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“I was in constant pain. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t function. My family was falling apart. I didn’t know what to do.” –Carl White, father, chronic pain sufferer
People who aren’t in constant pain don’t understand the toll it takes, and how desperate the search is for a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN. There’s more to the experience than just the never-ending push-you-to-your-limits pain. Pain diminishes life. It depletes bank accounts, devastates relationships, and limits potential. And when you’ve tried anything and everything to get relief, and you’re still in pain, it’s easy to believe you’re going to have to learn to live with it.
The tricky thing about this “You-Have-to-Live-With-It” myth is that it’s real message is obscured. Let me show you:
* It’s an incomplete sentence. The full message is, “You’re going to have to learn to live with the pain because this is as good as it’s going to get.” It means your best days are behind you and it’s all downhill from here, might as well not even find a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN. Until you take your last breath, this pain will remain a big part of your life.
* It’s sugar-coated. Learn to live with pain? Hardly. You’ll never learn to live with pain. It doesn’t work that way. At best, you put up with suffering through it maybe see a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN every once in a while. Not being able to play with your kids—that’s suffering through it. Not being able to go for a walk—that’s suffering through it. Not being able to sleep a full night—that’s suffering through it. When we start to believe this lie, we accept not only the sensation of pain as a part of our life, but also all of the restrictions, limitations, and lack-of-life that comes with it.
Laid bare, the real message is: “You’re just going to have to suffer through it because this is as good as it’s going to get.” And it’s the first myth of this kind. All the myths up to this point entice you with the possibility of getting better, but this one is the opposite. It leads you to believe there’s no hope and no end in sight for your misery. That’s enough to cause fear in even the toughest pain sufferer.
Before I as a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN reveal the truth behind this myth, let’s uncover how it leads to one of the most dangerous and hard-to-get-rid-of habits that will keep you in pain: fear-avoidance behaviors.
As humans, we are hardwired to avoid pain. When we do something that causes pain, we quickly develop fear around doing that thing again. In most cases, like touching a hot iron, this is good because it protects us from injury, but with back and neck pain, it’s a different story.
When you find a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN you’ll learn that your spine requires stress to stay strong, movement to stay mobile, and activity to keep you pain-free. If every time you vacuum, your back is thrown into thunderous spasms, you’re going to avoid vacuuming for as long as possible. That’s where the problem starts because vacuuming stresses your back and that stimulation keeps it strong. The same could be said for just about any activity that involves moving your back and neck throughout the day. So if you stop vacuuming, you stop stressing your back, and by doing so, your back will grow weak, which leads to more pain. For someone in constant pain, where the slightest thing causes pain, this turns into a very sticky mess.
Everyday activities get increasingly difficult, and as a result of this, we avoid doing more, which causes more weakness, more pain… and soon the fear of doing things spreads to other areas of your life, as does the pain. One author put it this way: “Pain-related fear leads to a cycle of decreased movement, inflammation, nervous system sensitization, and further decreased mobility.”(54)
Another way to think about it: engineers tell us that if our car sits out in the driveway, it will rust faster than it will wear out cruising the open roads. It’s true that if you drive a car eventually it will break down and need to be repaired, but that doesn’t stop you from driving, does it? Of course not. We all know that’s a part of the deal. You’ll here a similar story from a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN, it’s the same thing with pain: you can’t let it stop you from using your body; not using it will cause it to breakdown so much faster than it should, and you’ll be a lot worse off.
And that’s why this myth is so dangerous. If you believe that your back and neck pain is as good as it’s going to get, you are also going to believe there’s no point in trying to get it to improve with a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN. These beliefs go hand-in-hand with each other. And if you surrender and start doing less, you will become weaker and forced to suffer through the agony of more pain.
As a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN I’ve worked with people firsthand where this cycle has progressed so far, and their pain has become so bad that they don’t feel life is worth living any more.
Don’t give into this myth—it’s a lie.
The truth is that there is always potential for your back and neck pain to improve. Always. You might have problems with your spine—and if you’re reading this, they’re probably big problems—but that does not mean you have to suffer the rest of your life.
In another article, you’re going to have a big epiphany when you learn the “Five Daily Habits”, especially when you learn how easy they are to make a part of your routine. These habits along with seeing a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN will keep you from developing these “avoidance behaviors” because they do one thing: make your spine healthier by improving how you use it. I’m excited to share these insights with you, but before we do–you guessed it—we have another myth to bust, our last.
* MYTH: “You’re as good as you’re going to get. It’s best if you just learn to live with the pain.” This myth is a full frontal attack on the most important characteristic of getting pain-free: hope.
* TRUTH: You can never get as good as you’re going to get, and if you surrender and “learn to live with pain”, you begin down a slippery slope that leads to more pain. You can always do something to improve. In fact, I’ll prove it to you right now. Did you know that a small study in 2001 showed that monosodium glutamate (MSG) —a flavor enhancer found in everything from ranch dressing to fast-food restaurant meat—causes pain nerves (Nociceptors) to become sensitized? And that people who eliminated it from their diet for four consecutive months all but eliminated their chronic pain symptoms? (55) I’m guessing you didn’t know that. I’m guessing no doctor or guru has told you that. But that’s what I mean when I say there is always something you can do to improve. Don’t give up. Keep reading and find a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN.
Big Pharma has worked hard to make sure we as Chiropractor of Little Falls MN recognize their products and they work even harder sweeping the dangerous and downright deadly side effects of these pills under the rug. Well, it’s time we pull the rug out from under them and expose the truth.
Acetaminophen (example: Tylenol and Excedrin): It’s the deadliest over-the-counter pain reliever on the market (6), and the nation’s leading cause of acute liver failure (7). Although, it is the drug people tell this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN they use most often, Federal data shows that every year this drug is responsible for sending as many as 78,000 Americans to the emergency room due to overdose (8). This is partly because liver damage can occur from taking a smaller amount than you might think. According to the FDA, taken over several days, as little as 25 percent above the maximum daily dose of 4 grams (or just two additional extra strength pills a day) has been reported to cause liver damage (9).
Ibuprofen, naproxen, aspirin (example: Advil, Motrin, and Aleve): According to the New England Journal of Medicine, every year these drugs-non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) cause at least 16,500 Americans to bleed to death, making them the 15th most common cause of death in the U.S. (10).
All of these over-the-counter pills are like traitorous double agents. On one hand, they’re on your side providing temporary relief, but their true mission, unlike that of a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN is to simply sabotage your health. Here an example of what I mean. If you take a thousand acetaminophen pills in your lifetime (less than two per month), you double your risk of your kidneys shutting down permanently (11). And here’s another one: In 2009, a study in the journal Neurology showed that those who took the most NSAIDs increased their risk of Alzheimer’s by 66 percent (12).
Of course, the drug giants have made darn sure these Meds are never more than a hop, skip, and a jump away for all of our Chiropractor of Little Falls MN patients. But what about the pain Meds that you can’t pick up at your neighborhood convenience store? What about the ones that require a prescription?
Prescription drugs are obviously harder to obtain because you need your doctor or Chiropractor of Little Falls MN to prescribe them and you can’t simply waltz into a drugstore, grab them off the shelf, and pop them to your heart’s content. Nevertheless, in spite of that level of scrutiny and control, the amount of prescription medication consumed by Americans is mind-boggling. Over a ten-year period (1999-2010) the number of prescription painkillers sold in doctors’ offices and pharmacies quadrupled. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that in the year 2010 alone, “Enough prescription painkillers were prescribed to medicate every American adult around-the-clock for a month.”(13)
Take a moment and let that soak in, then call a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN to talk about a better way to handle the pain.
While the potency of prescription medications makes them more effective at relieving pain, they also come with a smaller margin for error. Meaning, fewer pills can cause more damage. Which is the reason why a prescription is needed to obtain them in the first place. The prescription gives the doctor or Chiropractor of Little Falls MN control over the dosage and therefore lessens the risks.
But what if the doctors and Chiropractor of Little Falls MN are misled? What if they aren’t told the whole truth behind the medication they’re prescribing? What havoc does the potency of these pain relievers wreak then? Take a deep breath because we’re about to dive into two examples where that’s exactly what happened:
Vioxx: Distributed worldwide, this painkiller was considered to be a “blockbuster” because it averaged over a billion dollars in sales annually (14,15) — that’s a lot of pills being sold. A short while after being on the market a major problem was found:
Taking it skyrocketed the chances of heart attack or stroke by up to 500 percent! (16) Did Merck, the developer, warn doctors of the risk and immediately pull it off the market? Nope. Not a chance. Because of a cat-and-mouse game so complex that entire books (and now mentioned in this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN book) have been written about it, five years passed before it was finally taken off the market. By then, it was too late. The damage had already been done: it had contributed to between 88,000-140,000 heart attacks, about half of them fatal. (17) Blockbuster? More like executioner.
Celebrex: This drug was found to triple the risk of heart attack or stroke for those taking it. (18) But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Celebrex claimed to be easier on the stomach than more established drugs—a considerable selling point to doctors and patients alike. It even had a six-month study to prove it. Not to this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN surprise, it was all a hoax. You see, the actual study was for an entire year, but the researchers simply failed to mention the second half of that study which happen to prove that it wasn’t better at protecting the stomach whatsoever. Why the smoke and mirrors? Perhaps it has something to do with Celebrex racking up more than $2.4 billion in sales. (19)
I hope you’re starting to see that “take a pill and the pain will simply disappear” is as far from the truth as north is from south and that depending on pain Meds to get through your day may be more beneficial for Big Pharma’s pocket book than your health. Speak with a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN in order to learn about better solutions.
A side note: It’s undeniable that both Vioxx and Celebrex relieved pain, but they did so while hurting a lot of people. Through this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN website I’m going to unveil a method to eliminate back and neck pain that is without any of the dangerous side effects and smoke-and-mirrors you’ve read about so far. Although you have a bit of reading to get through before you’re there, while we’re here now, let me whet your appetite by giving you a glimpse of the effectiveness of this method: a 2003 study published in the research journal Spine showed that just one component of this approach was 500 percent more effective at relieving chronic back and neck pain than either Vioxx or Celebrex. (20) Pretty exciting, huh?
The last type of prescription medication we’ll address is one we’ve all know there’s a problem with, but what you might not be aware of is how bad the problem has become.
Opioids: (for example: Vicodin, Oxycodone, Oxymorphone, Demerol, Percocet, Methadone, Hydrocodone, and Norco): If there were a “weapon of mass destruction” in the pain medication world, this would be it. How bad are these drugs we and Chiropractor of Little Falls MN wonder? Dr. Gary Franklin, neurologist and medical director for Washington State Department of Labor & Industries, said, “We’ve seen more than 100,000 deaths between 1999 and 2010, almost twice as many as U.S. casualties in the Vietnam War. In addition, we have millions of people who have become dependent or addicted, who will never be off Opioids, and who will never be helped by these drugs.”
And currently they’re causing 15,000 deaths per year. (21) Their side effects are no walk in the park either ranging from drowsiness and dizziness to confusion, severe constipation, ruptured bowels, depression, coma, suffocation, and more pain. (22)
Let’s take a quick time out and clear up one thing. I as a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN am not saying that pain-suppressing drugs have no place in healthcare. When used at the right time and for the right reasons, pain medications are good. On the other hand, if we believe something as foolhardy as “If I’m in pain I can take a pill and it will simply disappear” chances are we’ll use pain Meds at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons which can result in very serious problems. As a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN, I think we all can agree on that. Dr. Virgil V. Strang, Dean of Philosophy and Director of Professional Ethics, Palmer College of Chiropractic, put it perfectly into perspective when he said, “It is one thing to offer pain suppressing drugs to a dying 85-year-old; it is quite different to administer painkillers to a 20-year-old who has fallen on his buttocks.”
Certainly, there are times when taking something to help with the pain is absolutely necessary and there are other times when it’s not. Knowing that difference and being aware of the risks involved is an important step toward getting your back and neck healthy and pain-free.
And the issues mentioned in this article are just the tip of the iceberg—not good news for pain sufferers.
You’ll discover more by reading our next Pain Myth or by call thing this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN.
* MYTH: “Take something for the pain, and it’ll simply disappear.” Drug companies have repeated this line for decades for one reason: to get you to buy their product so that they can make money. Don’t fall for it. It’s a lie. Pain medication may help you feel better, but it does so while leaving the cause of your pain unaddressed. It’s a short-term fix, not a long-term solution like getting a health care plan from a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN.
* TRUTH: All pain medications have side effects. Some are worse than others, and all are worse than what Big Pharma wants us to believe. The way to get back and neck pain to disappear is not found in a pill that overrides the body. It will, however, be found in a proven method by a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN that works with the body. It’s as simple as that.
Twisted together like the snake and the staff, doctors and drug companies have become entangled in a web of interactions as controversial as they are widespread.
—Arnold Relman, M.D., Harvard medical professor
When we go to the doctor or even a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN, we assume they want only what’s best for us—which is certainly true. The vast majority of doctors become doctors because they want to heal sick people. That much is obvious. What isn’t as obvious, in fact what been hidden from public view, are the tactics big drug companies use to influence what’s on the minds of our doctors when they see us.
Whatever amount of time, energy, and money Big Pharma spends on convincing me and you to buy their specific brands, that pales in comparison to the resources they devote to sway our doctors. Why? They know that doctors or sometimes Chiropractor of Little Falls MN are the gatekeepers to our pocketbook because only they have the power to prescribe medication. So let’s pull back the curtain and expose the truth behind this next myth.
1) Early bird gets the worm. Drug companies know that getting in with doctors and Chiropractor of Little Falls MN when they’re younger is key to persuading those doctors to continue to prescribe their brand when they’re older. That’s why you find Big Pharma’s presence at nearly every medical school across the country where students are provided with free pizza, pasta, pens, and all manner of perks. This may seem like no big deal, but that’s exactly what they want you to believe. In 2004 the New England Journal of Medicine published an eye-opening article by a group of investigators who said that, “even small gifts create a sense of indebtedness, which can lead to inappropriate prescribing.” (23) The old saying is true: there is no such thing as a free lunch.
2) Train of Thought. Not even the teachers and researchers can escape the reach of the drug giants’ grasp. Like an infection, Big Pharma’s influence has spread to the highest levels of research, making it nearly impossible to find a senior medical researcher who isn’t in bed with them.24 This is a problem because it’s through research that doctors and Chiropractor of Little Falls MN know what the best course of action is for you. Harvard professor Arnold Relman, a noted critic of the cozy relationship between medical practitioners and the drug industry, pulls no punches: “The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research.” And later saying that, “Academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.” (24) †
3) Repetition. Repetition. Repetition. Every day in the U.S. about 100,000 sales representatives visit doctors and Chiropractor of Little Falls MN—ranging from family doctors to those in the ER. (25) Targeting doctors is considered so critical to the drug industry that they shell out at least $21,000 per doctor per year bombarding them with marketing material designed to persuade them to prescribe you their latest product. (26) This is the pharmaceutical companies’ favorite marketing tool for one reason: it is unnervingly effective. You’ll find out how good the return on their investment is in a moment. These tactics, though, have been going on for so long that one frustrated researcher said that “these aggressive, over-the-top marketing practices ‘are virtual fixtures in medical practice.’” (26)
And that’s not the scary part.
4) The scary part is this: while most doctors and Chiropractor of Little Falls MN accept this is going on, most reject the possibility that it actually affects them. Yet another researcher, had this to say: “My criticism is of the naiveté of doctors and/or their unwillingness to accept overwhelming evidence that the techniques used by the industry to increase prescribing their products actually work.” (27)
How well their tactics work is a lot more hair-raising.
Brace yourself.
(†) If you want to learn more about this or maybe you don’t believe me, I suggest reading the research article that is referenced in this paragraph. It’s absolutely startling.
Since the early 1990s, the number of prescriptions that Americans consume has nearly doubled. (28) In 2011 this came to roughly thirteen prescriptions for every man, woman, and child. (29) When you boil this down, it means that we are consuming 25 million pills… not per year… not per week… not per day… but per hour. (30)
That’s a lot of medication. And for the ever-greedy drug companies, that’s a lot of money. Since 1997, the amount Americans spend on prescription drugs has increased 392 percent. (24) And in 2015 the drug giants generated a whopping $309.5 billion. (31) If you were to have that amount of money in one hundred dollar bills stacked end-to-end, it would reach the moon’s surface. And, you’d still have millions left over.
It’s obvious that drug companies do not have your best interests in mind. As said earlier, their main interest is making money. But what about our doctors and Chiropractor of Little Falls MN who are caught in the middle of all this?
Let me be clear. Doctors and Chiropractor of Little Falls MN are caring and smart people who are where they are and do what they do because they want to help people like me and you. Doctors do have your best interests in mind, but they’re busy and overloaded with patients. Plus, there is an overwhelming onslaught of new research to absorb almost daily. And they can’t learn everything in all their years at med school. So when you combine all of this with Big Pharma’s influence in schools, hospitals, and clinics, it’s impossible that your best interests are the only thing on your doctor’s mind.
What do you do? I, as a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN will do my best showing you exactly what to do to become pain-free, but for right now, rest assured that being aware of this myth as you seek help with your pain is part of the solution.
* MYTH: Doctors have only your best interests in mind. Doctors are targeted early and often by the major drug corporations in a relentless attempt to persuade them to use the products that they sell.
* TRUTH: Doctors and Chiropractor of Little Falls MN do have your best interests in mind, but it’s not the only thing on their mind. So if you’re in pain and you’re headed to the doctor or any other health care professional’s office, recognize that they’re human and not without flaws.
Doctors are great as long as you don’t need them. —Edward E. Rosenbaum, author “A Taste of My Own Medicine: When the Doctor Is the Patient”
If you’re like most people, when there’s a problem with your health, you call the doctor, or a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN, and for good reason. Right? After all, it’s well known that doctors invest years learning all about the human body and have by far the most experience. It’s understandable, therefore, that as a group, they are regarded as the foremost authority on health. That’s why since your childhood, it’s been drummed into you to “follow your doctor’s orders” and “do as the doctor says.” The drug industry certainly recognizes their authority by ending every commercial with the same line: “Talk to your doctor to see if our drug is right for you.”
And, in many, many circumstances it’s absolutely true that “doctor or Chiropractor of Little Falls MN, knows best.”
There is one instance where it is often not true, and that’s when you’re in pain. In her book, A Nation in Pain, Judy Foreman tells us that: “Pain is the main reason that patients go to doctors, but most doctors know almost nothing about it, much less how to treat it.” How can this be? How come the people who are the authority on the human body know alarmingly little about pain?
It goes back to doctors’ days at med school when they are taught less about pain than you’d expect (and hope). Let me be the first to acknowledge: Becoming a doctor, or a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN, is no small feat. Thousands of hours are spent in classrooms learning everything from chemical reactions to how to do CPR. On top of that, a would-be doctor spends untold hours studying outside of the classroom, not to mention the seemingly never-ending hoops they have to jump through: pop quizzes, reports, midterms, finals, and expensive board exams. Trust me, I’ve been there, and it’s exhausting.
That’s part of the reason why I, as a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN, was shocked when I read what the John Hopkins Pain Curriculum Development Team found and published in The Journal of Pain (2011) about the amount of time devoted to teaching medical students about pain, and how to treat it. Here’s a direct quote: “A large number of U.S. medical schools are not reporting any teaching of pain.” The emphasis is mine here because it’s so hard to believe. Even in the “better” medical schools, the average time spent on pain education is only nine hours. (32) That’s not nine hours a semester or nine hours a year—that’s nine hours stretched over four years. You can’t get good at playing the kazoo in nine hours, much less learn the ins and outs of pain relief.
Before I go any further, please don’t feel I’m taking cheap shots at my brethren medical practitioners. Other health care specialties like Chiropractor of Little Falls MN, physical therapy, massage therapy, and acupuncture have their own shortcomings when it comes to pain education. For example, a sizable sector in chiropractic considers pain a four-letter-word not to be repeated. “We don’t treat pain. We only eliminate Subluxations (‡)” is the mantra they shout. I’ve even heard practice management groups advise to not talk about pain because “once the pain is gone, the patient is gone.” All the while, millions of Americans are having difficulty getting out of bed in the morning.
It’s madness!
Perhaps you’d like to know who gets closer to ninety hours of pain education during their training? Veterinarians. (33) This means that Fido has a better chance of getting rid of his back pain than you do.
But what about doctors and Chiropractor of Little Falls MN once they are in the trenches, seeing patients day in and day out? You can be excused for thinking that they will quickly compensate for the shortfalls in the education system and get up to speed. But you’ll want to think again. Pouring more salt on the wound, a 2007 study published in the American Journal of Medical Sciences, which involved twelve medical research centers, revealed that, out of 500 doctors who were seeing patients, only one-third felt comfortable treating someone who had chronic pain. (34) This means that if you’ve been suffering from a pain for more than three months, chances are your doctor or Chiropractor of Little Falls MN, has to take a deep breath and gather his thoughts before walking into the examination room with you.
(‡) Subluxation is a medical term used to describe a dysfunctional spinal joint that interferes with the nervous system.
Not good news for pain sufferers, and not breaking news to the healthcare industry.
In a major report, the Institute of Pain recognized that: “Most people are cared for by primary care physicians who likely received little initial training or experience in best practices for pain management.” They continue, “Too many physicians harbor outmoded or unscientific attitudes toward pain and people with pain.” (35)
Most doctors (and there are exceptions to the rule) are not your best choice when it comes to the treatment of pain but a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN is.
That being said, some doctors and Chiropractor of Little Falls MN are specially trained to handle pain. When it comes to them, it’s no longer a matter of “Does the doctor know how to get me out of pain?” but rather “HOW does the doctor know how to get me out of pain?” You need to know what to look for in a specialist doctor so you don’t ruin your chances of ever becoming pain-free.
“I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” — Dr. Abraham Maslow, Psychologist
When a doctor is trained in a certain way, she filters problems and conditions through that training. A surgeon, for example, has a surgical filter. When a person with neck or back pain goes to a surgeon, that doctor’s job is to determine whether or not surgery is a good option. If you go to a physical therapist, it’s the same thing. With their physical therapy filter, their job is to determine if physical therapy is a good option. This rule applies across all of health care, ranging from neurologists to nurses to Naturopaths.
What’s the problem here?
The problem, and it’s a big one, is that because of this, health care professionals tend to make patients fit the treatment they offer, instead of ensuring that the treatment fits the patient. That’s part of the reason why nearly 25 percent of all medical procedures and tests are considered unnecessary—which affects tens of thousands of people and costs millions of dollars. (36, 37) The bottom line: many things seem like “good” options, but only a few things are the “right” option.
I as a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN have seen this as particularly true when it involves back and neck pain. Take the word of Gordon Waddell, an international authority on back and neck pain, when he says, “Much of the health care we give for back pain is inappropriate. Too often, the choice of treatment reflects the skills of the professional rather than the needs of the patient. To put it simply, what treatment you receive depends more on who you go to see than on what is wrong with your back.”
Pain sufferers, how do you know if the health professional or Chiropractor of Little Falls MN you call for an appointment is going to give you the care you need? Keep reading. In the article: “Discover The Solution,” I will tell you the exact kind of treatment proven to be the best, as well as the exact kind of specialist to seek in order to ensure that the treatment is designed specifically for you.
Stick with this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN here. We’re making good time uncovering these pain myths and exposing the truth. If you’ve been suffering from back and neck pain, sooner or later, you’ll reach a point where enough is enough. You’re willing to try almost anything, which sets you up perfectly for the next pain myth.
* MYTH: “The doctor knows best.” Considering all of the education it takes to become a doctor, and taking into account that pain is one of the main reasons people seek medical attention, you would think that a doctor would know the best way to eliminate your pain. Unfortunately, for the most part, that isn’t the case.
* TRUTH: A significant percentage of healthcare professionals receive an upsettingly small amount of education about pain, and this is compounded by the limitations that come with their specialty. It is crucial to find the right doctor or specialist or Chiropractor of Little Falls MN who can provide the right treatment to become pain-free.
Since when did we start asking “I wonder WHICH medication or procedure is right for me?” instead of asking the real question “I wonder IF medications or procedures are right for me?”—Dr. Ben Grams, Chiropractor of Little Falls MN
Millions have bought into the lie that if one medication doesn’t relieve your pain, another one will instead of seeking help from someone like a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN. It may have to be stronger. You may need a doctor’s prescription. It may cost you an arm and a leg—heck, you may have to insert, infuse, or inject the medication into your arm and your leg—but, by golly, it’s going to work.
Pain sufferers aren’t the only ones who have fallen for this lie; the whole pain industry, including most doctors and a few Chiropractor of Little Falls MN, have too. We’ve come to think that the answer to back and neck pain is 1) better forms of medication delivered more specifically and/or 2) technology applied more directly. When ice, rest, pain pills, and muscle relaxants—the standard medical approach for back and neck pain—have failed (big surprise) the next step is onto a slippery slope: invasive procedures.
Before I as a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN explain how all medications and invasive procedures—which is any treatment that requires the breaking of skin for direct entry into the body are fundamentally flawed and will never, ever be able to get you pain-free I want to bust a myth behind a type of treatment that is performed on thousands of pain sufferers every day.
“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result”
— Albert Einstein
For nearly half a century, chemicals ranging from Botox (a toxin that paralyzes muscles) to lidocaine (what dentists use to numb your teeth) have been loaded into syringes and injected into the sorest spots of people’s necks and backs, such as the:
– Epidural space: the area surrounding your spinal cord (the procedure is better known as an “epidural.”)
– Facets: small joints that stabilize your spine.
– Trigger points: ultra-knotted parts of tight muscle.
– Nerve: the nerve that is transmitting the pain (the procedure is better known as a “nerve block.”)
The whole idea is to inject numbing chemicals into the painful areas… and hope for the best. Please, don’t fall victim to this myth but consult this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN. These procedures are not all they’re cracked up to be.
First, they come with substantial side effects, including bleeding ulcers, bone death, osteoporosis, and infection. Second, millions have undergone these procedures only to have their hopes of pain free living dashed.
Here’s why:
* You might as well be injected with salt water. In 2009, a study headed by Richard Deyo, MD, professor and co-editor of the book Evidence-Based Clinical Practice found that corticosteroid injections (more commonly known as cortisone) were no more effective at relieving lower back pain than “sham” injections that used only salt water. (39) A 2011 study published in the British Medical Journal showed the same. (40)
* If you get relief, it’s not going to last. If injections succeed in actually numbing you, that relief, on average, lasts only eight to twelve weeks. (41) Why such a short time? Because the underlying problem causing the pain is still there, but you can’t feel it. That’s why a doctor recommending only an injection is like a mechanic slapping a piece of duct tape over your check-engine light. Because if the underlying problem is not fixed, sooner or later, something is going to blow.
* Every single one weakens you—100 percent of the time. The same study that found that NSAIDs hurt you also found that corticosteroid injections hinder how you heal on a microscopic level, disrupt vital chemical processes, and ultimately suppress the very function of the tissue they’re used on. These authors conclude by warning that corticosteroids (and NSAIDS) are, “no longer recommended for chronic soft tissue injuries or for acute ligament injuries, except for the shortest possible time, if at all.” (42)
I don’t know about you, but if that is the best I can hope for, then count me out. What boggles my mind as a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN—and I hope you also see the insanity behind it—is that despite all the evidence against injections, they’re still given every day. Why? Maybe it’s because insurance companies are still willing to pay for them, which means less out-of-pocket expenses for we consumers. Maybe it’s the want of getting out of pain now, and the hope it can be done in a single, in-and-out procedure. Or maybe it’s that hospitals and clinics are caught in their old habits.
Who knows?
After all, if the injection didn’t work, don’t worry. There’s plenty more where that came from.
Technology is great, isn’t it? We can talk to a loved one across the country in an instant. All the information the world has ever created is a click away. We have TV, running water, air conditioning, and airplanes. In a lot of ways technology has bettered our lives. It has not, however, bettered your chances of getting rid of nagging back and neck pain.
More and more procedures are being developed that harness the power of technology to propel people out of pain. The pain industry has been climbing this ladder of “technological advances” for years, and can now do things that were once thought impossible. This is fine except for one very important, very crucial thing: for back and neck pain, the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. Before I as a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN describe this fundamental flaw, here are some examples of other techie, and mostly disappointing, invasive procedures.
* DENERVATION a.k.a. NERVE KILLING: It’s exactly as it sounds. Doctors use alcohol, scalpels, or lasers, with the assistance of advanced imaging, to kill nerves that detect pain. At best, it’s somewhat helpful in the short term. In the long term, when you cut through a nerve, you injure it, so when (not if) it grows back, it is damaged and sensitized, which means more pain in the long run.
* PAIN PUMPS: A doctor inserts a pump under the skin, runs a catheter from the pump to the low back, and programs the pump to deliver pain-numbing medications. Of course, with any surgery, there’s a risk, but once the pump is inserted, there’s the added risk, albeit small, of the catheter kinking, tearing, leaking, and causing drug overdose or under dose. (43)
* ELECTRIC STIMULATION: This is a techie way to trick the brain not to feel pain. By electrically stimulating non-pain nerves, the brain is prevented from feeling pain from the pain nerves. This procedure has many names: Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS), Peripheral Nerve Field Stimulation (PNFS), Spinal Cord Stimulation (SCS), and Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). Each one is more invasive than the last and brings with it more risk.
None of these work for everyone, and all of these—as well as injections and medications—are based on a myth that has led to the dismay and suffering of millions. This myth is the fundamental flaw I was talking about earlier.
Let me stop being a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN for a moment and tell you a short story to illustrate the point.
On the verge of retirement, a school custodian is training his replacement. One day, right before the lunch bell, they walk into the cafeteria and are shocked to see that the floor is covered in water.
The newbie grabs a mop and bucket and frantically starts mopping. He looks up to see the soon-to-be retiree leisurely walking away.
“What are you doing? I need your help!”
Without a glance in the direction of the trainee, the old custodian turns a corner, disappearing from view. “He must know where some better mops are,” thought the young custodian as he surveyed the water-covered landscape before him. “We’re gonna need them if there’s any chance of cleaning up this mess before lunch.” Moments later, he sees the old custodian reemerge empty-handed.
The young apprentice’s face turns red and a vein pops out in his forehead as he shouts, “What on earth were you doing? I’m over here toiling away while you’re acting like you’re on a Sunday morning stroll!”
With a look of wisdom, the old custodian grabs the remaining mop and with a half-grin says, “You have to turn off the leaking faucet before you can clean up the mess.”
Pain is a mess and it’s also the mess. Pain is a result of something going wrong in your body, and all the interventions we’ve talked about so far are mops trying to clean it up. Nothing more, nothing less.
I promise you as a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN that the reason you’re in pain is not because of a lack of medication or a lack of procedures. Your neck does not hurt because you are deficient in ibuprofen, nor does your lower back hurt because your injection levels are “below normal” or because you missed your mandatory, annual electric stimulation session.
Let me reiterate: Any pill, injection, or procedure is a mop, trying to clean up the mess of pain, and sometimes they are absolutely necessary. But if the problem that is actually causing the pain—the leaking faucet—isn’t fixed by someone like a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN, you will never, ever be pain-free. There’s no getting around that fact. The pain industry, drug giants, and apparently many doctors and health care professionals, either don’t understand or refuse to recognize this. That’s why more people are suffering from pain than ever before: the approach to eliminating pain has been one-sided.
Here’s the good news: I’m going tell you as a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN exactly what can be causing your back and neck pain. In a different article, you’ll learn about “The Vicious Cycle.” I know you’ll have a “Eureka!” moment as you read it.
* MYTH: “In pain? Yeah, there’s a procedure for that.” One can do a lot of things to find relief: injections, denervation, pain pumps, and electric stimulation, to name a few. Many of them might even be considered “good options” and provide temporary relief.
* TRUTH: None of them are the right option in and of themselves. That designation is reserved for the treatment that actually addresses whatever problem is causing the pain.
The rapid and enthusiastic expansion of disc surgery soon exposed its limitations and failures. It was accused of leaving more tragic human wreckage in its wake than any other operation in history.
–Allan & Waddell, A Historical Perspective On Low Back Pain and Disability, 1989
Surgery is the sacred cow of our healthcare system and surgeons are the sacred cowboys who milk it.
–David Spodick, MD, professor at the University of Massachusetts
Whether you like it or not, if you’re in pain long enough, eventually you’ll find yourself in a surgeon’s office instead of a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN. It’s there that some pain sufferers are told to go under the knife because it’s their best option for relief. Others are told that it’s their only option. It’s all a lie. The truth is that surgery is the worst option, period.
What pain sufferers aren’t told is that by trying to cut out the pain, they’re really cutting away their only chance of ever becoming pain-free. Let me, as a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN, show you why.
The idea behind a spinal fusion is not complicated: if a spinal joint is causing trouble, bind it to the good joints neighboring it. That way, it can’t be trouble anymore or so this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN hoped. When fusions first arrived on the scene, they were touted as the perfect fix for back and neck pain. It didn’t take long before the number of spinal fusion procedures skyrocketed.
This was fine, except that years later, after millions of operations had been performed, one very real, very permanent problem began to surface. Many spinal surgery patients learned the hard way that however bad your back and neck was before, after a fusion it can be much worse.
In 2011, the journal Spine published an article where researchers reviewed the records of 1,450 patients who were suffering from disc degeneration, disc herniation, or radiculopathy—a nerve condition that causes tingling, numbness, pain, or weakness in the limbs. What they found was shocking: having a spinal fusion increases the risk of being permanently disabled by 500 percent.
That doesn’t sound like a “perfect fix” to me or any other Chiropractor of Little Falls MN.
These 1,450 patients were people whose pain was so bad they couldn’t work, so when the researchers looked to see how many people had returned to work after spinal fusion surgery, they discovered that 74 percent of those who had the operation still weren’t back to work two years later.
Not only that, they found that over a quarter of spinal fusion patients had to have additional surgeries. (44) Considering that success rates plummet to 30 percent after a second spine surgery, 15 percent after a third, and approximately 5 percent after a fourth (45), you may start to wonder why spinal fusions are done at all. That’s a good question with a not-so-nice answer. But before I tell you what it is, let’s look at the other kind of spinal surgery are options instead of seeing a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN.
Instead of fusing segments, the other form of spinal surgery involves cutting away parts of the spine in the hope of relieving pain. Here are the most common types:
* Disc-ectomy: When a piece of your intervertebral disc (spinal cushion) gets chopped off. Usually done when there’s a herniation or bulged disc.
* Lamin-ectomy: When bone located on the back part of the spinal column is removed. Usually due to a disc problem or degeneration.
* Foramen-ectomy: When bone or tissue clogging the passageway for the nerve gets drilled clean. While this type of spinal surgery may (or may not) temporarily relieve pain, in the long run, it eats away at your spine like rust on a car, and that fact is often not emphasized when the surgery option is being discussed. This erosion of the spine has a name:
To understand this, you’ll need a crash course on the back and neck. So sit up straight and pay attention, pretend you’re going to be a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN. Your spine is a repeating chain of vertebrae and cartilage. Each segment works with the neighboring segments to absorb stress brought on by sitting, bending, lifting, etc. This is important because by each piece absorbing a little, no one piece has to absorb a lot—an essential process to having a pain free back and neck.
Surgery disrupts this and makes the healthing with a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN much harder.
When you cut through muscles and ligaments and cut out cartilage and bone, that specific spot ceases to do its part of absorbing stress. When one part of the chain does not work properly, the stress gets transferred or “transitions” somewhere else—the neighboring joints.
Where once the problem was limited to one, two, or maybe three areas, now it spreads like an infection up and down the entire spine. Bone spurs grow like weeds, discs tear and herniate, the passageways for nerves get clogged, and arthritis runs rampant. (47)
You see, this “transference” takes place after spinal surgery in which a neck or back problem goes to other places. If it goes to adjacent segments of the spine, it’s called Adjacent Segment Disease. If it goes to the extremities (shoulders, arms, hips, and legs) it’s called Transitional Syndrome. It may take months or years, but no matter how skilled the surgeon is it is not a question of if this happens, but only a matter of when and how badly it happens.
Believe it or not, that’s actually the best-case scenario. There are some cases where pain doesn’t transition at all. It actually never leaves.
What is it? It is just as it sounds. A person goes into surgery and comes out with the same level of pain or worse. Bluntly said, the operation didn’t work, you would of had better luck seeing a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN.
“The world of spinal medicine, unfortunately, is producing patients with failed back surgery syndrome at an alarming rate.”
—July 2004 “The Back Letter” (a newsletter from the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at Georgetown Medical Center in Washington, DC)
Be careful not to let the simplicity of the name undersell its meaning. Have you ever heard of “failed heart-surgery syndrome”? “Failed kidney-surgery syndrome”? Or “failed knee-surgery syndrome”? No, you haven’t, because they don’t exist. “Failed Back Surgery Syndrome isn’t a random slang term christened by an upset patient. It is an official diagnosis handed down from medical regulators. This disturbingly poor outcome has happened to thousands of people over the years that eventually it had to be recognized. That’s a lot of necks, backs, and lives ruined that a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN now has a slim chance to fix.
No other type of surgery in the world has an actual diagnosis due to its history of poor results… that award goes to spinal surgery alone.
A study conducted in 1999, and published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, took an interesting approach to the problem of spinal surgery. Researchers compared regions where they were doing a lot of spinal surgeries to those doing only a few. This is what they found: the best outcomes for back pain occurred where surgery rates were lowest, and the worst results occurred in areas where surgery rates were highest. (47) What does that mean? Wherever and whenever spinal surgery is performed the most, the chances of getting rid of pain is the worst! Bottom line, see a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN for better options.
We could end this section here, but the whole story hasn’t been told yet.
According to a 2005 study titled “Evidence-Informed Management of Chronic Low Back Pain.” outside of serious structural disease like an infection, tumor, or such severe spinal deterioration that your life is at risk, there are no clear guidelines telling doctors to perform spinal surgery to relieve back pain. (48) Zero. None. Nada. Zilch.
While this may be news to you, this has been known in the medical community for quite some time. But guess what’s happening? Despite an epidemic of failed spinal surgeries, people are still going under the knife and doing it in large numbers. Between the years 1992-2007, Medicare spending on spinal surgeries more than doubled. (49) In 2012, over a million spinal surgeries were performed across the nation officially making it the most common type of surgery. (50)
This isn’t going unnoticed. Many people “in the know” realize something isn’t right. One group of researchers said that, “There remains little or no medical, clinical, or surgical evidence to support such variability.”(49) Don’t breeze by that statement. They’re saying that there really isn’t any evidence that justifies all of these spine surgeries being performed.
Why are they still being done so often instead of seeing a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN?
The nice answer: Our aging population is plainly more willing to accept spinal surgery as a good option because they’re trying to stay active.
The not-so-nice answer: The spinal surgery industry has become more about the bottom line than your neck and back.
How has money—that is literally coming off the backs of pain sufferers—become a driving force for spinal surgery?
* Surgeons get paid more for doing more complex surgeries. It only makes sense. The more difficult the surgery, the more a surgeon should get paid for his skills. The problem is that these more complex surgeries are being performed when simpler, less expensive, and just as effective options are available. Richard Deyo, pain researcher, notes that possibly up to 50 percent of these more complex surgeries being done are unnecessary. (51) That’s more than just a few overzealous surgeons.
* The hardware used is a goldmine. “You can easily put $30,000 into a person during a fusion surgery,” notes Charles Rosen, a spine surgeon at the University of California who created a group to combat what it sees as conflicts of interest in spine surgery. What kind of profit margins are the manufacturers of spine surgery hardware looking at? Consider this: the screws used to drill into bone, called pedicle screws, can be manufactured for less than $100 and are sold for $1000 to $2000 apiece. (52) That’s a lot of profit.
* Physician owned distributorships. This is a business that a doctor is an investor in, and distributor of, the devices or hardware he may put into his patients. While it is a legal arrangement, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General has concluded that these distributorships are “inherently suspect,” and issued fraud alerts in 2006 and 2013. (53)
You’re probably reeling from all of this information. It’s shocking I know, but it’s true. It’s equally true that there are some fine spine surgeons who operate (in every sense of the word) with honesty and integrity, using all of the skills and experience they have acquired. And they have nothing but their patients’ best interests at heart. Having said that, it seems there are some bad apples in the bunch, but you’re now armed by this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN with some vital information to help you make informed decisions about your own health.
In her book, A Nation in Pain, author Judy Foreman got it right when she wrote, “The majority of surgery patients do not have an optimal outcome. That is, having minimal-to-no pain, reduction of pain medications, and a return to high-level functioning.”
Every time a new patient comes to my office, and on their intake form, they have checked “yes” to having had spinal surgery, I’m reminded of this pain myth, all the people it’s affected, and the simple truth behind it.
* MYTH: Spinal surgery is your best or only option for pain relief.
Two peas in a pod. Spinal fusions bind joints together while “ectomies” remove pieces of the spine, both in the hope of relieving pain. While they can help in cases of severe instability, infection, or a tumor, for back and neck pain their track record is terrible.
Cut in and cut away. By cutting into the spine, you disrupt its ability to absorb stress, and doing so ultimately leads to more problems and potentially much more pain.
The power of money. There are financial incentives for surgeons and hospitals to operate that is undoubtedly linked to the massive number of spinal surgeries being performed.
* TRUTH: Spinal surgery is the worst option when it comes to relieving back and neck pain and should only be considered when all other avenues have been thoroughly exhausted, if at all as this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN would recommend.
Be sure to put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
—Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the U.S.
Okay, let’s get real with this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN. Pain is everywhere, and if you’re not suffering from it, I guarantee that you know someone who is. Nearly 100 million Americans suffer from back and neck pain. (56) Which means that for every man, woman, and child you know, one in three is experiencing pain. This number is continuing to grow, with no end in sight.
That’s not all.
Between 1987 and 2013, the cost of treating back pain in the U.S. ballooned 538 percent to a whopping $42.5 billion. (57) If you combine that with other pain complaints like headaches, shoulder, hip, and knee pain, then Americans spend more money on pain remedies—and lose more money because of pain—than the economy of Norway generates in a year. We’re talking upwards of $350 billion (58) —that’s $11,000 per second. Pain is costing a lot of people a great deal of money when a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN is very affordable.
However, this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Because we’ve been in an un-contained epidemic of pain for decades, most of us have come to believe that back and neck pain is a normal part of life. Let this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN tell you, it’s not. The truth is that the line between what’s normal and what’s common has become so blurred that we can’t tell the difference anymore. But not for much longer because we are going to boldly redraw that line, get back in touch with reality, and from there, take our first steps toward becoming pain-free.
Here’s the shortlist of what’s believed to be normal, but really isn’t.
* The older I get, the more I’ll hurt, and the less I’ll do. Doing what I do affords me a unique perspective on the relationship between pain and age. The oldest patient at my Chiropractor of Little Falls MN clinic is ninety-two. She drives, gardens, cooks, and golfs nine holes every Wednesday. Does she experience pain? Yes. Does it stop her from living? No. On the other hand, I’ve worked with teenagers who can hardly get out of bed in the morning because of pain. Are they experiencing pain? Yes. Does it stop them from living? Absolutely. The truth is that pain doesn’t care how old you are, so see a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN. It can strike whether you’re a spring chicken or in your golden years because age is not what determines whether or not you’re in pain. The determining factor is how well you are using your body, and the more years that pass means more opportunities to either help or hurt your back and neck.
How can you tell if you’ve been doing a good job with your spine? Let’s go to the next item on our list.
* Arthritis is due to aging. I think we all can agree with this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN that a person in their twenties is not old. Yet, a 2015 study showed that up to 40 percent of young people today already have spine cartilage deterioration—a hallmark of spinal arthritis. (59) When you combine this with the fact that joints are designed to last about 110 years, it should make you wonder why so many people think that aging causes arthritis. Maybe it’s because every day, while pointing to an X-ray, doctors tell patients that their pain and stiffness is due to arthritis, and “you know, this is simply a part of getting older.
Here’s a health insight: X-rays and MRIs do not tell us how good our joints are, but rather how good we are at using our joints. And when you use your back and neck improperly, the joints get inflamed and start deteriorating—a.k.a. arthritis. The truth is: arthritis is not a measurement of age, it’s a measurement of the amount of times you’ve used that joint improperly. Let a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN show you the correct way.
You may be wondering if we’re going to tackle pain in the younger years of life. I’m sure you’ve heard that…
* Growing pains are a normal part of childhood. The Mayo Foundation of Research and Information finds that there is no evidence that childhood growth should be painful or that growing pains are even related to growth. “The cause of growing pain is unknown. But there is no evidence that a child’s growth is painful. And growing pains don’t usually happen where growth is occurring or during times of rapid growth.”(60) But, once again, because it’s so common, most parents don’t hesitate to chalk up their child’s latest complaint to the pains of growing up. Is it possible a larger and overlooked problem is leaving kids in this misery? Go to a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN instead. And last but not least…
* It runs in the family. “My grandma had it. My mom has it. Now I have it.” The belief that pain gets passed on like an unwanted hand-me-down is one of the oldest myths, and also one of the toughest to uproot. To see this in a new light, we need only think of the old “Nature vs. Nurture” debate. The nature side argues that our health is a result of our inherited genes. The nurture side argues that our health is mostly dependent on the environment in which we’re raised. You don’t hear much about it anymore because the argument was settled: they both are involved, but “Nurture” is, by far, the biggest influencer. And so it is with back and neck pain. The bony framework you inherited from your parents plays a role in your ability to live a pain-free life, but it’s certainly not the lead role. That spotlight belongs to how we learn to use our back and neck, learn from a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN. You see, the truth is we acquire much of how we move (walking, bending, dancing, lifting, etc.), and our postural habits (how you care for your spine on a daily basis), from watching those closest to us: our families. And unless you’re lucky enough to have had parents who were extraordinarily ahead of their time and understood the dynamics of proper spine usage, chances are you don’t know how to move properly, and thus you haven’t acquired the needed postural habits to be pain-free.
In this list of what’s commonly believed to be normal, but really isn’t, how many items have crept into your way of thinking?
The point of this section was to draw a line between what’s normal and what’s common.
– It’s common to have recurring lower back pain, but it’s never normal.
– It’s common to “carry your stress” in your shoulders, but it’s never normal.
– It’s common to have tight hamstrings, degenerating discs, headaches during menses, and stubborn muscle knots, but it’s never, ever, normal.
* MYTH: This type of thing is normal.
A lot of people are hurting. Research indicates that one in three Americans is dealing with pain at this very moment. And I believe that number is low.
A lot of money is being spent on pain. $42.5 billion per year. $11,000 per second. Think of what it would do for our economy and our nation, if that money was being put to better use.
* TRUTH: Because pain is so widespread, we’ve lost our bearings on what’s normal for the back and neck and what’s common. And so, like hikers without a compass and map, pain sufferers often end up lost in attempting to get to their desired destination—a pain-free life. But not for much longer, see a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN today.
“There are no magic bullets for chronic back pain, and expecting a cure… is generally wishful thinking” –Richard Deyo, M.D., pain researcher
Leeches.
What comes to your mind when you read that word? Gross? Slimy? Blood suckers? What if I told you the pain industry is full of leeches? And that every year new ones enter the water hungry to feast on pain sufferers? But they aren’t out for blood. These leeches are only interested in draining you of your hard-earned money.
They come in different shapes, sizes, and prices, but they are all selling the same thing: A magic bullet, a remedy that promises to get rid of back and neck pain once and for all.
Don’t fall for their lies, call a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN instead.
We as a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN see that one of the things pain interferes with most is rest. It makes it hard to fall asleep and even more difficult to stay asleep. When you’re tired and frustrated because your neck, back, shoulder, or leg pain has forced you up again-that’s when the leeches swarm.
Here’s the setup.
You turn on the TV and a B-list celebrity introduces an expert who walks on stage, applauded by a bought-and-paid-for audience. This guru has developed a little known “cure-all” that will get rid of your pain. Suddenly, the TV cuts to a testimonial; a middle-aged person who looks a lot like someone you know. She says something like, “I’ve tried everything, spent tons of money, and nothing worked. I used the guru’s trick and now I’m pain-free. And you can be too!”
This cycle of forced enthusiasm, applause, rehearsed questions, and over-the-top testimonials repeats a few times before a smooth voice chimes in, “If you act now you can save not $25, not $50, but $100! But wait there’s more. All of this for three easy payments of $XX.99. There’s a 90-day, money-back guarantee so if you’re not completely satisfied, send it back, no extra charge. Call now!”
Sound familiar, for this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN it sure does?
This sales recipe has been used for years. Here’s a list of magic bullets you may have seen in the past:
* Lie down, put your legs on this machine, and it will do all the work. It opens up the joints and loosens up nasty muscle knots. Once you own this device, your back pain will never stop you from living life to the fullest.
* The amazing flip-upside-down table that decompresses your back. Look at their smiles as they hang upside down. No way can they be in pain if they’re happy. You’ll wonder how you’ve been able to live without it once you’ve tried it!
this magnet that polarizes your blood and gets rid of back and neck pain instantly!
* The wrap with unique pressure pads that apply specific pressure to targeted areas. When you wear it, you’ll feel 20 years younger!
* The new supplement filled with just-discovered berries from the heart of the African rain forest, which fill the joints full of nutrients that kill pain!
* The shoe insert, made with special material, that eliminate posture problems, and back pain, leg pain, and foot pain.
* The device that looks like a garage door opener that uses fast-acting infrared light and laser therapy to soothe pain and stiffness out of your muscles and joints.
As you can see, there’s no shortage of magic bullets. Isn’t that odd? Why do new magic bullets keep getting invented? You would think that if they are doing their job, we wouldn’t need new ones.
But this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN knows that’s not what’s happening.
People keep buying these products because they’re still in pain. And they’re still in pain because these magic bullets have the same fundamental flaw that medications, invasive procedures, and spinal surgery have: they’re a mop, and they don’t turn off the faucet. No device, contraption, potion, lotion, or pill will ever fix back and neck pain, and the only thing a magic bullet remedies is the salesman’s empty wallet. That’s the truth, you’ve heard it from this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN.
A little known fact about the Golden Gate Bridge is that it’s always being painted. As soon as the painters have completed a coat, they start again, putting on another one. It’s a never-ending work in progress just like a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN job. For many, getting and staying as pain-free as possible is like that.
Back and neck pain is not like a cut on your finger where you treat it, it heals, and you never have to think about it again. Instead it’s like heart disease or diabetes where you treat it, it improves, and then you do what is necessary in order to stop it from coming back. That is why we encourage you to find a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN.
Now, I need to make something very clear about my message because it could be taken the wrong way. Just because back and neck pain is not “fixable” meaning that once it’s gone, it’s gone forever—it does not mean you’re destined to suffer from pain forever. Getting your back and neck pain-free, or as close to it as possible, is very doable by a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN. The key is that once the pain is relieved; you need to “stabilize” it so that it stays that way. Very specific things must be done to accomplish that and this is what “The Solution” is all about. It’s not a magic bullet, cure-all, or “one-and-done” way to get rid of pain that you will want to replace in a few months. It is a fundamentally different approach using principles that have withstood the test of time, as well as scientific scrutiny.
We have pulled back the curtains on yet another pain myth that this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN hears often. I hope the smoke is beginning to clear, and you’re seeing the pain industry in its true form. Soon, we will be exploring the commonly misunderstood purpose of pain, how it develops in the back and neck (called The Vicious Cycle), the exciting research on the most effective approach to eliminating pain, and most importantly, how to turn off “the pain faucet” once and for all.
But first, we have two more myths to bust.
* MYTH: There is a magic bullet that cures back and neck pain.
Leeches. Every year there is a new product on the market boasting its ability to cure your pain. Don’t fall for it. These products are here one day and gone the next because they don’t address the cause of back and neck pain.
Stable vs. Fixed. Back and neck pain, especially chronic back and neck pain, is like diabetes, heart disease, or asthma. While not necessarily “fixable,” it can be dramatically improved. Once they’re “stable,” the focus changes to keeping them that way.
An apple a day. Like maintaining a healthy smile, keeping the back and neck pain-free takes some thought and effort every day. Much like brushing your teeth, but for your spine.
* TRUTH: The only thing a magic bullet cures is the sales-man’s empty wallet. To have your back and neck go from being painful to being pain-free, you must get to the root of the problem. Contact your Chiropractor of Little Falls MN today.
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. —Galileo Galilei, astronomer
Increases in the rates of imaging, opioid prescriptions, injections, and fusion surgery might be justified if there were substantial improvements in patient outcomes; unfortunately, they do not. In fact, statistics indicate that disability from musculoskeletal disorders is rising, not falling. —Over-treating Chronic Back Pain: Time of Back Off?” Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine
We have covered a lot of ground, you might know more then some Chiropractor of Little Falls MN. Let’s recap the myths we have shattered, and the truths we have uncovered thus far.
* Big Pharma spends a lot of time, energy, and money trying to get you to believe that their medications are the answer for your pain. They aren’t, but a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN could be. Pain meds have dangerous side effects and many of them, including the ones we’re told it’s okay to take daily, are downright deadly.
* Most doctors do have your best interests in mind, but that doesn’t change the fact that Big Pharma puts an extraordinary amount of pressure on them in order to influence their recommendations. The sharp increase in pain medication usage over the past few years is evidence that their marketing efforts are working. So while most doctors and Chiropractor of Little Falls MN certainly do have your best interests in mind, it may not be the only thing on their mind.
* Invasive procedures are fundamentally flawed. They treat pain without treating the cause of pain, unlike a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN. This leads to short-lived results with long-term consequences.
* Remember what author Judy Foreman said, “The majority of surgery patients do not have an optimal outcome. That is, having minimal-to-no pain, reduction of pain medications, and a return to high-level functioning.” Certainly, when it comes to back and neck pain, patients need to consider long and hard if surgery is really their best option.
* Salesmen with their latest and greatest “magic bullets” are here to stay and the only thing their cure-alls remedy is the own empty wallets. The body isn’t something that gets “fixed.” It is something that gets as good as possible, and then we have to work to keep it there. That’s how it is with pain, too.
* You never really learn to live with pain. You’re forced to suffer through it. Most important though, if you buy into this self-defeating belief, the pain avoidance habits you develop will make your suffering worsen as time goes on.
* Lastly, normal and common are not the same thing. A lot of people are hurting, but this doesn’t make it normal. We’re not supposed to hurt more as we age. Aging doesn’t cause arthritis. There’s no proof that growing pains are a normal part of childhood. And lastly, your genes play only a small role in your ability to be pain-free.
Has the blindfold been removed from your eyes yet? Are you beginning to see clearly now? Are you viewing the pain industry any differently? Right now, we are laying the foundations for getting pain-free. And if these myths are alarming or disturbing to you, good! That’s exactly what I felt when I was studying to become a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN. I let those feelings motivate me to dig deeper and figure out “The Solution” to back and neck pain, and I hope you’ll let everything you’ve learned so far fuel your desire to follow “The Solution” and get yourself pain-free. Before I tell you what’s coming next, first let me say a couple things.
From what I have written so far, you might assume that I am anti-medications, surgery, and doctors. But that’s not the case. Let me tell you why even despite all this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN just said that I still respect their place. When I was eight years old, I was in an accident. I popped a wheelie while riding on a dock, lost my balance, and fell directly onto a blunt post. Many of my ribs had been fractured, my diaphragm torn, my spleen ruptured, and I was bleeding internally. I was emergency airlifted to a children’s hospital, and was in intensive care for weeks. Many times the doctors and my parents thought I was going to die. The tremendous skill of doctors and staff using drugs and surgery saved my life. It’s because of doctors, medications, and surgery that I am here and able to write this book today.
I love medications, surgery, Chiropractor of Little Falls MN, and doctors when they are absolutely necessary, and are used at the right time for the right reasons. As we all should. But I do not love medication, surgery, and doctors when they are not necessary and used at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons especially for back and neck pain.
I have no problem with Big Pharma, surgeons, doctors, and hospitals making a lot of money by prescribing medications and performing surgery. I believe they should be paid for their work. And if they’re good at what they do, they should be paid well but only if the treatment is safe and effective.
I have a big problem with people making money off pain sufferers when treatment is unsafe and ineffective. I think it’s sick. I think it’s wrong. I think it needs to stop, and I hope what you’ve read so far has caused a righteous anger to stir within you because that’s what’s needed if things are ever going to change. I am a Chiropractor of Little Falls MN actively trying to stop it.
Take a deep breath. In fact, put down the book, stand up, and do some good stretching. Go ahead, maybe call your Chiropractor of Little Falls MN for an appointment. I’ll still be here when you come back.
You’re back? Great.
With these myths exposed for what they really are—disempowering beliefs that leave you helpless, hopeless, and most importantly still in pain—we are going to take another step closer to being pain-free.
If you’re the type of person who wants to get to the point and learn “The Solution” to back and neck pain, skip to Section 5. For the rest of us, our next step is learning the basics of pain, nerves, muscles, and joints. And then this Chiropractor of Little Falls MN is going to introduce you to the culprit of back and neck pain: The Vicious Cycle.
Imagine an empty room. In the middle of that room sits a stationary bicycle. On the rear wheel of the bicycle is some type of contraption. Upon closer inspection you realize it’s an electrical generator, and a power cord runs from it, along the floor, and up the wall where it connects to a light bulb. Now, imagine you’re sitting on the bike and you begin to pedal. As you do, the light turns on.
When you stop, the light turns off, leaving you in darkness. You start again and the light turns on again. You pedal faster and the light gets brighter. After a while, you become fatigued, and you slow down. What do you notice about the light? It gets dimmer. Slower and slower you pedal until the light is barely a flicker. You stop and it turns off. Once again, you’re left in darkness.
What you imagined here explains how your Neuromusculoskeletal system impacts your health. The stationary bike represents your joints. The power cord represents your mechanoreceptors. And the light bulb represents your brain. You don’t have to be a chiropractor Little Falls MN for that to make sense, right?
It is through the activity of the Neuromusculoskeletal system that the brain is powered. In the same way that sunlight is essential for a flower to grow, movement is essential for your brain to be healthy. And the healthier your brain, the healthier every cell, tissue, and organ in your body.
This is why walking thirty minutes a day has been proven to:
* Prevent 47 percent of cognitive impairment
* Prevent 62 percent of Alzheimer’s
* Prevent 52 percent of dementia
* Enhance learning by 12 times
* Decrease depression by 20 percent, including relapses
* Reduce the risk of breast cancer, pancreatic, lung, and colon cancer by 50 percent or more
* Prevent 50 percent of all stroke deaths
* Reduce congestive heart disease deaths by 63 percent
* Reduce hospital readmission for heart failure patients by 70 percent
And the list goes on and on.
It’s not that exercise directly makes our hearts healthier, our immune systems stronger, and our brains keener. It’s that exercise is movement, and movement activates mechanoreceptors that supply the brain with an essential nutrient—stimulation. Then the brain, in turn, makes our hearts healthier, immune systems stronger, and itself keener. It does this by releasing certain hormones that help keep every part of us well, including our internal organs. The details of this activity are outside the scope of this section, but—and trust me as your chiropractor Little Falls MN on this—this is basically how it works.
When you go to a chiropractor Little Falls MN you’ll find out that your joints receive nourishment through a pumping process called “cyclic loading.” How well this “pump” functions depends on how well the joints move. This question may seem completely out-of-the blue, but play along with me. Why is your tongue one of the fastest healing tissues in your body? Here’s a hint: it’s why it’s red.
The answer is blood. When you go to a chiropractor Little Falls MN you’ll find out that it is often the small things that you do not think about that hold the most importance. Your tongue possesses an incredible amount of tiny blood vessels that supply it with more than enough blood to keep it flushed with nutrients. This is what gives it that fast-healing ability. Follow-up question: Why is cartilage one of the slowest healing tissues in your body? Hint: it’s why it’s yellowish gray. Again, the answer is blood, but this time it’s the lack thereof. You see, daily activities like bending, and walking make it impossible for delicate blood vessels to survive inside the cartilage of the joints—there is too much stress and pressure. Because of this, for the most part, cartilage does not have a direct supply line of blood, and is therefore not chocked full of blood, hence its yellowish grey color. In order for cartilage to be healthy and pain-free, it has to get its nutrients through different means.
It accomplishes this through an amazing, self-healing mechanism that harnesses the unique characteristics of your joints to their own advantage: a pump. Through a process very familiar to chiropractor Little Falls MN called “cyclic loading,” every movement you make does two things. It pumps new fluid and nutrients into the joint while simultaneously pumping out old fluid, and it stimulates new cartilage growth. The combination of these two processes is what keeps cartilage strong and resilient. Because this “cyclic loading pump” is so efficient, joints should last about 110 years without premature deterioration and pain.
Every time you take a step, this pumping happens to your knee cartilage. Every time you bend over, this happens to the cartilage discs of your spine. As long as you are moving, you are repetitiously squeezing and stimulating your joint’s cartilage (kind of like playing an accordion). Although your cartilage doesn’t have a direct blood supply like the tongue to keep itself healthy, this ingenious pumping mechanism is more than enough. By the way, it’s important to note that all movements are not equally good for your joints. In the above examples you need to be loading your knee and lower back cartilage within healthy limits in order to reap the benefits of this pump.
You might be thinking, “Okay, Doc, I understand this nerve-muscle-joint connection, but who cares? Why does this matter, really? When your joints move within healthy limits, the Mechanoreceptors fire. Using this information your brain, in turn, tells your Stabilizers and Movers how to respond in a coordinated and balanced manner to keep the joints moving properly. This allows for optimal pumping so that your joints are preserved as close to pain-free as possible. In this collaborative way, your nerves, muscles, and joints work together to form one of the most important systems in your body: the aforementioned Neuromusculoskeletal System. Each component is essential to this cycle. When one element works well, it helps the others do the same.
Nowadays it seems that nearly everyone on the planet knows what a car is. In America, most of us own one or two. We’ve grown up around them, we’ve been on car trips, we’ve taken classes and passed tests to drive them, and through all of that, we’ve learned the basics of owning and operating a car like:
* Look behind you while in reverse.
* If the gas gauge is low, fill up your tank.
* If the check engine light comes on, bring it in to the mechanic.
* A yellow light means slow down and yield.
The list goes on and on. Though most of us understand these basics, very few of us could explain the dynamics of the internal combustion engine despite it being the very thing that makes a car a car. If you think about it, it takes no knowledge to own a car, and little knowledge to drive one. As a chiropractor Little Falls MN, I have seen that pain is very similar…
A lot of people are in pain, and it’s nearly impossible not to have at least some contact with pain in your day-to-day life. You don’t need to understand pain like a chiropractor Little Falls MN does in order to suffer from it, and you certainly don’t need to explain the complex biochemistry behind pain in order to feel it. You do, however, need to know the basics of pain in order to have as little pain as possible in your life.
And that’s what we’re going to cover next.
The Basics: A Canary in a Coal Mine
What do you suppose the purpose of pain is? To make your life uncomfortable? To get in your way? To stop you from having fun? To remind you that you’re getting older?
Of course not.
At the turn of the 20th century, carbon monoxide poisoning was one of the deadliest threats facing coal miners. You see, carbon monoxide gas forms as a result of the incomplete combustion of a fuel. While mining coal, which is a fuel, if there was a fire or an explosion, carbon monoxide gas would form and accumulate within the mine. This was a big problem because carbon monoxide gas, as you probably know, is odorless, tasteless, invisible and deadly. As none of their senses could detect it, miners wouldn’t know they were poisoned until it was too late.
Then along came a scientist who discovered what causes carbon monoxide poisoning and suggested that, because canaries are highly sensitive to toxic gases, miners should carry them down into the mines to serve as an early-warning system. As the miners were toiling away, if they saw a dead canary, it meant that they themselves were being poisoned. This warning sign bought miners precious moments and saved lives.
What does this history lesson have to do with pain?
As a dead canary was a warning sign for miners, pain is a warning sign for you.
But a warning sign of what? The answer is found in the word “pain” itself.
The word pain comes from the Latin “poena,” meaning penalty. In a way, pain means that your body is paying the penalty—which is bodily damage. When something damages the body, specialized nerves called Nociceptors (remember them?) send signals to the brain, which the brain then translates into the sensation of pain.
Pain, then, is your body alerting you to damage and often times that you need to visit a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
That answers the question of what pain is, but we haven’t answered the more important question of: why do we have pain?
The Basics: Pain’s Purpose
Imagine for a moment that you couldn’t feel pain. What would life be like? Some of you are probably thinking, “Yes, please. I’ll have some of that.” Not so fast.
Consider leprosy.
Leprosy is an infectious disease that causes severe skin sores and nerve damage, so much so that the infected person can lose the ability to feel pain. Dr. Paul Brand, a world-renowned expert on the subject, in his book The Gift of Pain, warns us why not being able to feel pain is a bad thing, and alludes to what pain’s purpose really is. Without pain, we would be unaware of injury and devoid of the body’s protective mechanisms.
You may be thinking, “Okay Doc, chiropractor Little Falls MN, I get it”. Pain has a purpose.
But that doesn’t make my neck or back feel any better,” and you’d be right. It doesn’t. But knowing this information is an important step on the way to eliminate back and neck pain once and for all.
When you start working with a chiropractor Little Falls MN you’ll learn that there are two kinds of muscles that must work together in order to keep you healthy. It is absolutely vital to understand how these muscles work and what is required of them in order for these muscles to function properly. You have two types of muscles in your body and when they are in balance your back and neck are healthy and pain-free. They are:
The “Movers” are designed to do just that—move you. These are the muscles that chiropractor Little Falls MN see as the power generators because they propel you. Whether you’re walking down the hall or sprinting through a field, the Movers do it. These muscles have names you are probably familiar with: deltoids, pecs, quads, biceps, etc. You may not have heard of some, like the trapezius and levator scapulae. The crucial thing to remember about these muscles is it’s their nature to dominate, so they have to be kept in check. And that’s where the “Stabilizers” come in.
The “Stabilizers” are designed to prevent the Movers from doing too much. A chiropractor Little Falls MN focus on these muscles is because they hold the joints together, protecting them. These muscles go by tongue-twisting names like multifidus, rotatores, gluteus medius, quadratus lumborum, and intertransversarii. You’ve probably never heard of them before, but believe me, they are important.
As I mentioned earlier, the Stabilizers and the Movers have an intimate relationship. The Movers depend on the Stabilizers to anchor down the joints as they move us from Point A to Point B. Whether you are a professional bodybuilder squatting four hundred pounds or an accountant squatting to pick up a piece a paper, these muscle groups have to work together in a coordinated manner. Your Movers move your joints so that you can live life—walk, jump, climb, sit down, bend over, etc. Your Stabilizers keep your Movers in check by anchoring down the joints, ensuring that the movement of your joints stays within healthy limits.
To summarize it all, when both muscle groups are equally strong and are coordinated with each other, they are considered “in balance.” If the coordination is thrown off, the muscles become out-of-balance, and major problems enter your life. That is why we encourage you to communicate to your chiropractor and doctor to create a health plain that creates an environment where these two muscles work together. When this is achieved you are able to live a pain free life where you are able to do all the activities you love.
The next few pages took an incredible amount of time to write, mostly because it’s the distillation of a ton of scientific studies which as a chiropractor Little Falls MN I’ve had to read quite a few of. If you’ve ever read an actual research article, you’ll know the authors often use seven-dollar college words (mostly long-winded medical jargon) to “explain” their studies. I’m not going to do that.
My goal is to present that information in such a way that you’ll understand it. If I’ve done my job—and you pay close attention—this next part will provide the foundation necessary to understand The Vicious Cycle, and, more importantly, it will provide a springboard for you to live a pain-free life.
The Basics: Nerves, muscles, and joints are intimately connected.
The term “neuromusculoskeletal system” is used to describe the close relationship that nerves, muscles, and joints have with each other. All three are absolutely essential, each serving its own unique purpose that all need to be taken care of, ask your chiropractor Little Falls MN. You can’t have one without the other because they are totally integrated and have to work together. This means when something goes wrong, they all are equally damaged. Muscles move us, but the nerves coordinate such movement, and the joints provide the freedom and direction of that movement. Each element depends on the previous one, and influences the next. One of these cannot do anything, good or bad, without the next being affected by it.
* A nerve can never react without a muscle responding.
* A muscle can never respond without a joint being affected.
* And a joint can never be affected without making a nerve react.
That’s the way you’re put together.
I’m going to introduce each component, and share one or two important pieces of information about how they work that will come in handy later. Remember this, though, none of these pieces were designed to become dysfunctional, damaged, and be the cause of your pain. Each was designed to do the exact opposite to stay healthy and keep you pain-free.
The Basics: You have two types of nerves in your neuromusculoskeletal system: mechanoreceptors and nociceptors. (mek-a-no-re-sep-tore-s) and (no-see-sep-tore-s).
Yes, they sound like members of the dinosaur family, but stick with me on this one. Can you name your five senses?
How did you do?
Here’s the answer: Smell. Taste. Sight. Hearing. Touch.
Well done, not even many chiropractor Little Falls MN can do that. What about your sixth sense? I bet you didn’t know you have a sixth sense, did you? (And no I’m not talking about the movie). Your sixth sense is called “joint sense.” Here’s what I mean. Shut your eyes and hold your hand in front of you while doing the “peace” sign. Keep your arm there and count to ten. Go ahead. Give it a try. Did you do it?
Now, consider this: You could not smell or taste your fingers when they were in front of you (or at least I hope not). You could not see or hear your arm and fingers. And you didn’t have to touch your arm using your other hand to know that it was extended, did you? And yet, I’m sure you were certain that you had your arm and hand in the right position. How is that possible? Through, your sixth sense, joint sense, that’s how.
Joint sense is provided by a special set of nerves that tell your brain exactly what your joints are doing at all times. It’s what allows your brain to “see” your joints so it knows how to control them. I bet you didn’t know this, but most of the work of your brain involves coordinating and controlling your muscles and joints. That’s pretty impressive considering all of the other stuff the brain is responsible for doing.
The ins and outs of “joint sense” can get pretty technical, so let’s try to keep it simple, you shouldn’t have to be a chiropractor Little Falls MN in order to understand. When we break it down, you have two types of “joint sense” nerves.
Pretend that you are studying to be a chiropractor Little Falls MN and remember what mechanoreception and nociception mean because you’re going to see the words time and time again. This next part is important.
When your mechanoreceptors fire up, your brain knows that your joints are doing okay and it, in turn, responds appropriately. If, however, your nociceptors fire up, your brain knows that the joints are in trouble, and it responds in a way, if left unchecked, that will eventually lead to pain. On top of that, nociception also can cause something called a “stress response,” which is not good, either.
Pause a moment before reading any further. If the difference between the two categories of “joint sense” nerves isn’t perfectly clear to you, please go back and re-read from the beginning of this section or ask a chiropractor Little Falls MN for guidance. If you don’t get it, you won’t fully appreciate how The Vicious Cycle or The Solution are important in becoming pain-free.
The Basics: Nerves resist sending messages.
A physical barrier/threshold keeps nerves from being too active, and it ensures that when nerves are not supposed to fire messages, they don’t. This is like how the pain threshold ensures that when you’re not supposed to feel pain, you don’t. We, as a chiropractor Little Falls MN, don’t want any old thing to cause a nerve to fire. It takes persistence. The thing—whether it be damage, hot, cold, vibration, touch, whatever—has to be big enough and happen often enough to cross the threshold. Only then will the nerve send off a message to the brain telling it what’s happening—that’s how nerves “resist.” Really, this barrier is a way to keep our nerves in check, and it’s to our advantage that we’re pre-wired with this function because, if the nerves were allowed to fire off at their slightest whim, our world would fall into complete chaos. We’d, even us chiropractor Little Falls MN, be nervous wrecks. Once again, take a moment and study the graph below before moving on.
Some diseases disrupt the threshold and weaken resistance. Consider Parkinson’s disease, for example. With this devastating ailment, the brain loses its ability to provide the chemicals necessary to resist the firing of nerves. And once the resistance is lost, muscles go haywire leading to shakiness, tremor, slowness, difficulty walking, and a whole host of other problems.
So the stronger your barrier, the stronger your resistance, the harder it is for the threshold to get crossed, and the more likely it is that the nerves won’t be used when they’re not supposed to be used. On the other hand, the weaker your barrier, the weaker your resistance, the easier it is for the threshold to be crossed, and the more likely it is that nerves will be used when they’re not supposed to be used. This will be of great consequence in your pursuit of a pain-free life, if you are in this situation now we encourage you consulting a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
The Basics: Nerves can learn.
Nerves have a very special ability to learn, just like you from a chiropractor Little Falls MN. It’s called “plasticity.” Take learning how to play the piano, for instance. At first, it’s difficult to get your fingers to move and hit the right keys. Ask any parent who has encouraged their child to take piano lessons—and then came to regret it. In the beginning, they hear a lot more ear-piercing music than ear-pleasing music. With practice, the fingers dance across the keyboard and the music becomes enjoyable. Watch a professional pianist play, and it’s almost unreal how fast his fingers fly across the black and whites. It looks like the body is doing it automatically, because it is. Plasticity is found in the nerves, and is the ability to learn through repetition. The same principle is used in the martial arts, athletics, and singing. Everything you’ve ever learned, and have the potential to learn from a chiropractor Little Falls MN, is because of this ability.
The constant use of nerves lowers their resistance, making them fire more readily. So for a piano virtuoso, playing becomes easier and easier the more he practices. That’s plasticity.
It’s why, as children, we are able to learn how to crawl, walk, and run. Whatever that thing you do is, plasticity allows that thing to be done easier the next time you do it.This is why chiropractor Little Falls MN focus on repetition. But what if that thing isn’t being good at playing piano? What if that thing is bad? What if that thing is incorrect movement of your back and neck? What if that thing is poor posture? What if that thing is the nociceptors being repeatedly fired? What happens then?
When I first discovered the research showing how many people are dealing with pain, I had to ask myself as a chiropractor Little Falls MN, why? Why are episodes of pain so frequent? Why will nearly everyone experience some back and neck pain?
I came to realize that most people don’t know how to use their back and neck properly, which unless they are a chiropractor Little Falls MN they would not know the right way. Think about it. Aren’t we told the importance of washing our hands every flu season? Aren’t we all taught in school how to take care of our teeth? “Brush and floss, or else your teeth will rot and fall out.” However, when are we taught the importance of using our spine correctly? When are we told of the rotten consequences that come with the misuse? Rarely, if ever.
To address this, as a bonus, I’m going to show you five daily habits that, if you actually develop them, will take a great deal of stress off your spine. These “The Daily 5” are at the foundation of any training designed by a chiropractor Little Falls MN to prevent Buckling Points. That being said, it’s important for you to know that these five, while a great step in the right direction, are just that… a step. On their own, they will not get you to your final destination—being pain-free, but you should already know that if you’ve made it this far.
The Daily 5
The Daily 5 are actually very simple for those who aren’t just a chiropractor Little Falls MN. And they focus around one key point: Never bend your spine. What is a “broken spinal position?” It is simply another phrase for a Buckling Point, which most commonly occur when, instead of curving, your spine becomes bent.
Like a guy lying on a bed of a thousand nails, when the spine is curved the stress gets spread out across multiple spots. What happens if you remove all the nails except one and have the guy lie on it? What will you have? That’s right, a human shish kabob. This is because all of the stress has now focused on a single spot and that damages the body. That’s exactly what happens to the back and neck when the spine is bent. All of the stress gets focused on one joint and it gets damaged, which is why our goal as a chiropractor Little Falls MN is to avoid it.
Dr. Starrett also says, “If you see flexion or extension (forward bent or backward bent) anywhere in the spine, it’s an error.” That’s exactly what needs to be avoided. Here’s how to do it.
When was the last time you considered the position of your head? Like where it’s sitting in relation to your back and neck? Probably not until you finished that sentence. That’s a problem but unless you’re a chiropractor Little Falls MN why would you?
When I was a teenager, I coached our local diving team. For the divers who wanted to do a front flip, we would teach them one concept: “Where the head goes, the body follows.” The moment they leapt off the board, they would quickly flex their head downward. The momentum of that movement would carry them into a flipping motion. We taught a lot of kids to do flips like this—to the dismay of many mothers.
The position of your head is important because your head is heavy. It’s at least 10-15 pounds, and it sits on top of a mostly unsupported part of your spine, your neck. The mid back is reinforced by ribs and the abdominal contents. The low back is supported by the pelvis, quite a bit of muscle, and more organs. But your neck is left to fend for itself. Therein lies a potential problem.
You don’t need to see a chiropractor Little Falls MN for this simple fix, If you don’t position your head correctly, you’ll constantly create Buckling Points in your neck.
Here’s an example. In my reception area, we have a coffee bar where patients can enjoy a warm drink. One day, I walked out into the reception area as a young woman was finishing her hot chocolate. I watched in horror as she bent her neck back and brought her chin up to take a drink. It looked like this:
You might be thinking, “You’re seriously going to tell me that the way I’ve been drinking is wrong. Get a life, man.” But stick with me for a second. If you had X-ray vision and could see inside of her neck, you’d see that there’s one joint that’s moved a lot while the rest haven’t. That’s the Buckling Point and it usually happens in the middle of the neck when this rule is broken.
Get this. Later that evening, I was having dinner with a close friend, his wife, and their adorable two-year-old daughter. I watched this toddler pick up her cup and take a drink from it. This time, instead of horror, I watched in amazement. First, she grasped the cup in both hands and brought it to her lips. Then she tucked her chin and extended her entire upper body. This caused her neck and upper back to curve, allowing her spine to completely avoid creating a Buckling Point.
Using your X-ray vision again, you would see that she didn’t bend her neck at all. Instead, she curved it making sure each joint moved equally and ensuring no single joint was moved beyond its normal limits.
In order to curve your neck and not bend it, you’ll need to master a special move as well as a toddler or a chiropractor Little Falls MN this gives you the ability to control the position of your head: The Chin Tuck.
Imagine you have a string tied to the top of your head, and it’s being pulled up and back. How would your head and neck move? When you move like this, it’s as if you’re giving yourself a double chin, but in doing so, you optimize your neck’s curve, and effectively avoid bending it.
Before you take a drink of water, bench press, sit and work at the computer, or bring a spoonful of soup to your mouth, first, set your Chin Tuck. It should become your new but annoying daily habit. You’ll know you’re doing it right when friends and family look at you and ask, “What in the world are you doing with your head?”
Going back to the adorable two-year-old, what astounded me the most about her correct use of her back and neck to do something as simple as taking a drink—was that she simply did it. She didn’t watch a YouTube video or read this article. She didn’t have any special instruction from a chiropractor Little Falls MN or attend a weekend seminar. She just did it. It must’ve felt right. On a different occasion, I watched her squat to pick up a toy from the ground. She did that in perfect form, too. Later, I observed my own nieces doing the same thing. Never did I see them take a drink of water or pick something up with a bent spine. It was always a nice Chin Tuck or squat—the back staying straight, the butt sticking out, so that bending occurs at the hips.
This drove me as a chiropractor Little Falls MN crazy. How can these children, who can’t go to the bathroom by themselves have nearly perfect movement and posture?
Then like a lightning bolt, the answer struck me: Our back and neck comes pre programmed for proper use. That’s the default setting of our bodies. But when they get forced into the Vicious Cycle, it all gets lost. What that tells us is if we do something incorrectly long enough, before long we will be forced to keep doing that thing incorrectly. As we all know, the more mistakes we make with the back and neck, the more likely you’re going to be in pain. Now, on to the next one.
The next installment to undo the bad programming focuses on low back and hips. When you bend from your waist, you are actually bending your low back, thus creating a Buckling Point. That’s not good.
As a chiropractor Little Falls MN, what do you do? Don’t bend from the waist—hinge at the hips. By “hinging at the hips,” you keep your lower back straight, your butt gets pushed back, and your hips absorb all the force, which is exactly what they’re designed to do. The steps to do this are: stand with your feet shoulder-width apart. Bend your knees slightly. Keep your weight on your heels. Push your butt back. Now you’re in position to hinge at your hips. Now lower yourself.
Like the Chin Tuck, the more you do this, the more natural it’ll feel, and the better you’ll get. Before you bend forward to pick up the clothes from the floor, golf ball from the hole, or backpack from the ground, be sure to hinge at your hips.
Yoga practitioners have believed for centuries that each person only has so many breaths to take in their lifetime. That’s part of the reason why, if you’ve ever done yoga, you’ve heard your instructor comment on controlling your breathing. It’s believed that if you can control how you breathe, you can control when you take your last breath.
Now, as a chiropractor Little Falls MN I don’t know if that’s true, but what I do know is that how you breathe is either hurting or helping your chances to be pain-free.
Breathing is one of the most important things for a pain-free back and neck because it involves how you use your diaphragm. I know, this seems simple mister chiropractor Little Falls MN. Your diaphragm is the muscle that regulates your breathing, and it’s there first to expand your lungs to suck in air so that you can stay alive. That’s really important. Secondly, because it attaches throughout the middle back, when it is strong and being used correctly, it also helps to stabilize that area—which is the link between your neck and lower back. That’s important too. You could do the Chin Tuck all day and Hip Hinge at every opportunity, but if your breathing is off, you’ll never be quite as good as you could be. Truth be told, if you don’t breathe in the correct manner, you’re actually nudging your back and neck closer and closer to the Tipping Point.
Remember the Breathing Test I had you take during the Vicious Cycle? I did this because if your shoulders raise when you breathe in, it means that the superficial Movers have taken over, and the deep Stabilizers of your neck have gone weak—hallmarks of the Dysfunction Phase.
Now, if this is happening every time you take a breath, that dysfunction is being reinforced over and over. Consider how much you actually breathe. You take somewhere around 20,000 breaths per day, and 20,000 is a lot of anything. If you’re doing it wrong, it’s 20,000 small nudges in the wrong direction, or 20,000 small nudges in the right direction if you are doing it right.
Here’s how to ensure you’re doing it right:
Remember: Your neck and shoulders shouldn’t move at all during this and consult a chiropractor Little Falls MN if you have more questions.
By the way, since we’ve been talking about toddlers and how perfectly they do things, the next time you’re near a toddler, look at his stomach as he breathes. Guess what you’ll see? When he breathes in, his belly goes out—and that’s the key. Yes you can learn almost as much from a toddler then as a chiropractor Little Falls MN. The trick is to apply this with every breath. You should be doing it when you sit, when you stand, when you go for a run, when you’re driving your car, and when you’re making supper. The more you do this, the better you’ll be for it.
Compared to what we already covered, this next one is different. The first three are habits that you need to get used to doing all the time, day in and day out. This next one is something you do once or twice a day.
Because all humans are front heavy, as gravity pulls on us it not only pulls us down, but it also pulls us forward. This wreaks havoc on the spine because this constant pressure compresses your spinal joints. Combining this with sitting and poor lifting mechanics means most of us are headed for a world of hurt, or if you’re already in one, headed toward a place where the world hurts more. You’re probably thinking well I can’t control that and neither can a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
The fourth habit is decompressing your spine. The back and neck absolutely love this because it takes pressure off of them. It stretches the muscles, discs, and ligaments, giving them a chance to recover. All in all, decompression to your spine is like a glass of cool water on a hot day.
How do you do it, do you have to be a chiropractor Little Falls MN? Tons of gadgets out there all boast they’re the best. The most common one is an inversion table where you hang upside down. While they may have their merits, my educated opinion: they’re not the best. They simply don’t allow you the range of motion and freedom that you really need. Besides, I’ve found a cheaper and more effective way to decompress your spine. It’s called the Spine Stretch. Here’s how to do it.
Once you purchase a gym ball, inflate it so that it is firm. Then:
1) Sit on the gym ball,
2) Walk yourself out while leaning back so that your back rests against the ball,
3) Push with your legs, and extend your back over the ball,
4) Keep your head rested fully against the ball—you should not have your head lifted, and
5) Once stable, let your arms extend over your head.
In this position you can quietly lay there and let the decompression and stretch deepen. You could gently rock yourself back and forth—that’s good for you because you actively pump new fluids into your spine. You could roll to one side and then the other, stretching out your flanks. The beautiful thing is, once you’re in this position, you’re in control, and virtually any motion you can do will help decompress your spine. The more you do this, the more your back and neck will like you for it. A chiropractor Little Falls MN can help you.
Every morsel of food that enters your mouth is either moving you closer to pain or farther away. You’re either starving inflammation or feeding it. There is no in-between and no foods are neutral. You must be careful what you eat if you’re ever to become pain-free, as a chiropractor Little Falls MN this is probably the hardest part for patients.
Here are a few guidelines to follow during your pursuit of pain-free living. Be forewarned, the relationship between diet and pain is fairly complex, enough so that entire books have been dedicated to this topic. What I’m about to divulge is by no means comprehensive, but it is a good place to start.
Foods to avoid: Alcohol, omega-6 cooking oils, dairy products, processed meats, refined grains, white bread, rice, pasta, artificial food additives, aspartame, mono-sodium glutamate (MSG), sugars, trans fats, and commercially produced meats where the animals are fed grains.
Foods to consume: asparagus, avocado, beets, Brussel sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, parsnips, spinach, Romaine lettuce, berries, apples, oranges, pears, lemon, cantaloupe, green tea, turkey, chicken, eggs, and salmon.
Omega-3 Fatty Acids: this nutrient is absolutely crucial for the elimination of pain because it regulates inflammation. If you have too little Omega-3, your body overproduces inflammation, leading to you to feeling more pain than you should. The problem we face is that our modern diet simply doesn’t provide enough of it. This means that unless you’ve been actively supplementing with Omega-3, you’re likely deficient. This stuff is so potent that research shows it is as effective as those dangerous NSAIDs we discussed earlier, and the best part is that they have none of their side effects. (68) How much should you take? 370/mg per 40 lbs. per day.
Vitamin D: Like Omega-3s, this is another crucial nutrient for the reduction of pain. Here’s a quote directly from the research: “Many patients with Vitamin D deficiency may complain of full, persistent, generalized musculoskeletal aches, pains, and weaknesses, fatigue, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome.”(70) How much should you take? About 4000IUs (IU stands for International Units and is simply system of measurement like ounces) per day per day for adults and 1000IUs per day for children. (71)
Proteolytic enzymes: Instead of reaching for the aspirin or ibuprofen bottle after a flare up or injury, reach for this. This supplement counteracts inflammation, slows the formation of scar tissue, and improves blood flow to the site of pain or injury. The best part: it does all this by working with your body, and not overriding it. This is a must have for anyone who is serious about getting out of pain in the most drug-free way.
These five habits are crucial for you to retrain your back and neck, and keep you out of the Vicious Cycle and pain-free. Remember, knowledge is different than action.
Get to it and consult a chiropractor Little Falls MN if you have any further concerns!
References
Imagine a banana split, I’m probably the first chiropractor Little Falls MN that has told you to do that. What makes it so delicious? Is it the soft-serve ice cream? The perfectly ripened banana? The crunchiness of the nuts? Or maybe it’s the mouth-watering hot fudge? No, we can’t attribute the deliciousness to any single component because it’s when they’re combined that the real magic happens.
One Is the Loneliest Number That You’ll Ever Do
Consider what you’ve learned so far from this humble chiropractor Little Falls MN. Addressing each part of the Vicious Cycle individually, through adjustments, exercise, hands-on muscle therapy, and training, will get you some pretty good results. The research is clear—doing just one of those is better than doing none of those. If you had to choose only one, the adjustments are proven to be superior. “Pretty good” results, if you ask me as a chiropractor Little Falls MN, are pretty lame. I think if you have been suffering from chronic back and neck pain, you’d agree. You’d agree if you have tried some of these and you’re still in pain. You’d agree if you have watched a loved one turn into a shell of her former selves because of pain. If you’ve dealt with any type of ongoing, non-resolving pain, you’d agree that pretty good isn’t good enough.
Two for Your Health
Besides, I didn’t write this article for people to get “pretty good,” I wrote this article for people to be able to be the best they can be—to be able to do what they want, when they want, and how they want. So, I asked myself, “What if, like the banana split, we were to start combining these interventions? Then what?” This is where it gets exciting.
The research sticks out like a sore thumb: combining any two of those interventions is better than any single one alone.
This makes sense even if you aren’t a chiropractor Little Falls MN. The more of the Vicious Cycle you address, the better. Spinal exercises with massage is better than either one alone. Spinal adjusting, when combined with exercise or education, is also better than any of those alone. Literally, any two you can think of has been proven better than one (53,18,46,54,38,50) and that’s good.
Three’s Company
It makes sense that addressing more of the Vicious Cycle would get things better, but is there proof that combining three of those interventions is better than two?
If there is evidence of this, then there is a definite trend that addressing more of the parts that go wrong during the Vicious Cycle will get you better results. One day, in between seeing patients as a chiropractor Little Falls MN I was leisurely reading through an 800+ page report on noninvasive treatment of pain (yes, I am that obsessive). Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. The clouds opened, a ray of light shone on me, I stood up, and shouted, “Eureka!”
First, I ran across a study that showed that exercise, massage, and education was effective at relieving low back pain. (56) This is important because it proves that combining these three didn’t overload the body but instead helped people get better, but it didn’t answer the question, “Does combining three of those interventions get people better than two?”
Then, I read how exercise, massage, and education was proven to be more effective than exercise and education alone. (55) This means each individual intervention contributes to relieving pain in its own unique way and if you take a piece away, the results suffer. But what this study was lacking was any information on the keystone treatment: spinal adjustments.
Then, I saw it. Education, exercise, AND adjustments had an even better outcome in relieving pain. (52) Not only that, combining those three also improved people’s general health, faulty back pain beliefs (aka pain myths), and disability. This showed that combining any three of those interventions provided more relief than combining two. Seeking a chiropractor Little Falls MN will help too.
This is really significant because now there’s a trend.
Putting Your Best Foot Four-ward
A car has four bad tires. If you do anything less than replace all four, you still have a problem, right? I think you see what’s coming. Joint dysfunction must be fixed, Stabilizers must be strengthened, Movers must be remodeled, and Buckling Points must be stopped. What’s the best way to do this?
Spinal Adjusting and Spinal Exercises +
Hands-on Muscle Therapy +
Training = The Best Chance for Maximum Relief
That’s The Solution, ladies and gentlemen. Plain and simple, don’t have to see a chiropractor Little Falls MN to figure that out. That is the best way to get the back and neck out of pain. And that is what will harness the powerful nerve connection between your muscles, joints, and brain, and bring your back and neck to the Turning Point—where the momentum from breaking down is shifted to the momentum of building up. From dysfunction to function. From destruction to healing. From pathologically being protected to healthily expressing potential. From pain-full-ness to pain-free-ness. It is all because the combination of those four things correct the three unique elements of the spine—the nerves, muscles, and joints—making your back and neck as healthy as possible.
Things to Remember:
References
During the Vicious Cycle, a chiropractor Little Falls MN can see that the Movers play a sinister role. Here’s what I mean. Joint dysfunction and Stabilizer weakness are what push the back and neck through the Vicious Cycle. But the Movers do something different. They do not push. Instead, they hold. Like the teeth of a ratchet, the Movers stop the spine from being able to go any other way except deeper into the Vicious Cycle.
The Superficial Movers
After the Tipping Point, because of facilitation, the Movers become hyperactive. Then, whereas the Stabilizers start wasting away because of lack of use, and the Movers start tightening because of overuse. They become short and contracted and begin micro-tearing and scarring, causing the notorious muscle knots everyone seems to complain about. Ultimately, by the final phase of the Vicious Cycle, they are so weak and short that they become a source of pain all on their own.
How do you break Movers out of the Vicious Cycle? Like this.
Imagine you’ve been given a beautiful piece of land to live on for the rest of your life. But there’s a catch: you cannot live anywhere else except on that land. It’s a great spot, but it’s the only one you’re getting. On this land is an old, ugly house. The foundation is cracked, the support beams are splitting, and the shingles are rotten. It’s in complete disrepair. While you do have to keep the land, there are no rules about having to keep the house. What would you do? That’s right, grab a sledgehammer, rent a bulldozer, and demolish it. Why? Because sometimes you have to tear down before you can build up.
And so it is with the Movers—they’re the only ones you’ve been given, but there’s no reason why you can’t remodel them with help from a chiropractor Little Falls MN. The scar tissue must be broken down, the adhesions busted up, and the contracted tissue, lengthened. By doing this, you will give them (and yourself) an opportunity to rebuild, heal, and become pain-free.
The best way to do this is through hands-on muscle therapy. Like with the other interventions, the research on the effectiveness of hands-on muscle therapy (generally referred to as massage) and pain relief isn’t up for debate. Here are the highlights.
Research Highlights:
* Massage relieves chronic pain, chronic pain of moderate-to-severe intensity, and helps those with myalgia. (31,32,33)
* Massage improves subjective perception of and function for those with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. (34)
* Muscle-specific massage therapy is effective for reducing the incidence of chronic tension headaches. (35)
* In one interesting study done in 2007, researchers looked at eight trials of massage therapy and found that it was as effective as exercise, and a little more effective than acupuncture. (36)
Basically, all of these articles say that breaking down muscle knots and scar tissue adhesions in the superficial Movers will help you feel less pain. This theme is so common in the literature that here’s a quote pulled directly from an instructional course to orthopedic surgeons: “Massage decreases symptoms and improve function.” (37) And that’s the key—you have to get the Movers to function better, making them healthier; then you’ll be as close to pain-free as possible.
For Best Results, Use as Directed
The right type of muscle therapy applied to the right spot, on the right muscle, at the right time.
—Ben Grams, DC. Chiropractor Little Falls MN
“The right type”—If you’re trying to demolish a wall, you need a sledgehammer, not a rake. And so it is with muscle therapy. Some techniques, like “Light Touch” massage, are designed to release endorphins—natural pain killers that the body houses—and not bust up scar tissue adhesions. That’s not what we’re seeking. When it comes to getting the Movers out of the Vicious Cycle, an aggressive massage is needed. Now, breaking down scar tissue should be a bit sore and uncomfortable, so if you’re on the table and the massage you’re getting “hurts so good,” you’re probably on the right track. A few techniques that fit within this category are: deep tissue, cross friction, Active Release Technique, Graston, and myofascial release.
“The right spot”—Specificity is key. Not only does the right muscle need to be worked, but the right spot on the right muscle needs to be worked on. Here’s a couple tips:
A very important spot in a muscle is something called the musculotendinous junction, which is right where the muscle turns into a tendon before it attaches onto a bone. This is the weakest part of the muscle because it is an area of transition. The tissues there aren’t fully muscle, and they aren’t fully tendon. They’re more half-and-half, which means they have half the strength. Unfortunately, it’s also where a large amount of stress ends up when you use the muscles. The combination of these two things makes it fertile ground for the growth of scar tissue which causes a lot of issues for you and your chiropractor Little Falls MN.
The other spot, that is commonly overlooked, but where scar tissue loves to grow is between muscles. You see, the Movers are layered and typically glide over each other without problem. But when scar tissue forms between the layers, it adheres them to each other, and keeps your muscles all knotted up. If you could see it, it would look like two old books on a shelf with a thick spider web between them.
Most hands-on muscle therapy, especially when done by non-professionals, someone who is not a chiropractor Little Falls MN, or when employing most do-it-yourself muscle widgets, you cannot directly treat these areas because they’re difficult to reach and hard to find. The muscle/tendon junction, for example, can be located underneath the bone they attach onto. To get as close to pain-free as possible, with extreme precision, hands-on muscle therapy needs to be applied to the right spot. In fact, entire text-books are written about the necessity of being on the right spot, how to find it, and what to do once you’re there. One book I refer to quite often has over 750 pages, and has more detail than you can shake a stick at.
“The right muscle”—Sometimes muscle pain isn’t as straightforward as it seems. In the world of physical medicine, it’s well known that the muscle feeling the pain isn’t always the one that is causing the pain. This phenomenon is called “referred pain.” The mechanics of how this happens isn’t really important here. What is important is that it happens, it’s common, and in order to get pain-free, you can’t afford to be thrown off by this.
“The right time”—When one Mover gets damaged and forms scar tissue, a second Mover has to compensate. Soon that muscle gets overworked, damaged, and forms scar tissue. Causing a third Mover to do the same. This destruction spreads while the first Mover, where it all began, progressively worsens. This is why finding and treating the right muscle is so important.
The Mover that’s been beat up the most is the one that has to be cleared out first. Why? Because that muscle is like a slow driver in the fast lane—it’s causing a long line of issues to build up behind it. Until that muscle gets fixed by a professional like a chiropractor Little Falls MN, none of the other muscles can get as good as they should. Once you do clear that one up though, it’s truly a beautiful thing. Each subsequent muscle clears up with increasing ease. And before you know it, the slow driver has switched lanes, opening up the road ahead of you. You press the accelerator and move yourself that much closer to being pain-free.
All-in-all, any type of hands-on muscle therapy applied anywhere on probably the right muscle at any time could be good in the short run, but will be bad in the long run. It may help you relax and provide some relief, but if your goal is to break the bonds of the Vicious Cycle, hands-on muscle therapy must be applied to the right spot, on the right muscle, at the right time by a professional like a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
Lastly…
* Stretch with the massage. The breaking down of scar tissue activates the body’s healing mechanisms, and immediately new muscle starts getting laid down. This is a prime opportunity to tell the body that the Movers need to be remade in a longer and stronger way. Remember, Movers get their strength from being able to contract, and when they get knotted up, they lose that ability, becoming weak. The best way to stimulate those muscles on how you want them to grow is by being stretched, seek out a chiropractor Little Falls MN to learn how to properly do so. This window of opportunity doesn’t last very long so it needs to be done in a timely manner, preferably immediately following a scar tissue-breakdown session.
* Get someone else’s help. Like a chiropractor Little Falls MN… We need to make an important point here. In our day and age, there are tons of “at home,” do-it-yourself, muscle gizmo’s that you could purchase, but that doesn’t mean you should. Let me be perfectly clear: all of these things have their place, but they are not specific enough to get you out of the Vicious Cycle—and out of pain. You’re going to need the help of a trained professional to do that. Once you’re out of pain, those things are a great way to help yourself stay well.
So where can you go to get this?
Looking at a provider’s professional credentials is a good place to start, but doesn’t guarantee they understand the details of The Solution. Professional credentials are the letters after someone’s name.
For example, mine are “Ben Grams, D.C.” which stands for Doctor of Chiropractic.
But just because someone is trained as a chiropractor doesn’t automatically mean he or she knows how to deliver this type of hands-on muscle therapy. Same holds true about P.T. (Physical Therapists), M.D. (Doctors of Medicine), D.O. (Doctors of Osteopathy), L.A.c. (Licensed Acupuncturists), L.M.T (Licensed Massage Therapists), or O.T.s (Occupational Therapists). Plus, health care professionals, even chiropractor Little Falls MN, can get certifications that add even more letters to their name making it difficult to figure out who you should go to. Instead of diving into each one, let’s keep it simple.
When you first meet this professional chiropractor Little Falls MN, ask how scar tissue forms in muscles (through overuse and micro-tearing). Then ask what specifically he is going to do about it (like use a special tool, stretching, or hands-on technique to break it down). If he can answer those two questions with confidence, then you’re probably on the right track.
By getting hands-on muscle therapy from a chiropractor Little Falls MN and following these guidelines, the anchor keeping you in the Vicious Cycle will be hoisted and your ship will be ready to set sail to the land of no pain. Once you begin that journey, how do you ensure that you arrive at a pain-free destination and never return to the deep, dangerous waters of the Vicious Cycle?
References
Time heals all wounds. —Unknown
I wish I could say that The Solution works like a light switch: you flip it on, and you’re instantly pain-free but it usually takes a lot more care from a chiropractor Little Falls MN. But that’s not how it works. The Vicious Cycle has built up momentum, and simply can’t be stopped on a dime. Like a locomotive going “full steam ahead,” it must be slowed then stopped. Once that’s been accomplished, then and only then, is it possible to shift that momentum.
All of this takes time. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that the amount of time it takes has been proven through research.
Phase 1: The Recovery/Inflammatory Phase
It’s during this phase where the Vicious Cycle slows, stops, and you hit a Turning Point—where your back and neck start healing up rather than continuing to break down. This is a big deal and a big step in the right direction of being pain-free.
However, it doesn’t guarantee you start to feel better. It may surprise you to learn that you might actually feel worse as you go through this phase. Why? Because your back and neck has sensitized nerves, damaged joints, atrophied and scar tissue-ridden muscles, and the treatment is going to spark some inflammation. Be warned: while applying The Solution even with a chiropractor Little Falls MN and getting your back and neck into this phase is really good for you, you can certainly feel worse during it.
Then again, you might not. Some people feel the same, and others do feel better. It all depends on the condition of your back and neck. This phase can take as little as three days, or quite often between eight to twelve weeks or much longer, you should consult with a chiropractor Little Falls MN. (57,58,59)
The fastest way to get you through this phase is with structured and frequent care. Some people need to start with daily treatments. (60,61) Others could get by with treatment two to three times a week. It all depends on your back and neck, your history, and your activity level.
Phase 2: Repair and Remodeling
After the Recovery/Inflammation Phase, your body enters into Phase 2: Repair and Remodeling.
During the Repair phase, muscles are rebuilt, ligaments are re-structured, resistance returns to the nerves, and sometimes discs are regenerated—all, to the degree that the permanent pathological changes allow. The thing is, there’s a problem with all of the new tissue being laid down: it’s immature, fresh, and weak, which means that there is a risk that the dysfunction and damage could come back. The body, with its intelligence, does something about this. It moves into the next phase.
During the Remodeling portion of this phase, the “newbie” tissue starts to earn its keep. Amazingly, as the newer tissues get stretched and strained with use, they begin to get stronger. The important bit to remember is that during this phase, you’ll probably start to feel better, but you’re not healed yet and shouldn’t act like you are. If your house caught on fire (don’t worry; everything that is near and dear to you was saved), and you were in the process of rebuilding, would you live in the house while you put up the scaffolding and erected its frame? No. Should you start to refurnish the living room before the floors are put in? No, of course not. You don’t start living in the house until the repairs are finished, right? Same rule of thought applies to your back and neck during this phase in the healing process. You don’t start “living” in your back and neck until the repairs are finished so keep seeing a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
Outside of the direct supervision of The Solution expert, you need to be incredibly careful of your postures and movements, and put as little undue stress on your back and neck as possible. Inside of the Solution expert’s clinic, your care is still frequent and structured in order to achieve full range of motion and maintain it through this phase.
For your body this means that:
* Your spinal adjustments and hands-on muscle therapy are still happening pretty close to two to three times a week.
* Your deep Stabilizers are strengthened, smartened, and taught to have endurance through daily exercising, stretching, and mobilizing.
For sure, this is a demanding schedule, but it is the best protocol for getting pain-free. The good news is that during this phase, the frequency of treatment from a chiropractor Little Falls MN can start getting less. The keys for decreased frequency are that you:
* Prove you have stopped doing the “Something Wrong,” and know how to do it right.
* Pass a baseline muscle coordination, strength, and endurance test.
* Demonstrate competency in performing a home exercise program.
* Have maintained an as-full-as possible range of motion for a minimum of ninety days.
To start functioning optimally and maximize pain relief, all of these things must be present for the duration of the Repair phase: one to six months. (57,59,62)
Phase 3: Stabilization
New tissue has been laid down. Muscles are rebuilt stronger, longer, and smarter than before. Cartilage is resilient and squishy vs. degenerated and decaying. The motion of your spine is as full as possible from working with a chiropractor Little Falls MN, and your individual spinal segments are moving as best they can. This gives your brain optimal input, and it’s making sure that your back and neck are functioning optimally. All of this allows you to be as close to pain-free as possible because all of the things that were causing your pain are made anew, right? Wrong! What? How can that be? You might ask, “I’ve already come this far, so how can I not be completely out of pain?”
It’s because the new tissue has been laid down, like a fresh scab. Sure, it’s there, covering up the cut, stopping it from getting worse—the Repair Phase—heck, that scab can toughen up—the Remodeling Phase—but it’s still a scab, and if you brush it against something, what happens to it? It opens up again.
After Phase 1 and Phase 2, your back and neck enters into Phase 3: Stabilization. During this phase, the new changes get cemented into place. Through a process of trial, error, tears, and repairs the body gets tough and resilient. Not only the muscles and joints, mind you, but most importantly, the nerves. Your brain forms new neurons, learns new posture and movement habits so that if you do something incorrectly again, or something bad happens to you, and a Buckling Point is created, your back and neck does not hit the Tipping Point quite so easily. If it does, the spine won’t go back to its old mold. Not a chance. Your brain, because it’s been retrained with a chiropractor Little Falls MN, actually pushes the body to heal in the new mold… a more pain-free mold… a “live-life-the-way-you-want-to” mold.
This phase is when the scab has turned back into the skin, and that’s not all. This is typically when you can be released with your own, custom-tailored, home-care program from a chiropractor Little Falls MN. This should involve a unique combination of specific exercises, mobilizations, stretches, non-drug pain relief techniques, and dietary guidelines designed for you. Also, your spinal adjustment frequency can be reduced to once or twice every two to four weeks. (63,64) This level of support needs to be maintained anywhere from one to two years after the completion of the Repair Phase (65,57,59,66) in order for you to get pain-free. During this phase, you will be thrilled to feel the best you have through the whole healing process. Remember: your spine is not your tongue. The tongue, because of all the blood that’s in it, heals ridiculously fast. The spine is literally the opposite because tissues like deep spine cartilage, nerves, ligaments, etc. have a very scant blood supply.
Final Thought
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, said that “Healing is a matter of opportunity and time.” By implementing The Solution, you’re giving the body the opportunity to get pain free. All that’s left is time.
For Best Results, Use as Directed by a chiropractor Little Falls MN
* Repetition is the mother of learning. At the beginning of this journey to a pain-free life, you and your spine are going to be in a tug-of-war battle. Your muscles and nerves are so accustomed to being weak and contracted that they are ready to drag the joints right back to the way they were after your first treatments. Over time, though, the tissues will begin to change, and eventually they will help your joints stay moving. It takes repetition—a lot of it—and although the schedule laid out is pretty demanding, if you truly want to get pain-free, this is absolutely the best protocol.
* The three-to-four visit myth. I’ve had patients tell me they’ve heard that “If you’re not feeling better in three or four visits, it’s not going to work.” Not only is that statement unscientific and not based on evidence, it’s just plain stupid. How could a condition that has taken months, or quite probably years, to develop, heal within three to four visits over a week or two? It doesn’t make sense. Plus, it’s physiologically impossible. This is simply a myth propagated by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Here’s the truth: How long it takes you to get out of pain depends on how long you’ve been in pain, and how far down the Vicious Cycle your back and neck have gone. If you have experienced the pain for three months or less, you’ll have a relatively quick turnaround. If the pain has been bothering you for longer than three months, you’re in for a considerably longer haul. One study went as far as to say that “Increased function and reduction of pain may not occur for 12 weeks.”67 Keep that in mind as you set off on the road to a pain-free destination.
* Just do it. During all of these phases, while it’s important to be mindful of what you’re doing, you can’t stop “doing.” Keep doing your regular daily activities, especially the ones that you want to do, whether that’s gardening, playing with the kids, golfing, or traveling. It’s only by doing that your back and neck learns what it needs to do in order for you to keep doing.
* Stable but not fixed. Once you’ve completed the Stabilization Phase you’ll be declared stable, but not fixed. Nothing in your body is ever fixed once and then is good to go forever. Although you’ve been through all of this, if you start doing things wrong again, your back and neck will become dysfunctional again, and then it’s back into the Vicious Cycle.
* Get your oil changed frequently. It’s good to get the back and neck stable again (who wants to be unstable?), but it’s much better to keep it that way—like getting your car’s oil changed frequently after you’ve had the engine fixed. For your spine, that means you should keep doing exercises, keep stretching, keep mobilizing, and keep your diet clean. It also means getting your back and neck checked periodically by a chiropractor Little Falls MN to ensure that the areas that have been permanently damaged are staying in check. How often should you do the home care program? Daily, like brushing your teeth. How often should you get your spine checked? Once a week to once every four weeks—your Solution expert will be able to help you with that.
* Plant a tree today. Guess what’s the most common comment patients make when I tell them about the healing phases and the time it takes? You have almost certainly said the same thing to yourself while reading this article. Are you ready? Here it is: “Gee-whiz! I don’t have time for that!” I agree that’s probably true. It is a major time commitment. I also know if you’re reading this, you’re probably in pain or someone you know is in pain. Mother Nature has certain requirements that must be met in order to heal. And in learning the amount of time it takes to complete the journey to become pain-free, I hope you’ve realized two things. First, if you’re not in pain, keep yourself that way by installing The Solution as a part of your life. Second, remember this saying: “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the next best time is now.”
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the next best time is now.
References
Time heals all wounds. —Unknown
I wish I could say that The Solution works like a light switch: you flip it on, and you’re instantly pain-free but it usually takes a lot more care from a chiropractor Little Falls MN. But that’s not how it works. The Vicious Cycle has built up momentum, and simply can’t be stopped on a dime. Like a locomotive going “full steam ahead,” it must be slowed then stopped. Once that’s been accomplished, then and only then, is it possible to shift that momentum.
All of this takes time. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that the amount of time it takes has been proven through research.
Phase 1: The Recovery/Inflammatory Phase
It’s during this phase where the Vicious Cycle slows, stops, and you hit a Turning Point—where your back and neck start healing up rather than continuing to break down. This is a big deal and a big step in the right direction of being pain-free.
However, it doesn’t guarantee you start to feel better. It may surprise you to learn that you might actually feel worse as you go through this phase. Why? Because your back and neck has sensitized nerves, damaged joints, atrophied and scar tissue-ridden muscles, and the treatment is going to spark some inflammation. Be warned: while applying The Solution even with a chiropractor Little Falls MN and getting your back and neck into this phase is really good for you, you can certainly feel worse during it.
Then again, you might not. Some people feel the same, and others do feel better. It all depends on the condition of your back and neck. This phase can take as little as three days, or quite often between eight to twelve weeks or much longer, you should consult with a chiropractor Little Falls MN. (57,58,59)
The fastest way to get you through this phase is with structured and frequent care. Some people need to start with daily treatments. (60,61) Others could get by with treatment two to three times a week. It all depends on your back and neck, your history, and your activity level.
Phase 2: Repair and Remodeling
After the Recovery/Inflammation Phase, your body enters into Phase 2: Repair and Remodeling.
During the Repair phase, muscles are rebuilt, ligaments are re-structured, resistance returns to the nerves, and sometimes discs are regenerated—all, to the degree that the permanent pathological changes allow. The thing is, there’s a problem with all of the new tissue being laid down: it’s immature, fresh, and weak, which means that there is a risk that the dysfunction and damage could come back. The body, with its intelligence, does something about this. It moves into the next phase.
During the Remodeling portion of this phase, the “newbie” tissue starts to earn its keep. Amazingly, as the newer tissues get stretched and strained with use, they begin to get stronger. The important bit to remember is that during this phase, you’ll probably start to feel better, but you’re not healed yet and shouldn’t act like you are. If your house caught on fire (don’t worry; everything that is near and dear to you was saved), and you were in the process of rebuilding, would you live in the house while you put up the scaffolding and erected its frame? No. Should you start to refurnish the living room before the floors are put in? No, of course not. You don’t start living in the house until the repairs are finished, right? Same rule of thought applies to your back and neck during this phase in the healing process. You don’t start “living” in your back and neck until the repairs are finished so keep seeing a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
Outside of the direct supervision of The Solution expert, you need to be incredibly careful of your postures and movements, and put as little undue stress on your back and neck as possible. Inside of the Solution expert’s clinic, your care is still frequent and structured in order to achieve full range of motion and maintain it through this phase.
For your body this means that:
* Your spinal adjustments and hands-on muscle therapy are still happening pretty close to two to three times a week.
* Your deep Stabilizers are strengthened, smartened, and taught to have endurance through daily exercising, stretching, and mobilizing.
For sure, this is a demanding schedule, but it is the best protocol for getting pain-free. The good news is that during this phase, the frequency of treatment from a chiropractor Little Falls MN can start getting less. The keys for decreased frequency are that you:
* Prove you have stopped doing the “Something Wrong,” and know how to do it right.
* Pass a baseline muscle coordination, strength, and endurance test.
* Demonstrate competency in performing a home exercise program.
* Have maintained an as-full-as possible range of motion for a minimum of ninety days.
To start functioning optimally and maximize pain relief, all of these things must be present for the duration of the Repair phase: one to six months. (57,59,62)
Phase 3: Stabilization
New tissue has been laid down. Muscles are rebuilt stronger, longer, and smarter than before. Cartilage is resilient and squishy vs. degenerated and decaying. The motion of your spine is as full as possible from working with a chiropractor Little Falls MN, and your individual spinal segments are moving as best they can. This gives your brain optimal input, and it’s making sure that your back and neck are functioning optimally. All of this allows you to be as close to pain-free as possible because all of the things that were causing your pain are made anew, right? Wrong! What? How can that be? You might ask, “I’ve already come this far, so how can I not be completely out of pain?”
It’s because the new tissue has been laid down, like a fresh scab. Sure, it’s there, covering up the cut, stopping it from getting worse—the Repair Phase—heck, that scab can toughen up—the Remodeling Phase—but it’s still a scab, and if you brush it against something, what happens to it? It opens up again.
After Phase 1 and Phase 2, your back and neck enters into Phase 3: Stabilization. During this phase, the new changes get cemented into place. Through a process of trial, error, tears, and repairs the body gets tough and resilient. Not only the muscles and joints, mind you, but most importantly, the nerves. Your brain forms new neurons, learns new posture and movement habits so that if you do something incorrectly again, or something bad happens to you, and a Buckling Point is created, your back and neck does not hit the Tipping Point quite so easily. If it does, the spine won’t go back to its old mold. Not a chance. Your brain, because it’s been retrained with a chiropractor Little Falls MN, actually pushes the body to heal in the new mold… a more pain-free mold… a “live-life-the-way-you-want-to” mold.
This phase is when the scab has turned back into the skin, and that’s not all. This is typically when you can be released with your own, custom-tailored, home-care program from a chiropractor Little Falls MN. This should involve a unique combination of specific exercises, mobilizations, stretches, non-drug pain relief techniques, and dietary guidelines designed for you. Also, your spinal adjustment frequency can be reduced to once or twice every two to four weeks. (63,64) This level of support needs to be maintained anywhere from one to two years after the completion of the Repair Phase (65,57,59,66) in order for you to get pain-free. During this phase, you will be thrilled to feel the best you have through the whole healing process. Remember: your spine is not your tongue. The tongue, because of all the blood that’s in it, heals ridiculously fast. The spine is literally the opposite because tissues like deep spine cartilage, nerves, ligaments, etc. have a very scant blood supply.
Final Thought
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, said that “Healing is a matter of opportunity and time.” By implementing The Solution, you’re giving the body the opportunity to get pain free. All that’s left is time.
For Best Results, Use as Directed by a chiropractor Little Falls MN
* Repetition is the mother of learning. At the beginning of this journey to a pain-free life, you and your spine are going to be in a tug-of-war battle. Your muscles and nerves are so accustomed to being weak and contracted that they are ready to drag the joints right back to the way they were after your first treatments. Over time, though, the tissues will begin to change, and eventually they will help your joints stay moving. It takes repetition—a lot of it—and although the schedule laid out is pretty demanding, if you truly want to get pain-free, this is absolutely the best protocol.
* The three-to-four visit myth. I’ve had patients tell me they’ve heard that “If you’re not feeling better in three or four visits, it’s not going to work.” Not only is that statement unscientific and not based on evidence, it’s just plain stupid. How could a condition that has taken months, or quite probably years, to develop, heal within three to four visits over a week or two? It doesn’t make sense. Plus, it’s physiologically impossible. This is simply a myth propagated by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Here’s the truth: How long it takes you to get out of pain depends on how long you’ve been in pain, and how far down the Vicious Cycle your back and neck have gone. If you have experienced the pain for three months or less, you’ll have a relatively quick turnaround. If the pain has been bothering you for longer than three months, you’re in for a considerably longer haul. One study went as far as to say that “Increased function and reduction of pain may not occur for 12 weeks.”67 Keep that in mind as you set off on the road to a pain-free destination.
* Just do it. During all of these phases, while it’s important to be mindful of what you’re doing, you can’t stop “doing.” Keep doing your regular daily activities, especially the ones that you want to do, whether that’s gardening, playing with the kids, golfing, or traveling. It’s only by doing that your back and neck learns what it needs to do in order for you to keep doing.
* Stable but not fixed. Once you’ve completed the Stabilization Phase you’ll be declared stable, but not fixed. Nothing in your body is ever fixed once and then is good to go forever. Although you’ve been through all of this, if you start doing things wrong again, your back and neck will become dysfunctional again, and then it’s back into the Vicious Cycle.
* Get your oil changed frequently. It’s good to get the back and neck stable again (who wants to be unstable?), but it’s much better to keep it that way—like getting your car’s oil changed frequently after you’ve had the engine fixed. For your spine, that means you should keep doing exercises, keep stretching, keep mobilizing, and keep your diet clean. It also means getting your back and neck checked periodically by a chiropractor Little Falls MN to ensure that the areas that have been permanently damaged are staying in check. How often should you do the home care program? Daily, like brushing your teeth. How often should you get your spine checked? Once a week to once every four weeks—your Solution expert will be able to help you with that.
* Plant a tree today. Guess what’s the most common comment patients make when I tell them about the healing phases and the time it takes? You have almost certainly said the same thing to yourself while reading this article. Are you ready? Here it is: “Gee-whiz! I don’t have time for that!” I agree that’s probably true. It is a major time commitment. I also know if you’re reading this, you’re probably in pain or someone you know is in pain. Mother Nature has certain requirements that must be met in order to heal. And in learning the amount of time it takes to complete the journey to become pain-free, I hope you’ve realized two things. First, if you’re not in pain, keep yourself that way by installing The Solution as a part of your life. Second, remember this saying: “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the next best time is now.”
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the next best time is now.
References
I really regret that workout. –No One Ever
When you use your back and neck incorrectly, or Something Bad Happens To You, a Buckling Point is created, and muscles that were once your spine’s biggest protector become its greatest threat. As a chiropractor Little Falls MN I know that has to change to get out of pain. You must get your muscles on your side once again. Here’s how.
The Deep, Spinal Stabilizers
Once the Tipping Point has been crossed, life becomes difficult for the deep Stabilizers. At first, because of inhibition, their reaction time is slowed and their coordination begins to wane. Eventually, some of them stop being used completely. This lack of use turns into weakness. Weakness brings destruction. After a while, the muscles and the parts of the brain that control them begin to die off, which is not a pretty picture.
What do you do about it? Turn lack-of-use into lots-of-use by forcing the deep Stabilizers to become active. This turns weakness into strength, destruction into reconstruction, and your dead muscles will be raised to life. The use of these muscles will force your brain to grow new neurons, reestablishing its control. As a chiropractor Little Falls MN we even see coordination will be restored. Reaction time will improve. You’ll feel stronger, move better, have more balance, and most importantly, have less pain.
What’s the best way to get this done? Through spinal exercises and seeing a chiropractor Little Falls MN. And like with spinal adjusting, the research and data on exercise relieving back and neck pain is so extensive that it’s almost mind numbing. Here, again, are highlights.
Research Highlights
In 1992, some 103 low-back pain sufferers were randomly assigned into a carefully graded exercise program. Others in the group were given “the usual” care (ice and rest). All were blue-collar workers on sick leave for disability because of their low back pain. This study found that the people who received exercise training returned to work faster than those who did not. (22) Duh! Of course people who were given the means to directly address one of the components of the Vicious Cycle got better. Study (23), after study (24), after study (25), after study (26), after study (27) proves this. Another study was done in 2010 that involved over 6,000 people that showed the same thing. (28) Yep, the science is abundantly clear that if you’re suffering from back and neck pain, you need to be exercising your deep Stabilizers.
Interestingly, spinal exercises not only relieve pain but also stop and reverse weakness, destruction, and the muscle death that happens to them in the Vicious Cycle. Case in point: An Australian study that showed if low back pain patients perform exercises, the atrophy of a deep Stabilizer (called the Multifidus) was prevented. (29)
Why does exercising the spinal Stabilizers work so consistently well? It’s simple. When you keep the deep Stabilizers strong they do their job at holding the joints together and protecting them. You don’t have to be a genius to understand that. So if you’re suffering from back and/or neck pain and not doing spinal exercises, you’re missing a big part of what it takes to be pain-free.
Where can you find how to exercise your deep, spine-stabilizing muscles? Well call this chiropractor Little Falls MN to find out!
Once again, for some reason beyond me, more doctors and chiropractor Little Falls MN haven’t figured this out so you may have to do some work in order to find a good back-and-neck rehab program. This is not an all-inclusive list by any means, but doctors of chiropractic, physical therapists, and occupational therapists are going to be your best bet. The key is to know what you’re seeking. If the typical program of the person you’re seeing is a handful of “one-size-fits-all” sessions, and then you’re sent home with a grainy printout of exercises straight out of the 1980s, run for the hills.
For Best Results, Use as Directed:
* Be picky! Not all exercises are created equal. If you want to improve your heart health, you would do cardiovascular exercise like jogging. If you wanted to build whole-body strength, you would focus on weight lifting. If you wanted to work on your stability, you would do balance-reinforcing exercises. You see, different types of exercise give different results. When it comes to relieving your back and neck pain, the exercises you perform need to strengthen the deep spinal Stabilizers which can only be done through certain exercises. Walking, jogging, staying active, and lifting weights are all good things to do for your health, but they aren’t the right kind of exercise to get your back and neck out of the Vicious Cycle. That is why we encourage you going to a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
* Specificity is key. The exercises need to be done in a very specific manner. The truth is your back and neck can be exercised in a variety of ways, but, based on your pain level, body type, and progression through the Vicious Cycle, only the right way for you will get your pain gone. The “one-exercise-fits-all” approach to getting the spine pain-free is hogwash. In fact, one study showed that the more specific the exercises are, the better the results. (30) You might think this is common sense, but you’d be surprised how many physical medicine professionals seem to have forgotten about this.
* Coaching is a must. The farther down your spine the Vicious Cycle has gotten, the harder it’s going to be to actually turn on the deep Stabilizers because the nerves controlling them get damaged, making the brain/muscle connection weak. On top of that, the superficial Movers are hyperactivity trying to take over the Stabilizer’s job. This makes it impossible to be able to exercise your Stabilizers in the right way all by yourself. As it is with so many things in life, practice does not make perfect—only perfect practice makes perfect which is why we encourage you to consult a chiropractor Little Falls MN. Having an outside set of expert eyes train you, critique you, and give you feedback as you perform the exercises makes it possible for you to strengthen your Stabilizers to their fullest potential.
* Strength first, endurance second. Stabilizers are used all the time. Even when you’re asleep, they’re being used. You can’t get complacent by only getting them strong, you have to build up their endurance. They have to get strong and stay strong over a long period of time to keep you out of pain.
* Muscle memory takes time. Learning how to do these exercises comes in three stages. If you’ve ever played an instrument, this will make perfect sense. The first stage is where you understand what you have to do, but you simply can’t do it. In learning to play piano, for instance, understanding where your fingers need to land is entirely different from being able to get them to do so. At this point, you lack muscle coordination and strength. The only way to change that is through practice, patience, and time. There is no way to get around it. That’s the first stage of learning back-and-neck exercises—you understand what you should be doing, and you start working on being able to do it.
At some point, you’ll be able to strike the key at the right time and with the right finger, but it still takes a lot of concentration and effort. The second stage is you’re able to do it, but you really have to think about it.
Once you’re here, you have to continue to push your muscles. More practice. More repetition. More time. More coaching from a chiropractor Little Falls MN. Keep repeating this until you meet the third and final stage—where you do it without thinking. You’ll be like the master pianist whose fingers effortlessly grace the keys. The beautiful thing about getting to this point is that once you’re there, you really won’t have to think too much about your back and neck. Remember, the deep Stabilizers are involuntary muscles. In the Vicious Cycle, this works against you because once they start shutting down, they’re hard to stop. In the healing process, this works for you because all you have to do is feed them an occasional exercise session, and they take care of the rest. It’s a beautiful, very pain-free place to be.
* Don’t stop until you get enough. These exercises will take you a long way toward achieving flexibility, strength, and coordination, but it can’t stop there. These need to become a habit, and you have to continue long after the pain has lessened or perhaps disappeared completely. Stopping these exercises is like sending pain an invitation back into your life.
* Less is best. While you’re on your way to getting pain-free, you might be told that you’ll need a big, expensive, technologically advanced machines to strengthen the Stabilizers. Wrong. The best spinal rehab is done low-tech, and these things will do the trick: a yoga mat, seeing a chiropractor Little Falls MN, gym ball, a couple of weights, and wall bands.
* Consistency is vital. Who has the healthier set of teeth? The person who brushes once a week or the person who brushes daily? Duh. So it is with your Stabilizers. Doing the exercises once a day, every day, is better for you than doing a session once a week because it constantly reminds the Stabilizers how they should be behaving. Once a day, every day—that’s your quota.
Conclusion
Through spinal adjustments and seeing a chiropractor Little Falls MN, the joints have started moving fully, and through spinal exercise, the Stabilizers have gotten stronger. At this point, it’s like the broken mast has been repaired and secured. What needs to be done now is to hoist the anchor and set sail. To accomplish this, another component of the Vicious Cycle must be taken care of—the superficial Movers.
References
The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing. —Stephen Covey, author
“The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People”
Becoming pain-free is the goal of almost every patient that comes in to see this chiropractor Little Falls MN. That’s the goal. We know what doesn’t do it—drugs, surgery, and falling prey to pain myths. We know what the purpose of pain is, and how it develops in the back and neck. Now, it’s time to leverage that knowledge and take the next step. In order to do so, however, you must understand one main thing.
Some things in this life are simply true. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. You reap what you sow. One plus one equals two. See, it doesn’t matter if you believe they’re true or not, they simply are. They are as undeniable as they are unstoppable. Like if you don’t believe in gravity, and then jump off a building, you’re still going to fall.
With what I’m about to share with you as a chiropractor Little Falls MN, this is the case. There is a “truth” about back and neck pain, and if you take away only one thing from this entire book, it should be this: in order for your back and neck to be as pain-free as possible, they have to be as healthy as possible.
As Pain Free As Possible = As Healthy As Possible
But before we talk about what it means for the back and neck to be “As Healthy as Possible,” we must first know what health is. In a dictionary, you will find that health is defined as, “The state of an organism when it functions optimally without evidence of disease.” The key words are “optimally” and “functions.” When something functions optimally, it means it’s working at 100 percent. For the spine, it’s the state in which the nerves, muscles, and joints are working as good as they possibly can be. The Vicious Cycle robs you of that and relentlessly pulls your spine away from peak performance—away from being healthy—and closer to pain.
Then: As Healthy As Possible = Optimal Function
Now, one system in the body is responsible for making sure every other system in the body is functioning optimally: The Nervous System. It supervises and coordinates the activity of every cell, tissue, and organ at breakneck speed and with astounding precision. Its complexity is mind boggling, and its architecture is awe-inspiring. One of my wise professors when I was studying to be a chiropractor Little Falls MN would say, “The human nervous system is the apex of creation in the known universe” and I agree. If you think about it, you probably agree as well.
Despite its grandeur, the setup of the nervous system is very simple. The brain sends messages down the spinal cord and out through the nerves, telling whatever is on the end of that nerve—heart, lungs, stomach, or muscle—how to function optimally. How well the body is able to function is really dependent on the messages the brain sends. This means that in order for the body to function optimally, the output of the brain also has to be optimal.
Optimal Function = Optimal Brain Output
But how does the brain know what to do? For instance, if you’re walking up a flight of stairs, how does the brain know to send messages to the heart to beat faster and to the lungs to breathe deeper? How does the brain know to regulate your blood sugar? How does it know to get your skin to sweat when you’re hot? The answer is that the body tells the brain what’s happening to it, once again, through the nerves, and then the brain interprets that information and responds accordingly.
Then, in order for the brain to control the body really well (optimal output), it must receive really good and complete information from the body. So,
Optimal Output = Optimal Input
I know I’m getting a little technical as a chiropractor Little Falls MN, but stick with me here. Like I said, this is the most important concept of this book.
In some systems in the body, this input/output happens automatically; meaning, we have no conscious control over it. Take the immune system. You cannot consciously tell your immune system to start fighting bacteria or viruses. It just does it. Nerves detect the invaders, alert the brain, and then the brain triggers an immune response. The digestive system is another example. You cannot, right now, by the force of willpower, make your stomach produce more acid—no way. Only once food enters the stomach, and the nerves detect it, does acid start getting released to break down the food. It’s the same with the cardiovascular system as well as the skin system. If you get a paper cut, no matter how hard you think and stare at your bleeding finger, it’s not going to heal any faster. All of the systems of the body run on autopilot, but the neuromusculoskeletal system is an exception.
It almost goes without saying that you have at least some control over your body. You can lift your arm, close your eyelids, hold your breath, and bend to pick up things. But just because we initiate the action by willing it, doesn’t mean we really control it. Here’s what I, your chiropractor Little Falls MN, mean.
The mechanisms that go into planning and executing a movement are far more complex than the brain simply issuing a command and the nerves executing it.
For example, suppose that you go to pick up a glass of water that you think is cool and refreshing, but is actually boiling hot. As soon as you touch the glass, you immediately pull your hand back, by reflex, without thinking about it.
But suppose that next your child tries to grab this glass, which you already know is hot. In this case, because your child’s safety is so important to you, you can consciously overcome the reflex to pull your hand away. Instead, using your voluntary muscle control, you grab the glass yourself and put it where your child can’t reach it.
Lastly, if someone tells you that the glass is made of fine crystal and not ordinary glass, you will probably handle it more carefully. In other words, your brain will take this information into account and adapt your method of grasping the glass accordingly.
All of these facts demonstrate that the execution of a movement is not simply a matter of the brain’s sending a “Go!” command through the nerves but is rather the result of a highly elaborate construct. Moreover, the remarkable adaptability of movement demonstrates the involvement of powerful mechanisms. (1)
Yes, we do have some say in how we move, but the majority of motions themselves—the speed, force, timing, coordination, etc., —are on autopilot. The part of the brain that controls this is called the cerebellum, we understand that unless you are a chiropractor Little Falls MN or a doctor you probably don’t care about there. It’s located at the base of your skull, and is impressively chock-full of nerves that’s sole purpose is to make sure you’re moving optimally.
Following what we’ve already discussed, in order for your brain to ensure that your back and neck are functioning optimally, it needs as much information about your spine as possible. Like how the joints are positioned, how they’re moving, how fast they’re moving, and how much stress is on them because of that movement.
Now, in the last section we covered the type of nerves that do this. Do you remember? Mechanoreceptors. Your brain needs as much Mechanoreception as possible in order to ensure your back and neck are functioning optimally.
But what about the nociceptors? You know, the “bad guys” of the entire Vicious Cycle? For the intents and purposes of this chapter, nociception should really be considered as “no-mechanoreception.” Meaning that if nociceptors are firing, the mechanoreceptors are not. Then, if the mechanoreceptors aren’t firing, the brain becomes disconnected from knowing what the joints are doing. Nociception is bad input.
For the back and neck, optimal input is when mechanoreception is maximized and nociception is minimized.**
Optimal Input = Maximal Mechanoreception and Minimal Nociception
The next question then is: how do you do this? How do you ensure that your brain is getting optimal input for optimal output? This is where it gets exciting for you and this chiropractor Little Falls MN. Muscles, tendons, and ligaments—the things that hold joints together—are full of mechanoreceptors. They’re not only responsible for controlling a joint’s movement, but also for containing it within its normal limits. Joints must move as fully as possible, and at the same time, not exceed their normal limits which is why you should learn proper methods from a chiropractor Little Falls MN (i.e., no Buckling Points) —that’s how you get optimal input to the brain (your cerebellum to be precise).
Maximal Mechanoreception and Minimal Nociception =Joints Moving As Good As Possible
But it doesn’t end there. In order for joints to move as good as possible, they must have two things: 1) Optimal alignment and 2) Balance between the two muscle groups.
Joints Moving As Good As Possible = Optimal Alignment + Muscle Balance
That’s the bottom line. If you can keep your spine in good alignment when you sit, lift, bend, sleep, stand, or whatever, and keep the deep Stabilizers balanced with the superficial Movers, your spine will be as healthy as possible, making it as pain-free as possible. **For the other spinal geeks and chiropractor Little Falls MN out there reading this, I do not mean absolutely no nociception. Some, I imagine, is good for us, like red wine. But also like red wine, too much will cause problems.
This line of logic stripped to its barest elements looks like this:
This is what The Solution does. It doesn’t simply operate within this framework—it maximizes it. Which is why, as you’re about to find out, it is the most effective way to rid the back and neck pain. By the way, guess what doesn’t operate within this framework, or at best, leverages it incompletely? Standard medical care, pain management clinics, and the vast majority of physical medicine. As a healthcare field, we have failed to keep the main thing the main thing. Many other things—technological advances, money, and political power, to name a few—have replaced the main thing: getting and keeping people healthy. This is why people are suffering from so much pain. It’s time for a better approach to pain. It’s time for a better answer: The Solution, so ask a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
Let’s review what you’ve learned so far from this chiropractor Little Falls MN. Spinal adjusting, spinal exercises, and hands-on muscle therapy are very effective treatments for back and neck pain. Not only that, they’re incredibly less expensive and safer than medications and surgery.
Pretty impressive, but it’s not good enough. Why? Because good enough is never good enough. I want to deliver to you as a chiropractor Little Falls MN the most effective treatment for back and neck pain—The Solution—but before I can do that I need to unveil one more component.
You might be thinking: “What’s wrong with what you’ve laid out? That treatment sounds like the winning ticket.” The answer is just that—spinal adjustments, spinal exercises, and hands-on muscle therapy are treatment. They only address the dysfunction once it’s set in. They only repair what has already been damaged. They only slow the pathological protective changes once they’ve occurred. But what if you get all the way to your desired destination—to the point of being without pain—and then you unwittingly create another Buckling Point in your spine and cross the Tipping Point? That’s right; you’ll be pulled back in the Vicious Cycle faster than you can say ouch.”
The problem with what we’ve discussed in this section so far is that it’s all treatment. Spinal adjustments, spinal exercise, and hands-on muscle therapy only treat problems that are already there. They do not prevent problems from occurring like a chiropractor Little Falls MN can. Said differently, up to this point, I’ve shown you what the most effective mops are, where to find them, and how to best use them to clean up the mess, but I have not yet shown you how to turn off the faucet—which, in my opinion, is the most important component of The Solution.
Mistakes and Buckling Points
Imagine a really bad driver. He comes to a screeching halt at every stop sign and then accelerates like a bat out of hell. He never slows down to take corners, and red-lines the engine every chance he gets. And to top it off, he’s never changed the oil, replaced fluids, or had the “check engine” light looked at. One day, while driving like a maniac, his car violently lurches forward, then abruptly stops as smoke spews from under the hood.
A tow truck takes the car to a mechanic who reveals that the car is nearly totaled, and it’s going to take a lot of time and money to get it fixed. Let’s say, for the sake of this example, he cannot dump, exchange, or sell the car. He has to bite the bullet and fix it.
How would he go about doing that? First, find a mechanic that can do the job. Second, get the damaged parts repaired. And then, for Pete’s sake, drive better! That last part—learning how to drive better—is exactly what has to be done next to rid yourself of back and neck pain.
The Problem
Let’s go back to the beginning. Remember the pathway to pain starts in one of two ways. Either a) Something Bad Happens To You or b) You Do Something Wrong. We have no control over the former, and it’s incredibly rare. The latter, however, is completely within our influence and is extremely common.
When you use your back and neck incorrectly, Buckling Points are created—that’s the start of The Vicious Cycle. Remember, the occasional mistake in using your back and neck won’t do you any harm. Your spine has the ability to “recover.” It’s only when that mistake goes uncorrected and repeated that the Vicious Cycle takes off. Therein lies the final component to The Solution: The mistakes you’re making are hurting you, and they have to be stopped by a chiropractor Little Falls MN. Otherwise, you will be forever caught in a Vicious Cycle, and getting pain-free will never be an option.
The final component for The Solution is to stop making mistakes, and start using your back and neck correctly. Once you start to do this, the rate of Buckling Point creation in your spine gets reduced drastically. This allows your muscles more time to recoup between mistakes, making the Tipping Point harder to cross. Mechanoreception gets maximized, and nociception minimized, which helps your nervous system function optimally. Lastly, the joints move more normally, which helps preserve your cartilage. All in all, becoming “anti-Buckling Point” in all your movements is the only way to turn off the faucet.
How do you do this? Hire a professional back and neck trainer or see a chiropractor Little Falls MN. She or he will be able to identify what you’re doing wrong in your day-to-day life, and then teach you how to correct it. For example, this person will be able to figure out if your lower back pain is coming from your sitting posture at work or your lifting mechanics at home. They will be able to determine if your neck pain is coming from how you stand, hold your child, or drive your car. Their job is to train you on how to use your back and neck better so that you don’t keep creating Buckling Points. This type of learning intervention goes by many names including “education” “back school,” and “cognitive therapy”, but the intent is the same: to give you the know-how necessary to use your back and neck correctly.
Think of it this way…
Imagine being dropped off in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. You have no food or water and no way to communicate with the outside world. What gives you the best chance of staying alive: To rely on your own survival skills or have a guide who has already taken thousands of people out? The answer is obvious!
Research Highlights
Studies show that simply learning how you use your back and neck better provides a pretty good amount of relief, even if you do nothing else. (38-45) In fact, there’s evidence that shows that “back to school” can be as effective as spinal exercise. (46) This is probably because if you’re using your back and neck better, it means that you’re activating your deep Stabilizers more often.
Let’s be clear: learning how to use your spine better, and then implementing those changes, is vital. However, if you’ve crossed the Tipping Point, using your spine better is not enough. The dysfunctional muscles, nerves, and joints feed off each other, and have to be addressed individually with treatment targeted directly at them to become functional again and reverse the Vicious Cycle. See a chiropractor Little Falls MN to determine if you’ve already received damage. As we’ve found throughout this section, it’s not the ingredients that make a pie delicious—it’s how you combine the ingredients that determine whether the pie is worthy of the dinner table or a trash can.
For Best Results, Use as Directed
* The advice must be custom-tailored. It’s been found that the most successful outcomes result not only from being taught improved body mechanics and lifting techniques, but also having someone show you how to apply this newfound knowledge to your life—your job, your activity level, your age, your body type, etc. In order to turn off your specific faucet, whatever that may be, it has to be done in a way that is unique to you. The best way to do this is consulting a chiropractor Little Falls MN for a plain. Yes, you can get a suit jacket from a discount store, and it’ll probably look and feel good enough, but let’s be honest, good enough isn’t really good enough. If you want to look and feel your best, your jacket should be custom-tailored, and so should your back and neck advice.
* Roll up your sleeves. Don’t go someplace where you sit and listen to a teacher and later try to remember what you’ve learned. That doesn’t cut it. You must be involved in the process, and the process must involve you. Knowledge without action is useless.
* Using your spine better is different from spinal exercises. I can’t tell you how many times a patient has come to me frustrated, saying something like, “I’ve been doing the exercises, but I’m still getting pain in my back!” I’ll ask, “Well, when did the pain start to worsen again?” They answer with, “After I was loading wood in the trailer,” or something to that effect. “Could you show me how you were lifting?” I ask. Then I’ll see their back contort as they pretend to pick something off the ground. “Well, I think I know your problem. You would do well to remember that spinal exercises strengthen your Stabilizers so that your joints can handle more mistakes, but they don’t make them impervious.”
* Never trust a skinny chef. Not too long ago one of my patients came in for treatment with an obvious chip on his shoulder. I asked what the problem was since normally he’s a happy-go-lucky guy. At his annual checkup, his doctor told him to lose weight. He then turned to me and scoffed “And he’s fatter than I am!” The persons whose advice you seek must practice what they preach. If you have better posture than they do, they’re not the trainer for you.
* Lean on me. Time after time I’ve worked with athletes and self-proclaimed health “gurus” who thought they knew it all, but couldn’t pass the simplest of proper-usage tests. You may think you have a pretty good grasp on this stuff, but the truth is unless you’ve had professional grade training, you don’t. Accept that you’re going to need some help. Besides, I bet you don’t have the time, interest, or money to spend the next ten years of your life going back to school and learning about pain relief, biology, chemistry, and human biomechanics. By finding an expert and learning from them, you can obtain a decade’s worth of schooling and probably decades’ worth of real-world practice in a short amount of time.
* Seeking a long-term relationship. How long do you see a dentist? If you want a healthy, bright, pain-free smile, and to avoid tooth decay and root canals, you’ll want to see a dentist periodically for your entire life. Chances are you’ve already accepted this as a fact. It is the same with your back-and-neck professional-grade trainer, chiropractor Little Falls MN. Different seasons of life require different skills. Using your back and neck correctly as a teenager requires a different set of skills than in your twilight years and this “trainer” will serve as your guide through those years.
Where do you find a professional back and neck trainer?
Your best chance of getting pain-free does not rest in the arms of medically trained doctors or surgeons or even a chiropractor Little Falls MN. It does not rest in magic potions, lotions, or pills. Nor does it rest in your average chiropractor, physical therapist, massage therapist, or osteopath. It rests in finding a non-drug, non-surgical, professionally trained expert. You’re probably not too happy to read that these experts are hard to find. I personally know of only a handful of doctors who understand all of this, and even fewer with the ability to teach it. Although I can’t provide you with a list of names, I can share with you some telltale signs you’re in the right place.
There’s an important note to be made here. Everything that’s been described so far are components of The Solution, but not The Solution itself. You’ve learned a lot, and you’ve been patient. Now your patience is about to be rewarded as I unveil The Solution. But before we take this next step, I have one last thing to say about learning how to use your spine correctly.
Our Future: Starting Young
I shudder to think of the magnitude of chronic pain our children are facing. Kids these days are simply not told about the importance of their posture and using their spine correctly. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. Most parents, guardians, teachers, and adults are unaware of the spine’s impact on health and how to take care of it—how to safely do simple movements like lifting objects off the floor, sitting posture, walking posture, etc. This lack of understanding is directly feeding into the onslaught of chronic pain that Americans are experiencing, and it has to change. So consult a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
Spinal development happens only over a handful of years, and it’s the only time when children are developing habits that will last for the rest of their life. What if during that period we taught them how to use their back and neck correctly? What if they were taught how to sit properly, stand properly, and get up from a seated position properly? What if we ensured that, during this phase in their life, that their back and neck created as few Buckling Points as possible? Then, if a Buckling Point was created, it was corrected immediately? If we did that back and neck pain could be all but eradicated.
Indeed, starting with kids is an important part of getting out of this chronic pain and mess we’re in. The fact that this isn’t happening is a problem, but an even bigger problem is that it doesn’t seem to be on anybody’s radar.
If you have kids and you’re reading this, I hope you teach them the importance of maintaining a healthy spine with the same intent as you do with brushing their teeth, taking a bath, and applying themselves in school. Because protecting your kids’ spines when they’re young, will ensure that their spine protects them when they’re old.
References
How long does it take to before you’re caught deep within the Vicious Cycle and desperately turning to a chiropractor Little Falls MN for help? That’s a good question. Considering the number of steps in the Vicious Cycle, you might think it takes a long time to get to the Point of No Return. Indeed, the answer may well surprise you. The creation of a Buckling Point occurs in milliseconds (nearly instantaneous), and so does its recovery. I have found no absolute guidelines regarding the number of times one must use the spine poorly (or, for that matter, to what specific magnitude an impact must have) to force someone into the Dysfunctional Phase. I suspect this information is exceedingly hard to obtain because of the variables (age, nutrition, etc.) of recovery we’ve already discussed.
All else aside, once the Tipping Point has been crossed, you have precious little time.
* Scar tissue begins to be deposited immediately upon joint dysfunction, (3)
* After about a week, joint destruction begins, (4)
* In just two weeks, bone damage, cartilage deterioration, and bone spurring is detectable on X-ray, (3) and
* Within four weeks, irreversible bone spurring occurs. (4)
Here’s the takeaway point: after a Buckling Point has been created, you have less than four weeks to stop the Vicious Cycle. So if you haven’t had your back and neck professionally checked for dysfunction within the month, you’re due for a checkup with a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
How Can This Happen So Quickly?
The Vicious Cycle starts slowly, and then accelerates faster and faster. Here’s an analogy. If your car is out-of-alignment, what happens to your tires? Do they wear down slower or faster? Faster. Now, when your tires wear down, what does that do to your car’s alignment? Make it better or worse? Worse. Now that your car’s alignment is worse, what does that mean for your tires? They wear down much faster. Which means what for the alignment? It gets even worse. You see, the tire’s damage is progressively worsening. That final mile right before your tires blow out actually wears them down faster than all the miles that preceded it.
This is how the Vicious Cycle behaves—kind of like a snowball gathering in size and speed as it rolls down a hill. When dysfunction gets bad enough, it turns into destruction which makes repairing even with a chiropractor Little Falls MN much more difficult. As the tissues become damaged, what do you think happens to the degree of dysfunction? Does it get better or worse? Worse. What does it mean for the amount of damage that dysfunction is causing? Less or More? More.
What does that do to the dysfunction? Makes it worse.
Not only do the nerves, muscles, and joints feed off of each other, but so do the phases of degradation. And although the first step into The Vicious Cycle is merely a stumble, a mistake, if your course isn’t set right, the farther down you’ll go and as the slope becomes steeper, the less time you have and the more likely you are to hurt and be in pain. This is why the old adage, “The worse the problem gets, the worse the problem gets” is true.
References:
There is a difference between knowledge and action.
—Dr. John Grams, pastor, and all around great dad
I‘ve hit you with a lot of information, but it’s all vital stuff to know even if you are not a chiropractor Little Falls MN. Think about it. If You Do Something Wrong or if Something Bad Happens To You then comes:
– The Buckling Point. Nociception. Muscle imbalance. Abnormal joint movement.
– The Tipping Point. Constant nociception. Muscle incoordination. Turning off the pump.
– The Breaking Point. Sensitization. Stabilizer atrophy. Degeneration.
– The Point of No Return. Allodynia. Hyperalgesia. Neoneuralization. Scar tissue. Bone spurring.
– The Dead Canary. Pain. Nociceptive bombardment. Adaptive physiology. Sickness. Disease. Death.
Whew. That’s a lot to grab hold of and swallow. But take heart: it’s nothing like the physical pain I’m going to help you avoid as a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
When your body gets caught in The Vicious Cycle, you’re able to do less and less. Your self-reliance and independence begins to crumble. You lose control of your body and life. Doing what you want becomes harder and harder. And for most people, The Vicious Cycle continues as they pile on Tylenol, NSAIDs, potions, lotions, injections, incomplete physical care, some type of cleverly marketed cure-all, and who knows, maybe a dreaded spinal surgery. Then, because The Vicious Cycle still hasn’t been stopped, they go back to the doctor or chiropractor Little Falls MN seeking answers, and hear the despicable soul-destroying words (and yes they’re worth repeating), “There’s nothing you can do about it,” or “You’ll have to learn to live with it,” or “It’s just a part of getting older,” or “It’s all in your head.”
The thing that really grinds my gears, the thing that truly boggles my mind, is that during the whole cycle, the back and neck have always had the potential to get better. Your body is designed to fight back. Your body hates The Vicious Cycle. It hates that it’s being forced to damage itself. It hates not being able to express its full potential. It hates not living a pain-free life. It desperately wants to recover.
All we have to do is to figure out how to give it what it wants.
Right now, you know more about the actual origins of back and neck pain than most health professionals do. Good, but it’s not good enough. Growing up my father always said, “Benjamin, there is a difference between knowledge and action,” and he’s right. It’s how you apply this knowledge to your life that is the important part. Doing something different to get a different result is where the magic lies. But what do you do now? How do you break free of the Vicious Cycle and catapult yourself into a pain-free life?
Good question. Read on, my friend.
The saying “The straw that broke the camel’s back” originates from ancient Egypt when camels were used to transport straw over long distances and is an example I as a chiropractor Little Falls MN use a lot. It was well known that a camel could carry a certain amount of weight without any problems, but at a certain point, the camel’s spine couldn’t sustain any more weight. If that point was crossed, even by a single straw, the camel’s back would break.
Get this from your favorite chiropractor Little Falls MN. In the Dysfunctional Phase, this is exactly what your back and neck have been going through. Your nerves, muscles, and joints have had an increasing amount of stress put on them making it only a matter of time before they hit the Breaking Point—when Dysfunction turns into Destruction.
During this next phase, the slope of the Vicious Cycle gets much steeper. Your back and neck begin breaking down, which moves you away from being pain-free and healthy and closer to pain and sickness.
Destruction: The Nerves—Nociceptors
If you remember, nerves have a natural resistance that serves as a barrier against them firing too easily. During the Dysfunctional Phase that barrier remained untouched, but during the phase of Destruction, that wall comes tumbling down. Here’s how as a chiropractor Little Falls MN I have seen it happen.
Prolonged, involuntary joint dysfunction forces nociceptors to fire over and over again, wearing down their resistance and lowering their threshold.
This means that it takes less stimulus to cause them to fire. In fact, the Nociceptors become so “on edge” and “wound up” that they overreact at the slightest provocation. It can even get to the point where normal and healthy movements cause them to fire. This nerve-disease process has a name, and it’s the one you’ve seen before: sensitization (mentioned in the first pain myth).
If pain sets in while sensitization is present, it can make for a real mess. Ask any chronic pain sufferer which most people who come to this chiropractor Little Falls MN are or have been. Activities that used to be done without thinking—like getting dressed in the morning—now cause the pain sufferer to move more warily.
Sensitization not only makes it easier for Nociceptors to fire, but it is also a vehicle in which the Vicious Cycle spreads to other areas by corrupting adjacent nerves. Unless stopped, sensitization will infect the nerve down to its root: the spinal cord. This is disastrous because all nerves connect to the spinal cord, so once there, sensitization spreads like wildfire. Nerves that were functioning normally, three, four, or five segments away from the initial Dysfunctional Joint, now turn into sensitized, Nociceptive zombies.
And, of course, where Nociception goes, dysfunction follows, and where dysfunction goes, destruction is soon to come.
Note here that more Nociception does not necessarily mean more pain. It certainly can, but it doesn’t have too. In fact, believe it or not, everything described so far can still occur without any symptoms or pain. We only consciously comprehend a tiny fraction of what is happening with our bodies. When I say tiny, I mean.00000000000016 percent. Don’t let yourself be fooled into thinking you would know if this was happening to your back and neck. I’ve heard dozens of patients over my career as a chiropractor Little Falls MN, hunched over in pain, say things like, “This just came out of nowhere.” The truth is that back problems never come from out of nowhere. They always come from somewhere, and that somewhere is usually Nociception and the Vicious Cycle.
Destruction: The Nerves—Mechanoreceptors
While Nociceptors are being sensitized, the exact opposite is happening to the Mechanoreceptors. Their threshold increases, building resistance, making it more difficult for them to fire.
This forces the Mechanoreceptors to be less active, and in the end this lack of use causes their pathways to deteriorate like an old, under-used, and under-cared-for road. It becomes difficult for them to do their job of feeding the brain information about what the joints are doing. Since the brain depends on Mechanoreceptors to “see” the joints and control them, this lack of signaling causes the brain to become essentially “blind” to those joints. This allows for more severe muscle and joint dysfunction.
This “blindness” can get so bad that without help, you won’t be able to move your body the way you’re supposed to. I see people in this stage nearly every day in my chiropractor Little Falls MN clinic. I’ll ask a patient to perform a very simple move with his neck or lower back, one that most six-year-olds can perform easily, but the man won’t be able to do it. I’ll explain it again, walking him through the steps. He’ll try again and fail. At this point, I’ll have to demonstrate the move so he can see how to do it. I’ll have him try it again, and he may fail again.
When it gets to this point, I’ll have to grasp him and move his neck or back for him so he can feel it. It may take a few sessions of this type of one-on-one attention, but after a while he’ll start to do it right. You see, it’s because his brain lacks Mechanoreception that he lost the ability to move his neck or back the way he’s supposed to, and the only way to change this is to turn the Mechanoreceptors back on. That’s exactly what The Solution does when you see a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
Destruction: The Muscles—The Stabilizers
First, the Stabilizers begin to atrophy (a medical word for “to waste away”). The reflex that made it more difficult for the Stabilizers to contract worsens and causes them to “shut off” like a light switch. Eventually, they weaken and start withering away like an unwatered lawn in the heat of summer.
This has profound implications making it much harder for the chiropractor Little Falls MN to engage in the healing process. In the Dysfunctional Phase, the Stabilizers simply need to be re-awakened in order to restore their normal function and eliminate pain, but in the Destruction Phase, they have to be completely rebuilt—a much more involved process.
Destruction: The Muscles—The Movers
While this is happening to the Stabilizers, the Movers begin to go through their own type of destruction. During the Dysfunctional Phase, the Nociceptors forced the Movers to become overactive. When they should be resting, they’re working, and when they’re supposed to be working, they overdo it. At first the Movers can handle this extra activity and stress, but it’s not long before they hit their Breaking Point and begin to micro-tear.
Unless you’re well versed in the world of physical medicine like a chiropractor Little Falls MN, you’ve probably never heard of a micro-tear. Let me explain. A muscle is made of millions of tiny, individual muscle fibers—much like how a rope is made of smaller fibers.
If that rope is suddenly put under a lot of tension, it will completely tear.
If that happens to a muscle, it’s called a rupture, which can occur, for instance, by falling on an out-stretched arm. If a rope has stress or tension that’s quite small at the beginning, but slowly increases, it won’t suddenly fail, but rather its individual fibers will start to break one-by-one on its way to giving out. That’s micro-tearing.
With atrophying Stabilizers and micro-tearing Movers making the muscle imbalance and incoordination more profound, destruction to the joints is soon to follow.
Destruction: The Joints
At this point, because of erratic movement and overall lack of joint mobility, the flushing of nutrients into the joint has basically stopped. Firstly, this causes a buildup of inflammatory metabolic “waste” that begins to eat away at the joint from the inside out like acid. Secondly, lack of pumping severely starves the cartilage and bone, literally killing the cells. This combination results in destruction. Here’s how:
* Synovial fluid (the oil in between the joints): It gets used up faster than it can be replaced, resulting in a liquid that’s too watery to protect and lubricate. This leaves the cartilage exposed to too much friction. This is like what would happen to your car’s engine if you were to put in the wrong kind of motor oil.
* Articular cartilage (the thin layer of cartilage that cover the ends of bones): The loss of synovial fluid, and increase in friction, causes this cartilage to wear thin. The resulting lack-of-cushion puts increased stress on the underlying bone.
* Bone (i.e., vertebrae): After the protective cartilage has worn away, the bone begins to feel the burn of friction, ultimately causing damage and bone death.
* Intervertebral discs: As the cells that form its cartilage begin to die off, the layers of the disc begin to separate, tear, and collapse like an old, run-down building. This structural damage robs the disc’s ability to handle stress and the body’s weight. Result: much faster degradation. It’s during this phase that the disc is likely to herniate, “slip,” or bulge.
As all of this is going on, what do you think is happening to the joint’s alignment and mobility?
Often times as a chiropractor Little Falls MN, I see it gets much worse. Sooner rather than later, the dysfunction and destruction of one joint begins to spread, affecting entire regions of the spine. No longer is it only one spot in the neck that is problematic, now it’s the whole neck. This brings about even more Nociception and more destruction in the nerves, muscles, and joints
Allowing the Vicious Cycle to build more momentum until one defining moment occurs—The Point of No Return.
We know that nociceptors send stress signals to the spinal cord, which then causes a reflex that leads to loss of balance and coordination in muscles, thus driving us further into the Vicious Cycle. But as a chiropractor Little Falls MN I know that those stress signals don’t stop there. Their next destination is your brain, and from there, potentially, to every cell in your body.
Once the stress signal hits the spinal cord, it shoots up to the brain via the “spino-thalamo-cortico-pituitario-tract”—a fancy string of words that describe the pathways a nociceptor takes to the brain and you’ll never hear again unless you’re a chiropractor Little Falls MN. You see, increased nociception can cause your brain to release “stress hormones,” which are responsible for virtually every symptom of stress: increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, increased feelings of stress, fear, anxiety, and depression. They’re also responsible for symptoms you may not be aware of: insulin resistance, elevated blood sugar levels, a change in blood cholesterol profile, diminished immune system function, bone loss, and sensitivity to pain.
As the Vicious Cycle progresses, and the increasing amount of nociceptive stress signals continue to bombard the brain and more stress hormones are released, as Dr. James Chestnut notes: “Increased release of stress hormones drives the physiology of the body toward a state of alarm and adaption, and, if these levels remain elevated, can result in fatigue, illness, and early death.”(5)
You want the least possible amount of stress hormones in your body at all times. When you consider that heart disease is the leading killer of Americans and is due, in part, to prolonged increased heart rate, blood pressure, and bad cholesterol, this becomes paramount to prolonged health. Consider, too, the second leading killer of Americans: cancer. One of the immune system’s main jobs is to identify and eliminate cancerous tumors growing in the body. If you have stress hormones coursing throughout your body for too long, your immune system weakens, and that allows cancer to grow unchecked. Lastly, think of diabetes—the third leading cause of death in the U.S. —and the fact that stress hormones allow blood sugar levels to run rampant. Once again to quote Dr. Chestnut:
“Without proper mechanoreception/nociception to your brain, you are literally sick and aging at an accelerated rate.”
I hope you better understand how devastating it is to let your spine enter and progress through the Vicious Cycle and you contact a chiropractor Little Falls MN. Not only does it rob your back and neck of their ability to be pain-free, but also, if left unchecked, can steal your potential to be healthy.
References:
Your brain thinks your back and neck are important just like this chiropractor Little Falls MN does. I hope you’re starting to think so, too. When dysfunction has occurred in the spine, it is a dangerous situation—your nerves and spinal cord, essential components of staying alive, are at risk. When destruction sets in, the downward slope of the Vicious Cycle turns into a cliff, and the body enters into a free-fall of an ever-worsening condition. If this trend isn’t stopped, there comes a point when the back and neck have deteriorated so much that your brain takes matters into its own hands.
When the Point of No Return is crossed, your brain understands that your spine needs attention, and realizes that you’re either unwilling or unable to help it. This is an emergency, and the brain issues a “code red” alert, moving the back and neck into a phase of Pathological Protection—when the nerves, muscles, and joints start to protect themselves. It’s a particularly vicious step because these actions cannot be taken back.
Once you hit this point in the Vicious Cycle, it’s impossible to get your spine all the way back to being completely normal and healthy. That’s the bad news. The good news is that this doesn’t mean there is no hope for you. Hitting The Point of No Return does not mean you cannot live a life mostly free of pain. But it does means you have a lot of work ahead of you which is why we encourage you finding a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
Pathological Protection: The Nerves
This is when we can actually start to feel the sensitization that the nerves have been going through. First, the back and neck develop “hyperalgesia” (definition: hyper = over, algesia = pain) which refers to an abnormally intense pain response induced by a painful stimulus. Example: when your grandson jumps on your back, you’re sore for the next three weeks. You knew it would hurt, but you didn’t think it would hurt that bad and for that long..
After that, the back and neck develop “allodynia,” which refers to pain that occurs in response to harmless stimuli. This is when something shouldn’t hurt, but does. In my practice as a chiropractor Little Falls MN, I have firsthand experience with these phenomena. I examine patients, and no matter where I touch their back, they nearly jump off the exam table in pain. I have patients tell me that simply brushing up against a wall or the slightest change in weather causes pain. (Keep in mind that both hyperalgesia and allodynia are driven by sensitization, which develops from constant nociceptive firing due to abnormal joint movement.)
Not only do the nerves become more sensitive to pain, but new nerves can grow into areas of damage, like disc and muscle. The process of new nerve growth in dysfunctional and damaged tissue is called “neoneuralization” (neo = new, neural = nerve, ization = “the process of”). When you combine this with allodynia, it creates a really sticky mess for people. Think about it. At this point, your body is creating more nerves that are able to feel more pain.
Those last three paragraphs are important, so take some time, and read them again as if you are a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
It’s true. Nerves become more sensitive to pain, and your body reacts by growing more nerves to stimulate more pain. What’s up with that? Isn’t that a bit masochistic? Why do the nerves start to feel more pain? Remember the purpose of pain? It’s a warning—and it’s for your protection. The nervous system starts to go down this path because if you do something that hurts, chances are you won’t do that something again. That’s how the nerves start to protect your back and neck.
I’m reminded of a patient who sought my care as a chiropractor Little Falls MN following a second failed spinal surgery. When she came in, she couldn’t stand for longer than five minutes without severe low-back pain. A side bend made her yelp in pain. The act of getting on the exam table and lying on her stomach brought her to tears. When I started to feel her back, assessing her muscle tone, she yelled in pain.
She was a mess.
Now this woman was one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, and it broke my heart as her chiropractor Little Falls MN to see her in so much pain. I point this out because The Vicious Cycle doesn’t care who you are. It doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor; overweight or in good shape; famous or not well-known; young or old; or African American, Caucasian, Hispanic, or Asian. If a Buckling Point is created in your spine, this is what happens. Once the Tipping Point is crossed, it has to be thoroughly addressed, otherwise it gets worse. If it crosses the Point of No Return, permanent changes have occurred and it is considerably harder to become pain-free.
Be careful!
Pathological Protection: The Muscles
Although the muscles are atrophied and micro-tearing, they are still forced to do their job day in and day out. When you drive, for instance, you still have to turn your head to check your blind spot. You still have to carry in the groceries in from the car. You still have to bend over to pick up the dirty clothes that you, or more likely your kids, dropped on the floor. This never-ending use of broken-down muscle tissue interferes with its healing process. The atrophied muscles are trying to rebuild, and the micro-tears are trying to repair, but they can’t because the Vicious Cycle has brought them so far away from the environment they need for healing they have to take action to protect themselves.
In an optimal environment, like while receiving care from a chiropractor Little Falls MN, muscle heals muscle. In a suboptimal environment, scar tissue heals muscle.
When damaged muscles are caught in the Vicious Cycle, and they attempt to heal, scar tissue is laid down instead of new muscle fibers.
Scar tissue is non-flexible, short, and is altogether different from normal muscle tissue—much like how a scar on the skin is different than the skin itself.
You might ask, “How does scar tissue protect me?” Well, scar tissue is actually tougher than muscle tissue. That’s why it’s laid down. It’s the body’s way to protect the muscles from further tearing. Unfortunately, there are many disadvantages to scar tissue.
1 Scar tissue doesn’t look like muscle. Muscle is nice, smooth, and organized. Scar tissue, on the other hand, is a gnarled entanglement of dead muscle fibers, cartilage, and nerves.
2 Scar tissue causes more pain. Unlike scar tissue found in skin, which has less pain-sensitive nerves, scar tissue in muscle has more pain-sensitive nerves, making it a possible source, all by itself, of significant pain. Not good news for pain sufferers.
3 Scar tissue spreads. It tethers to surrounding muscles, causing otherwise normal muscles to become dysfunctional, and continues to throw off your muscle balance.
4 Scar tissue causes less motion and loss of function. Loss of function results in that tissue, whether it’s neck, back, shoulder, or knee, getting weaker and eventually re-aggravated—more often than not—by normal, everyday use.
While this may seem new to you, you’ve actually known about muscle scar tissue for quite some time, but by a different name: muscle knots. Scar tissue is what causes muscles to “knot up.” In fact, go ahead and feel the knots at the base of your neck, by your shoulders. Think those are normal? Harmless? There for no reason? Ha! What you’re feeling is overworked, under-rested, out-of-balance, scar-tissue-ridden muscles. Since we’re on the topic, muscles do not simply develop “knots” out of the blue. People often say this, and you’ve probably said it yourself: “I have knots in my shoulders.” “I have knots in my low back.” And so on. What’s actually happening is that scar tissue is tethering to the surrounding muscle, causing it to knot up.
I hope you understand why it makes me, a chiropractor Little Falls MN, shudder when people nonchalantly say, “I always have knots there.” They don’t know that so much has had to go wrong in order for those “knots” to form.
Pathological Protection: The Joints
Up to this point, the weakened cartilage and bone have been getting damaged because they have been forced to keep you moving even though they don’t have the ability to withstand the stress that comes with it. In response to this, changes occur within the cartilage and bone that stop the joint from being able to move because if the joint can’t move, then movement can’t hurt the joint. That makes sense, doesn’t it? The only problem is that your level of activity is determined by your level of mobility, so if your joints move less, you move less, and if you move less, you do less.
Here are some of the changes that take place:
The intervertebral disc: as it breaks down, it goes from being soft and squishy to tough and inflexible. It goes from basically being a shock-absorbing water balloon to a rough leathery sack.
The bone (i.e., vertebrae): the parts that were under friction in the last phase now react by laying down new, thicker bone—kind of like scar tissue to muscle.
Trouble is, the body doesn’t lay down just enough to replace what was lost. Not a chance. The body adds layer upon layer of bone, causing the once nicely square vertebrae to develop jagged, gargoyle-looking bone spurs. Not only that, but this outgrowing of bone can lead to the narrowing of the little holes through which the spinal nerves exit, causing a condition called foraminal stenosis. It can get so severe that the spinal canal which houses the spinal cord will start to narrow—a condition called spinal stenosis.
Why does the body do this? How does a bone spur protect your spine? Bone spurs, in fact, do two things: first, they stabilize the joint, and second, they increase the surface area available to the disc, thereby making it more resilient and stable. This is good until you realize what you’re sacrificing once again, mobility, and your ability to do what you want.
I hope you now understand why as a chiropractor Little Falls MN I almost fell off my chair when a patient casually mentions she’s been told she has arthritis and some bone spurring, and there’s really nothing that can be done. Remember, “It’s normal,” and “simply a part of aging,” Right? WRONG! It has very little to do with “aging,” and nearly everything to do with how deep into the Vicious Cycle you’ve traveled.
Keep this in mind. If you are ever shown an X-ray of your spine, and the doctor points at the image and says, “That’s arthritis,” or “That’s regenerative joint disease,” or “That’s a bone spur,” immediately look at the other joints and see if all of them have the exact same amount of arthritis, degeneration, or spurring. Chances are you’ll see a joint that looks fine, like there’s nothing wrong with it. If that’s the case, do yourself a huge favor and ask the doctor, “Why is that area more broken down than the other area?” If he blows off your question with an answer like “aging,” or “that’s how it goes,” or if they don’t give you a clear answer that makes sense to you based on what you now understand of the Vicious Cycle, consider getting a second opinion from a chiropractor Little Falls MN.
If the doctor can’t explain the difference to you, they don’t have the right kind of knowledge to get you better.
The Bottomless Pit
Ignorance is not bliss. What you don’t know about your body will hurt you. This is the reason why this part of the Vicious Cycle is called the “Point of No Return” is that once you’ve gone this far, you can’t make it all the way back. The brain has been forced to take command and, unfortunately, that means permanent changes. Once a bone spur is formed, it’s there to stay. Once a certain amount of scar tissue has developed, it cannot be totally extricated. Once the nerves are so sensitized that you feel pain from normal touch, they can’t be totally desensitized. All of these things rob you of your mobility, activity level, and quality of life, and will lead you further and further down the Vicious Cycle and eventually into more and more pain.
What happens next ultimately becomes the driving force behind the entire Vicious Cycle—it is the engine that moves the car. The tricky bit is that it occurs without a single symptom leaving many people unaware that their spine has started down a dangerous path. My hope, as a chiropractor Little Falls MN, is that you won’t be part of that group. For reaffirmation, at the end of this section, I have included a “self-test” you should take which will determine whether or not this is happening to you. The results might be surprising.
The last section left off with Nociceptors initiating a reflex that forced an imbalance between the Movers and the Stabilizers. Remember, these muscles move the joints, and to do so properly, they have to be balanced. When a Buckling Point occurs, and the muscles become imbalanced, their actions become uncoordinated, which results in the joint not moving properly. Instead of gliding smoothly, the joint moves erratically. If the reflex doesn’t cease and muscle balance restored, the joint will stay moving like this, and will be officially designated as “dysfunctional.” (What nerves detect this type of “bad” movement? Nociceptors.) After all this, Nociceptors then begin firing repeatedly, and the once momentary reflex is now the standard operating procedure. This is when the Tipping Point has been crossed, and your back and neck have officially entered into the Vicious Cycle. Go to a chiropractor Little Falls MN before this happens!
You see, before the Tipping Point you had to be hit by something, or you had to keep making mistakes in order to fire the nociceptors. But now, they fire whenever that dysfunctional joint moves (which will be every time you move your spine). After this point has been crossed, your back and neck are set on a course to develop problems and eventual pain. This is another paragraph worth rereading even if you are not a chiropractor Little Falls MN. The clear, uncompromising and downright depressing message: once you’ve reached the Tipping Point, any movement is another step closer to pain. How lovely.
Worsening Dysfunction: The Muscles
Because the Movers have become facilitated, it’s easy for them to contract and become overactive. From this, eventually, they tighten. Because of inhibition, it gets increasingly difficult for the Stabilizers to contract, so they tend to be underused and grow weaker. This causes the imbalance and in coordination between the two muscle groups to worsen.
Worsening Dysfunction: The Joints
The growing severity of muscle imbalance and incoordination turns the joint’s erratic movement into lack-of-movement. Losing mobility is bad because it structurally weakens joints which causes people to visit a chiropractor Little Falls MN. Remember, your joints depend on motion to “pump” nutrients into the cartilage and bone. Lack of mobility turns off the pump that flushes the joints with nutrients, thus it starves the cartilage and bone, weakening them.
Worsening Dysfunction: The Big Wheel Keeps On Turning
– As the joints begin to weaken, do you think their mobility gets better or worse? Worse.
– With worsening mobility, do the nociceptors fire less or more? More.
– Does this put less or more stress on the muscles? More.
– What happens to their imbalance and in-coordination? It gets worse.
– What does that do to the joint’s mobility? Gets even worse, making the joints even weaker.
As long as the three elements—the nerves, muscles, and joints—are dysfunctional, the momentum of the Vicious Cycle continues to build. It’s important to note that although the joints aren’t moving the way they should be moving, there isn’t any damage yet. Here’s a quote from the research:
“Initially, there is abnormal motion of the spinal segment and pathological signs of degeneration are minimal; this stage being termed ‘spinal dysfunction.’”(2)
There is an important concept in those words. They describe a “stage” where the back and neck have “abnormal motion” before “degeneration” occurs. They’re saying that Dysfunction precedes Destruction, and it’s not until something gets damaged that there is the potential for pain. Not only is this “dysfunctional” phase without symptoms, but it is also without damage—which is what makes it tricky to detect. Unfortunately, because of this many people are walking around completely oblivious that this is happening to their neck and back. Or worse, they know, but don’t care because it’s not causing pain…yet. So consult a chiropractor Little Falls MN!
Which is complete lunacy.
Do we think plaque buildup on teeth is okay because it hasn’t yet rotted out the tooth? Do we think a little bit of mold in a new house is no big deal because it’s not out-of-control yet? Do we think elevated blood sugar levels aren’t important because they haven’t yet caused insulin resistance—a telltale sign of Type II diabetes? Of course not. Everyone knows if a small problem isn’t fixed, it only gets worse. Well, that’s the Dysfunctional Phase in the Vicious Cycle—if you take care of this small weed now by seeing a chiropractor Little Falls MN, it won’t grow out of control.
If you can get the nociceptors to cease firing, the muscles will recover, and the Dysfunctional Phase will stop because the nerves, muscles, and joints still have the potential to return back to normal. In order to do so, dysfunction must turn into function. For that to happen, the treatment must address all three elements equally and completely by a professional chiropractor Little Falls MN. This is why the standard approach to back and neck pain is such a complete failure—it simply doesn’t do that. Most treatments available today allows the three elements to continue to feed off each other. Lucky for you, The Solution addresses all three elements thoroughly. You’re almost there.
If the spinal dysfunction isn’t caught and corrected by a professional like a chiropractor Little Falls MN, it will continue to worsen until the back and neck enter the next phase of the Vicious Cycle: The Destruction Phase.
Self-Test
As you sit there reading this article, there’s a good chance your back and neck is in a dysfunctional state right now. Curious? There’s a simple way to determine if the base of your neck and mid-back have entered into this phase. I’ll explain the test. You don’t have to be a chiropractor Little Falls MN to do it. Then when I say “go,” give it a try. First, let your arms rest loosely at your sides. Then, take a very, very deep breath in, as deep as you can manage. Ready? Go.
Okay, relax. Don’t worry, no one is watching.
Now do it again. But this time pay attention to what your shoulders are doing.
Do they stay at one level? Do they rise up? Do they depress? Got it? Ready? Set. Go.
Here’s how to interpret the test. If your shoulders elevated at all, you failed and your upper back and neck muscles are dysfunctional. If your neck and mid back Stabilizers were balanced and coordinated, your shoulders would not elevate. Instead, your belly would expand (called diaphragmatic breathing) and your shoulders would depress.
If you didn’t pass, it could very well mean that your neck and mid back are currently dysfunctional. You’ve been warned by a chiropractor Little Falls MN!
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“I’ve seen how pain steals life from people. Worse, I’ve seen firsthand the harmful effects numbing pain with drugs can do. Because of this, I am committed to providing the best possible care people in a way that not only relieves pain but improves health and quality of life.”
He graduated from Northwestern Health Sciences University—a respected school for chiropractors—one of the youngest in his class, with a Bachelor of Science in Human Biology and a Doctorate in Chiropractic.
Dr. Ben Grams has a long track record of helping people eliminate pain and regain their health by integrating the best of the holistic and medical worlds. He is known as one of the best choices for chiropractor Little Falls MN because of his ability to accurately assess and treat more difficult cases, especially those related to the lower back, sciatica, shoulder, and hip.
Over the years, he has won several awards for performance and achievement and he continues to pursue the most effective non-drug, non-surgical methods for treating patients as a chiropractor Little Falls MN. In 2017, Dr. Grams authored the book titled “The Solution to Back and Neck Pain” which had a brief stint as a top seller on Amazon.com in the categories of Chiropractic, Chronic Pain, and Alternative Medicine. Its success was also noted on NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX affiliate websites as well as the StarTribune.
When not working, he will be spending time with his wife and preferably outdoors. He enjoys hiking, swimming, biking, playing guitar, and being active in his church. Chiropractor Little Falls MN, Dr. Grams has additional studies in chiropractic radiology, spinal disc problems, hands-on muscle therapy, therapeutic exercise, sports injury, nutrition and wellness.