Suffering from chronic back pain is a cycle that must be continually treated. In this video, a physiotherapist discusses its clinical manifestations and treatment.
To manage chronic back pain, you have to know what's causing it and if it's acute or chronic. In general, chronic back pain is much more difficult to treat because this has a lot more factors that can play a role. For example, even just pain for 2 years or 3 years, a lot of psychological factors can play a role as well.
A lot of people are depressed because of the pain. They can't go to work, they can't go out and exercise, their life is severely debilitated and that causes them, again, more depression. They become living unhealthy, they put weight on, they gain a lot of weight, it's a vicious cycle.
The treatment of acute back pain is much easier. Patients getting to a vicious pain cycle, when pain sets in, your stabilizing muscles of the spine will get weak and they'll shut down and your big mobilizers of your spine will spasm up to protect the spine. When weakness sets in, it would create instability with the spine.
People don't move properly, they don't bend properly, they start using their body differently and this, because of the weakness, the risk of reinjuring the back at the time is very high. It might be a disc that's pushing on the nerve or the fatted joint that's locked or the nerve being irritated. But the patient will have instability.
You'll feel unsafe and vulnerable. When that happens, when you're vulnerable and you move incorrectly or do something that could lead to pain again and the whole vicious cycle, the vicious pain cycle will just keep on repeating itself. It's different from acute back pain cycle.
How we fix this is by controlled strengthening and we do that on the Medics machine and what that leads to is increased back strength. Also massage, you have to understand, is a short term pain relief. It's not going to fix the problem but it's a very good tool also to help patients.
Dry needling, basically the use of acupuncture needles, but what you do with the needle is you go locally into the trigger point. We call it trigger points, these tight areas in the muscles, and that can refer pain to the other areas. What we do with the needle, we go right into the actual trigger point, and what happens when it hits the trigger point is you get a quick reaction and the trigger point dissolves, and also increasing the blood flow in that area.
A lot of therapists out there as well that uses electrotherapy. But for chronic back pain, electrotherapy is a waste of your time and your money. And also with chronic back pain, we have to look at the whole body.
We can't just treat the back. You are a person, there's a lot of aspects to your body, your physical body, so just to isolate an area is incorrect and you'll find the saying in the clinic that you treat the person and not the problem. Alright, so we have to look at what's going up, what's happening up in the spine, on your neck, your upper back, what's going on your hips, your pelvis, are you aligned as well, and that's very important.
So, the winning formula for treating chronic back pain is it's a combination of actually combining spinal mobilizations and manipulations. Move the stiff joints in the back at a certain grade, combining that with soft tissue treatment and controlled strengthening on the Medics machine and also looking at the core, and making sure that your stomach and your core is strong. Some people have depression, a very common factor that these patients are suffering with as well, and that has to be addressed.
So, that's a cap of chronic back pain treatment.
