for several months. The first few weeks worked muscles to make them supple and improved his flexibility. With this the chronic stiffness and pain also subsided. He continued for the next several months to make more progress. He returned to activities gradually and progressed through strength exercises.
His constant pain is gone despite the bulged discs. His testament was that when he took a hard fall skiing that he was able to pop right back up and had no residual pain after. Before, something like that would have completely set his back off. That’s the benefit of progressing past the pain phase with your efforts.
We help relieve back pain suffering
“We’ve helped many chronic back pain sufferers move easier, get stronger and feel like they used to years ago.”
If you can relate contact us now to book a consultation. Let us know how it’s impacting you and we’ll let you know if we can help.