Low back pain affects millions of Americans every year. It starts as something noticeable right away, but slowly begins to affect everyday life. If left untreated long enough, it can affect you not just physically, but mentally too. Our focus is not just to get you out of low back pain today, but to keep you out of it forever. We know that your pain doesn’t just affect you; it can eventually affect your friends, family, and even community when you cannot be at your best.
Low back pain is common today because:
Sedentary lifestyle: Movement is key to helping keep a healthy spine. Unfortunately, today we are seeing more and more jobs becoming sedentary. This shift we are seeing in today’s world is leading to more cases of low back pain because of the increased stress it places on the muscles and ligaments that support the joints.
Poor Posture: Keeping perfect posture would be ideal in a perfect world to keep a healthy spine while sitting for 8 hours a day, but bodies are not designed to sit as long as we do today. When we sit for long periods, we tend to lean to one side, tilt our heads forward, and rotate our shoulders, placing excessive stress on our joints.
Improper lifting: We use our spine constantly. Think of the spine like a frame to a car. It’s constantly at work. When we use poor lifting techniques, it can slowly worsen low back pain, causing our spine to become misaligned. That’s why you never buy a car with a bad frame.
What Can Cause Low Back Pain?
The spine is composed of muscles, joints, nerves, and discs that all contribute to low back pain in unique ways.
Muscles: Your spine is surrounded by muscles. When we put too much stress on this vast muscular system surrounding the spine, it can strain the spine, leading to dull, sometimes achy, low back pain.
Joints: The joints in our spine that link everything together are called the facet joints. When these joints get stressed, they can lead to low back pain. Over time, these joints can develop arthritis, leading to severe, long-lasting low back pain.
Nerves: The nerves surrounding the spine can become irritated, causing shooting or stabbing pain that may even be felt down the legs as a tingling sensation.
Discs: Soft material used as shock absorbers for the spine. When the disc is pushed out of its natural structure, it can put pressure on the nerve, causing unrelenting lower back pain.
Lower back pain can limit your ability to engage in physical activities like hiking, biking, kayaking, fishing, and hunting, as well as everyday outdoor activities. Lower back pain, when left untreated, can make even simple tasks like washing the dishes, walking from room to room, getting out of bed, and performing basic movements feel like a lot of work. When low back pain is managed properly, it helps prevent it from escalating and potentially causing more long-term damage. Untreated, chronic low back pain can lead to health problems like depression, anxiety, incontinence, digestive disorders, infertility, and sleep disorders. Addressing lower back pain is essential to reduce the risk of spinal disease and help you achieve the highest quality of life.
$97 New Patient Special
Includes Consultation, Digital AI Range of Motion Analysis, Digital Posture Analysis, Digital X-rays & Report of Findings
How Our Care Plan Works
1. Discover The True Root Cause
We looking beyond where you feel symptoms to understand what is actually causing them. Instead of offering a short term answer, we focus on correcting the problem at its source to create long term solutions and lasting results.
2. Finally Get Real Solutions
We are not here to simply manage symptoms or provide quick fixes. Our focus is on understanding the true reason behind your condition and correcting it, helping you move beyond the Band Aid approach and toward lasting, meaningful results for your health.
3. Have The Freedom To Fulfill Your Dreams
Your goals become our goals. We are a goal focused practice helping you achieve the health so many people struggle with today. With better health comes the freedom to go after the dreams you’ve set out to achieve.
How We Treat Lower Back Pain In [City, State]
Treatment for lower back pain can vary from patient to patient, because a variety of factors can cause it, and no two people are the same. We take a specialized look at each patient to understand and create a plan to eliminate lower back pain.
Comprehensive Consultation, Exam, and X-rays
This is where the journey begins, and we start to understand your lower back pain better. We have to dive deep into what has caused your lower back pain so we can understand how to correct it. We will examine to confirm exactly what is causing your lower back pain. X-rays will help confirm and further diagnose your lower back pain. To see is to know, and not to see is to guess, and we do not do guesswork in our office.
Specific Chiropractic Care in Duluth MN
Spinal misalignment occurs when one or more vertebrae become misaligned, causing pressure on the adjacent nerve. This will interrupt the signal from the nerve trying to communicate with the muscles and organs. When nerves are compressed, your body sends a signal in the form of pain. This is the body’s natural response, an alarm to your brain saying there is something wrong. We turn the alarms off by making specific adjustments to the spine, placing it back into proper alignment, which takes pressure off the nerves and allows your body to feel and function the way it is supposed to. Aligning the spine not only relieves pressure on the nerve but also slows the rate of degeneration and the loss of space between the vertebrae. This allows the body to age more slowly over time and not break down as quickly.
Custom Therapeutic Exercise Plan
We have specific exercises tailored to your needs that help keep your spine properly aligned. We implement these exercises to create a long-term solution for your low back pain rather than a quick fix.
Hydrowave Therapy
To supercharge your healing, we use Hydrowave Therapy to address your lower back pain. Hydrowave Therapy is the highest class of shockwave therapy (electromagnetic shockwave) used today to help treat lower back pain. Hydrowave Therapy works by sending numerous small acoustic waves into the tissue, tricking it into thinking it is damaged, thereby helping your body release healing factors. This process helps the body release various biochemicals that increase growth hormone levels, stimulate blood flow and collagen production, and encourage cellular repair, thereby promoting the production of new, healthy tissue.
Common Causes of Low Back Pain in Duluth MN
Bulged Lumbar Discs
When we see a bulge in the lumbar spine, it results from the disc pressing on the spinal nerve adjacent to it. The pressure from the disc on the nerve will cause more immediate lower back pain. The disc features a soft, spongy center to help absorb shock and keep the soft material in place. The disc has a fibrous, hard outer layer. A disc bulge occurs when the soft center material protrudes through the outer hard fibrous layer, putting pressure on the nerve and causing lower back pain, as well as numbness, tingling, and weakness in the legs.
Herniated Lumbar Discs
When a bulging disc tears completely and the soft center herniates, it can put pressure on the nerves in the lower back. This can cause severe lower back pain that can be relentless because of the consistent pressure from the disc on the nerve. The herniation can cause extreme pain, which may cause numbness, tingling, foot drop, weakness in the legs, and even incontinence.
Degenerative Disc Disease
Degenerative disc disease occurs when the disc between the vertebrae starts to break down. The disc acts as a shock absorber between the vertebrae, allowing the spine to move in many directions and achieve a certain range of motion. When degeneration occurs, it causes both lower back pain and loss of range of motion, which can be permanent depending on the level of degeneration.
Spinal Stenosis
Spinal stenosis is the narrowing of the spinal canal, which houses the spinal cord and nerve roots. This constriction can pressure the spinal cord and nerve roots, causing pain and other symptoms.
Muscle Strain
Muscle strains occur when muscles are stressed beyond their physical limits. A muscle converges into an end point called a tendon, which attaches to the bone. Muscle strain occurs when the tendon is damaged by being pushed past its physical limit. Muscle strain will cause lower back pain in various areas of the lower back.
Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction (SI Joint Pain)
The SI Joint is made of two parts: The sacrum, which is the center piece of the lower back, and the iliac bones, which are the hip bones that connect to the sacrum. Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction can cause lower back pain by creating abnormal tension between the upper and lower extremities. Inflammation in this area can cause abnormalities in the supporting muscles, abnormal curvature of the lumbar spine, and reduced range of motion.
Facet Joint Dysfunction
Facet Joint dysfunction happens when the facets are stressed past their physical limits. Facets are the links that connect the vertebrae. There is connective tissue that links them, and when that tissue is pushed past its physical limits, it can cause lower back pain, stiffness/soreness, and reduced range of motion.
Subluxation
This term refers to when our vertebra(e) is/are misaligned or not moving properly. This can cause nerve irritation. When the nerve is not working properly, it can lead to lower back pain and also affect joints, muscles, and organs.
Frequently Asked Questions
When Should I Be Worried About Lower Back Pain?
Lower back pain is how our bodies communicate that something is wrong. Pain is almost always the last symptom to show. Therefore, you want to get checked as soon as it is present to avoid something small from becoming chronic. Most of the time, the best time to get checked out was years ago, but you can’t change the past, so the second-best option is now.
What Can I Do to Relieve My Lower Back Pain?
Chiropractic care, spinal adjustments, strengthening/stabilizing exercises, and hydrowave therapy (shockwave) are among the best ways to address the root cause of your lower back pain and find a long-term solution. The best thing you can do is talk with us so we can find the root cause of your pain and provide a plan of action to treat it, not just cover up the symptoms.
How Do I Know if My Back Pain Is Serious?
All pain should be assessed to determine severity. However, some general guidelines might help you assess whether your back pain is serious:
- Pain has lasted more than a few days
- Standing or walking difficulties
- Difficulties urinating or passing stool
- Numbness, tingling, or radiating pain in the legs
- Pain that worsens when you lie down
- A high fever, nausea, or vomiting, in addition to pain
- Unanticipated weight loss
- A cancer history
What Causes Lower Back Pain?
Some of the most common causes of lower back pain include muscular strains or sprains, herniated discs, spinal stenosis, facet joint dysfunction, and degenerative disc disease, among many others. It is always a good idea to consult a healthcare provider for an accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment.
How Should I Sleep With Lower Back Pain?
Sleeping with lower back pain can be very difficult, but here are some steps to help get better sleep tonight.
- Make sure you have a firmer mattress, not too soft. A firm mattress will better support your spine than a softer one.
- Sleeping on your side with a pillow between your knees will keep your spine aligned, taking pressure off it and reducing strain.
- Sleeping on your back with a pillow or a raised surface under your knees will also take pressure off your lower back.
- Do not sleep on your stomach; this will put more pressure on your spine, worsening your lower back pain.
- Stretching before bed will help alleviate pressure and strain on the lower back and improve the quality of your sleep.
How Do I Tell If Lower Back Pain Is Muscle or Disc-Related?
Using examinations and diagnostic testing, we can determine the exact cause of your low back pain and create a long-term solution.
Lower back pain caused by muscle typically feels achy and sore. This kind of low back pain can be improved with movement, ice/heat, or massage. Disc-related lower back pain is sharp, stabbing, unrelenting, and typically made worse by movement.
Can a Chiropractor Help With Lower Back Pain?
Yes! We are experts in lower back pain. We know how to identify the exact cause of your lower back pain and create a plan that won’t just give you a band-aid effect or a short-term fix. We are focused on correcting the problem at its root cause and creating a long-term solution.
$97 New Patient Special
Includes Consultation, Digital AI Range of Motion Analysis, Digital Posture Analysis, Digital X-rays & Report of Findings
