"Lower back and sciatic pain are the leading cause for limiting daily activity."

What Is Lower Back Pain?

Lower back pain is your body’s protective mechanism, with different types of pain (such as dull, achy, sharp, or stabbing) in the lower back, mostly originating in the facet joints, intervertebral discs, and sacroiliac joint. Muscle, ligaments, and fascia problems can also cause lower back pain. Such pain can also be triggered by conditions such as arthritis, stenosis, spondylosis and more. Lower back pain can be acute (begins suddenly and is usually short and sharp) or chronic (persistent or recurrent pain lasting longer than three months).

Types Of Lower Back Pain

We’ve found that nearly one third of individuals with persistent lumbar pain have Facet Syndrome, with pain experienced lateral to the spine. This kind of pain reduces when sitting or walking.

Disc pain typically affects 40% of those with persistent lumbar pain, and it presents as pain in the centre of the lower back. The intervertebral disc is the only structure in the centre of the lower back which can cause pain. This type of pain gets worse with sitting, and standing up from a sitting position often aggravates this pain. Disc pain can affect the nerves, causing sciatica, which is often due to inflammation around a nerve due to disc pathology.

Sacroiliac pain is prevalent in 23% of individuals with persistent lumbar pain. This type of pain presents as pain on one side of the lower back, and is often worse when walking.

How To Fix Lower Back Pain?

At Five Dock Osteopathic and Chiropractic, we treat both acute and chronic lower back pain. Our approach is to go to the root cause of the problem.

Acute Lower Back Pain Treatment

Many clinics won’t treat acute lower back pain at all, but we treat plenty of it. The key is to improve your mobility when you are in lots of pain. We do this by doing treatment both standing and lying down, as only lying down would aggravate your pain.

Chronic Lower Back Pain Treatment

Chronic lower back pain causes a change in your brain (alteration of the sensory processing of the brain leading to amplification of pain). About 20% of people affected by acute lower back pain develop chronic lower back pain. Five Dock Osteopathic and Chiropractic has found that the key to fixing chronic pain is to retrain your sensorimotor system so it no longer amplifies pain.

Lower Back Pain Treatment Methods

We have a number of special methods for treating all kinds of lower back pain:

In treating sciatica, we look at the “pain pathway” (where the pain travels down your leg). This gives us vital information as to which nerve is being affected, thus greatly improving treatment outcomes.
Lower back pain related to a sedentary lifestyle usually leads to deconditioning of your muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints. The image your brain has of that part of your body goes from high definition to low definition, increasing your risk of injury. We’ve found that core strength and posture is critical here – we work on adding stability, which leads to postural control and reduces injury and damage.
Your Hip flexor muscles will tighten in response to back pain. This is an evolutionary muscle response intended to stop you from moving and thus limit further injury. But in treating your lower back pain we can use it to our advantage by focusing on these muscle sets.

What Makes Our Treatment Of Lower Back Pain Unique?

We have our own unique style of massage developed to complement our adjustments. We are experts at tracing the cause of lower back pain to its source. Our treatment includes the front of the body (hip flexors and quads) and back (glutes and lumbar spine muscles). This approach focuses on you as a whole person, not a region in isolation. This brings you short-term relief from pain and lasting improvements to your health and well-being. Our adjustments all use traction, making them smooth and gentle on your body. Our adjustments all use traction, making them smooth and gentle on your body. We work with you to devise personalised functional exercises that you can use to strengthen your core and build your stability.

What kind of lower back pain do you have?

We can help.

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