When you experience your first episode of EXCRUCIATING lower back pain – perhaps even with pain shooting into your leg or legs – then you come to understand how frightening it can be.
Basically, one day you are walking and moving around normally. You are, apparently, doing great with no physical health issues.
You’re getting in and out of seats with no problem.
You’re able to roll over in bed without waking up and grunting.
At no point does coughing or sneezing or clearing your throat make you feel like you are rolling the dice.
Life was proceeding as planned, things weren’t hurting. Everything was A-O-K.
And then BAM! You did something so simple that you are shocked you’ve been injured. Maybe you were just trying to put your socks on. Or maybe you were doing something inherently challenging such as a sport or picking up something heavy. Whatever it was, things went from good to bad in the blink of an eye.
Which Way to Go?
If you are like most people, you first go to Urgent Care or your Primary Care Provider. You have a few different options when it comes to what to do at this point.
If you are a physically active individual then you are probably already someone who respects their body. You probably try to eat right and get regular exercise of some type. That’s great, if that’s you. Your goal is probably going to be that you want to return to the FUNCTION you had prior to your setback. That is a great goal.
If you are currently not in good physical shape, for whatever reason, then perhaps you are not fixated on maintaining great physical health, or maybe you have health issues which prevent you from exercising. It’s OK to not be the picture of perfect health. But this means that you have already acclimated yourself to being physically impaired to some degree, and you may not be chasing a return to function but instead looking for the pain to disappear.
Pain going away and function coming back are two different goals.
Chiropractic can help with both.
Importantly, though, you should recognize that with the return of function comes the resolution of pain. They are causally related: dysfunction of a body part tends to devolve into pain after some time when the body can no longer adapt to compensate and avoid the pain.
Anyway, back to the fork in the road.
You can choose an ACTIVE method of treatment or a PASSIVE method of treatment. Active treatments involve your participation, and passive treatments involve you having something done to you.
Chiropractic, in it’s simplest form, is passive. You lay on the table and the chiropractor adjusts your spine. Typically, this relieves pain. It typically also returns function, and your spinal joints hurt less because they move normally.
But, and this is a big but (I cannot lie), once you are past the initial phases of care that involve the more passive aspects, what you should involve yourself with is the active component of recovery. The active component is a mix of things, such as:
- Rehab stretches
- Rehab exercises
- Posture changes
- Lifestyle modification
Now, if you are already “sporty”, then all those active components are things you are already working on. You probably don’t need your chiropractor coaching you through those changes. On the other hand, if you are more sedentary and sluggish and you’ve let your physical health problems take root, then you really should stick with treatment until you are not just pain-free but also at a level of function that you find respects your body sufficiently.
So, yeah, that’s the choice you need to internally make as you embark on your recovery from this pain in your back. It’s not just a choice you make once, it’s a choice you re-commit yourself to daily upon waking up.
Either way you go, we aren’t the people who will guilt-trip or condescend to you about it. We will support you in whatever your personal goal is. If you’re ready to try a local Frederick chiropractor, then we would be honored if you choose us. You can contact us here at this link.
Thanks for reading all this!