Lower Back Pain

Lower back pain is one of the most frequent reasons people come to see us.

If you've had an acute low back you'll know just how much we take a normal back for granted.
You start envying anyone who can move normally & you may experience impatience from other people who have never had bad back pain!


Firstly, some re-assurance.

You can have a perfect back on x-ray and still experience severe low back pain.
This is common.  The reverse also applies - x rays that show a lot of wear and tear which is not causing any pain.

In other words, x rays are often of limited value in telling us why someone is in pain.  Having pain doesn't mean you've got severe damage.

Many cases of back pain happen because the spine has become progressively more restricted over time.  The means that movement is not shared between all the spine, but focused too much on one particular section.  This results in too much movement in that section & painful spasm, often with just a trivial movement  (e.g. bending down to pick something small off the floor) .

The good news is that this is usually easy to treat, with significant easing of pain after your first visit and a quick return to normality soon after.

In young adults, disc problems are more common, often caused by bending and lifting.  They cause 'pinched nerves', the best known of which is sciatica, a shooting pain down the back of the leg as far as the foot.  Numbness or tingling in the legs may also be experienced.

Except for the more severe cases, disc injuries do get better, but will often take months to do so, partly because  they are constantly under pressure from the weight of the rest of the body, and also because of the kind of tissue they are made of, which takes longer to mend.  Milder injuries do occur and can resolve quite quickly.

In both cases, our treatments significantly improve comfort levels and your recovery by making sure the rest of the spine and body are able to move as well as possible.  This helps distribute stresses along the whole length of the spine & reducing it on the affected area.

Other causes of low back pain
 

• Fractures.  These are more common in younger adults and may be due to a severe impact.  In the elderly, one has to consider reduced bone density (as in osteoporosis) as a possible cause.  The key to relief is often good management, which is something we can help with.
• Osteoarthritis (wear and tear) affects most people more as they age, though this process can start much earlier with heavy manual jobs or a history of injuries.
• Falls & slips.  These often change the mechanics of the hop bones (the pelvis), resulting in the spine and body resting on an uneven foundation.
• Pregnancy back pain.  Many pregnant women experience back pain and are commonly told that it is ‘normal’ and that there is no effective treatment.  The results we have had say different.

Both the mechanical stresses and the hormonal changes in the body can lead to the onset of this pain. It can also present very early in the pregnancy, particularly if there has been previous back pain history or trauma.
Occasionally the baby can lie on the sciatic nerve in which case treatment may not help.

Osteopathic treatment is usually effective & SAFE for both mother & child within a short number of treatments .

During delivery the tissues in the pelvis are easily strained and may not return to their normal position when the delivery is over. Typically the woman should be pain free within two weeks of delivery although it can take longer to feel that her pelvis has returned to normal.

Again treatment at this stage can be very effective.