Chronic Back Pain
Chronic back pain can affect all aspects of a person’s life as well as the lives of families and friends. Back pain that has persisted for more than three months is considered chronic. Symptoms may include back or leg pain when standing, walking or sitting, and prolonged morning stiffness. Some people report concurrent sacroiliac or tailbone pain.
Chronic back pain treatment
Clear Passage Therapies® was born as a chronic pain clinic. For several years, 60% of our patients were low back pain patients who had failed to find relief elsewhere. Over the last two decades, we have become experts at treating chronic back pain. Many of our patients have been searching for relief for years before they find us. For most chronic back pain patients, the search for pain relief ends with good or total resolution at one of our clinics.
Treatment methods vary considerably. Many people do not obtain pain resolution after conservative treatment such as traditional physical therapy or medications. Chiropractic care may help temporarily, but unless we treat the strong, underlying adhesions that pull bony structures out of balance, pain resolution does not occur.
Most physicians agree that surgery is a treatment of last resort. While surgery can address adhesions and other mechanical problems, surgery also causes more adhesions to form. We suspect that new adhesion formation is one reason that some people do not obtain lasting pain relief after one or more surgeries. In fact, some people find their pain worsens after surgery.
The primary goals of our manual therapy (Wurn Technique®) are to increase mobility, decrease pain, and restore normal function. We are highly skilled in using our hands to palpate and treat restricted areas of the body. As adhered areas begin to free, pain decreases, and soft tissue mobility improves. For more detailed information on how treatment works and how it feels, see “treatment philosophy” and “what treatment is like.”
The mechanics of chronic low back pain
Posterior aspect of the low back, with support ligamentsImproper pelvic balance can cause chronic back pain.
Two important elements in low back pain are biomechanical and soft tissue dysfunctions of the sacral joints. The sacrum is the body’s center of gravity and stability, simultaneously negotiating forces transferred from above and below it. A complex series of ligaments attach the sacrum to the two large pelvic bones (the ilia), at the sacroiliac joints. In doing so, they help provide a stable transition between the upper and lower body. The sacrum also forms a joint with the fifth lumbar vertebra, the lumbosacral junction, at the base of the spine.
The sacroiliac joints contribute significantly to the stability of the low back, and the lumbosacral junction contributes greatly to low back mobility. Together, these joints and their support ligaments support the entire body above the pelvis. They represent significant structural and functional units when we walk, bend, lift, twist, or perform most activities of daily living.
We find a very high correlation among dysfunctions of the sacroiliac joints, the lumbosacral junction, and low back pain.
How structures are pulled out of balance
All of these structural elements are held together by collagenous soft tissues, such as fascia and ligaments. Collagen is extremely strong, with a tensile strength that has been measured at nearly 2,000 pounds per square inch. When bones and ligaments are in balance, we generally function well, without pain. Yet, if the pelvis, sacrum, and low back are out of alignment, adhesions can form, pulling these structural elements out of their normal balance. When this happens, instability and pain are the near-inevitable result.
Trauma, injury, surgery, or even years of poor posture can cause the body to create additional collagen as a response to inflammation. This new collagen forms glue-like adhesions, binding structures that should be mobile. Once the inflammation has passed, these collagenous adhesions remain in the body as a permanent by-product of healing.
Clear Passage therapists are experts at decreasing and freeing the excess collagen fibers and adhesions that form during the healing process. This has been the focus of our work for most of the last two decades. As we decrease the collagenous bonds pulling your pelvis and low back out of alignment, mobility returns and pain generally decreases significantly. Freed of the glue-like adhesions, most patients find that they can move as they did years ago, before they had pain.
