Low Back Pain Treatment In Portland, ME
Roughly 80% of people will experience low back pain at some point in their lifetime. With a statistic like this, it’s no wonder we treat back pain every single day. Low back pain is often experienced with sitting, bending, driving, sleeping, and even standing. Unfortunately, many cases of low back pain become chronic, and many people experience this pain for years. Read on to learn more about our approach and treatment plan.
Low back pain is often rooted in our daily activities. Most of the activities that trigger back pain are your mundane daily habits that don’t seem like they should be a problem. In many cases, people will describe the pain as “coming out of nowhere” simply because it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact activity that caused the problem.
Low back pain can be complicated, and the first goal is to find out the underlying cause and why your pain won’t go away. Pain in your lower back may be due to an injury to a disc, facet joint, lumbosacral joint, sacroiliac joint, muscle, ligament, or tendon! Regardless of what triggered your injury, low back pain is often associated with limitations in a person’s function. A healthy back is supposed to move in many different ranges of motion and requires both stability AND mobility to work correctly. A person’s alignment, strength, and mobility must be corrected to resolve persistent back pain properly. Without correcting for these underlying issues, your back pain isn’t likely to completely resolve, or it will return after a short period of time.
How We Treat Low Back Pain in Portland, ME
Comprehensive Consultation and Examination
At Chiropractic & Sports Health, we focus on you and your lifestyle to fully understand the cause of your pain. We will take a thorough history of your injury but also look at your daily life and general health history to attain a complete picture of your health and the causes of your pain. While doing so, we will collect knowledge of your current strength, flexibility, posture, and alignment. Once we have gained enough information about you and your back pain, we can answer every patient's question: What’s wrong? How can we help? How long will it take to get better?
Specific Chiropractic Care in Portland, ME
Once we have determined the cause of your injury and created your custom treatment plan, our next step is to start helping you get better! Our treatment methods involve a combination of therapies to help improve your overall function. Each therapy is designed to help you regain strength, mobility, balance, and alignment.
Our chiropractic adjustment is specifically designed to help restore your mobility and alignment. In low back pain cases, many spine joints become stiff and lose their normal range of motion. As chiropractors, our goal is to locate these areas of restriction and restore their proper mobility with the adjustment.
Corrective Exercise
In combination with the adjustments comes your personalized exercise plan. Our office teaches specific treatment protocols for back pain to address the lack of function contributing to an injured low back. Our system typically begins with ergonomics correction, stretches, and mobility drills. As you progress and improve, we build you further with strengthening exercises to help improve your stability. The goal for your care is not a temporary fix but one that will give you long-lasting relief that prevents future issues. Our focused exercise protocols will help you get there.
Muscle Therapy
Sometimes people have more intense muscle spasms and adhesions that limit movement and trigger discomfort. In these cases, we also offer therapies to help reduce pain and loosen tight muscles. These therapies include muscle stimulation therapies and myofascial techniques to help release muscles that are stiffening up. Combining these techniques will help you improve your motion and help keep your joints moving better.
Common Causes of Low Back Pain
Bulged and Herniated Discs
The intervertebral discs, which are the cushion-like structures located between the vertebrae (bones) of the spine, act as shock absorbers and provide flexibility to the spine. They have a gel-like interior and a fibrous exterior.
A bulged disc occurs when the disc's outer layer weakens or becomes damaged, causing the disc to protrude or bulge outward. The bulging typically occurs symmetrically and remains contained within the disc space. It may irritate nearby nerves, leading to pain and other symptoms.
A herniated disc, also called a slipped disc or disc herniation, occurs when the inner core of the disc (nucleus pulposus) ruptures or protrudes through a weakened or torn area of the outer disc layer (annulus fibrosus). This herniation can result in compression or irritation of nearby nerves, causing pain, numbness, tingling, or weakness. A herniated disc can occur anywhere along the spine but is most common in the lower back (lumbar spine) and neck (cervical spine).
Causes of bulged and herniated discs include age-related degeneration, wear and tear on the spine, repetitive motions, improper lifting of heavy objects, sudden trauma or injury to the spine, and underlying spinal conditions such as osteoarthritis or spinal stenosis. Chiropractic care can help restore proper spinal structure to relieve pressure on the disc and allow it to rehydrate and heal.
Facet Joint Dysfunction
Facet joint dysfunction is characterized by pain and dysfunction in the spine's facet joints. The facet joints are small joints located at the back of each vertebra, connecting adjacent vertebrae and allowing for movement and stability of the spine.
Facet joint dysfunction typically causes localized pain in the area of the affected facet joints. The pain is often described as a deep, aching sensation and may be one-sided or bilateral, depending on the involved joints. It can reduce flexibility and range of motion and may be exacerbated by twisting or bending. Facet joint dysfunction can also cause muscle tightness and spasms as the surrounding muscles try to compensate for the compromised joint function.
Facet joint dysfunction can occur due to various factors, including degenerative changes in the spine associated with aging, osteoarthritis, repetitive stress or injury to the facet joints, poor posture, spinal misalignments, or excessive weight-bearing on the joints. Chiropractic care can help restore spinal structure to correct misalignments, relieve nerve irritation and stress causing muscle spasms, and improve posture.
SI Joint Dysfunction
The sacroiliac joints are located in the lower back, where the sacrum (the triangular bone at the base of the spine) connects with the ilium (the large pelvic bones). SI joint dysfunction typically causes pain in the lower back, buttocks, and sometimes the hips or thighs. The pain is often described as a dull ache or sharp, stabbing sensation. It may be one-sided or bilateral, depending on the involvement of the joints.
Certain movements or activities can worsen the pain associated with SI joint dysfunction. These may include standing for prolonged periods, walking, climbing stairs, running, or transitioning from sitting to standing. The pain may also be aggravated by twisting or bending at the waist.
SI joint dysfunction can occur due to various factors, including trauma or injury to the joint, pregnancy and childbirth, degenerative changes in the joint, inflammation (sacroiliitis), or mechanical imbalances in the pelvis or lower spine.
Muscle Strain
A muscle strain, also known as a pulled muscle or muscle tear, refers to an injury when a muscle or its tendons (the fibrous cords that attach muscles to bones) are overstretched or torn. Muscle strains can range from mild to severe, depending on the extent of the injury. They commonly occur during physical activities that involve sudden or forceful movements, excessive stretching, or improper use of muscles.
The most common symptoms of a muscle strain include pain, tenderness, swelling, bruising, and limited range of motion in the affected muscle or joint. In more severe cases, there may be muscle weakness or difficulty using the muscle.
By adjusting the spine and other joints, we can help relieve muscle tension and improve joint mobility. Adjustments may also reduce nerve irritation and enhance the body's natural healing process. Aligning the spinal structure will bring balance to the body and allow the muscles to work as designed. We also provide exercises and stretches to improve flexibility, stability, and muscle balance, to prevent future injury and enhance overall recovery.
Subluxation
A subluxation is a joint that is not properly aligned or functioning optimally. This can occur due to trauma, repetitive stress, poor posture, or muscle imbalances.
Subluxations can create pressure or irritation on nerves, affecting the communication between the brain and the rest of the body. Our nervous system controls every aspect of our body, so a disruption in normal nerve flow can lead to a variety of health problems.
Chiropractic adjustments are our greatest tool to correct these misalignments and restore the body to optimal function. After an exam to locate the subluxation, we use a gentle, specific force on the affected joints restoring proper alignment, relieving nerve pressure, and improving joint function.
Check Out Our Location Near You
Portland
15 Sewall Street
Portland, ME 04102
Phone:
207-347-2205
Frequently Asked Questions
When should I be worried about lower back pain?
Pain is our body’s way of telling us something is wrong. It indicates we should seek a chiropractic assessment to uncover and correct the underlying cause of the low back pain.
What causes lower back pain?
Low back pain has many causes, including spinal misalignment, a herniated or bulged disc, joint dysfunction, or muscle strain. Determining the cause of your low back pain is essential to design an effective treatment plan.
How should I sleep with low back pain?
On your back, with a pillow under your legs, or on your side with a pillow between your legs. This relieves stress on the spine and keeps it in a neutral position. Never sleep on your stomach.
Why won’t my lower back pain go away?
If you’re experiencing chronic low back pain, it is most likely because you haven’t addressed the cause of the problem. Pain medication is only a temporary solution. For long-term low back pain relief, you must address the specific cause of your pain.
How can you tell if your spine is out of alignment?
It is very difficult to identify a subluxation without a chiropractor. Pain may be an indicator, but pain is the last thing to appear after a subluxation and the first thing to disappear. Dysfunction in the body indicates that the nervous system is impaired, and a chiropractic assessment is necessary.