Chronic Pain is one of the most debilitating conditions. Perhaps the worst is chronic back pain since it interferes with your ability to do anything. People suffering from chronic pain understandably spend a great deal of time, energy, and money in an attempt to get rid of their pain. 

But, if you understand pain you will begin to understand why trying to get rid of pain is likely destined for failure.

That doesn’t mean you can eradicate your pain!

What it does mean is that the path to changing your pain more often lies in increasing and improving the four things I will discuss here. In medicine there is no way to quantify or measure pain. It is what we call subjective. It is your experience.

It can’t be measured on an x-ray, a CT scan, an MRI, or any other test. Some of those tests can help identify possible reasons for the pain but they can’t demonstrate pain. 

WHAT CAUSES PAIN?

Pain is an indication of a number of possible things:

• Tissue damage – most tissues that get damaged cannot be returned to their pre-damaged state. Broken bones are an exception but the soft tissues around the bone are forever changed. 
• Inflammation – all injuries, tissue damage, and chronic irritation causes inflammation and inflammation is associated with pain. 
• Nerve Irritation – you wouldn’t experience pain if the sensory nerves that transmit the message of pain weren’t irritated. 

Some of this arises from trauma like falls, auto accidents, work injuries, etc. The problem is that while injuries to soft tissues heal, they heal with scar tissue. 

Scar tissue is weaker and less elastic than normal uninjured healthy tissue. 

WHAT ARE THE 4 THINGS TO DO TO TRANSFORM CHRONIC PAIN?

1. Structural Balance: your nervous system always wants you to be in balance. Your brain wants your head and eyes to be level. If your hip or pelvis is even a ½ inch lower on one side it takes tremendous effort and muscle tension to compensate for that in an attempt to maintain as much balance as possible. 

It is often a combination of the original damage and the compensations that drive much of the chronic pain. The solution here is to bring the body back into as much balance as possible. 

Corrective chiropractic is focused on restoring spinal and pelvis joint alignment and joint motion and stretching restrictive scar tissue. 

2. Nerve Function: any pain you experience is communicated through your nervous system. If you have pain, you have nerve irritation. The goal is to remove as much nerve irritation as possible. Corrective chiropractic has a focus of removing pressure and irritation from the nervous system so that the nerves can heal and stop sending the message of pain.

3. Muscle Activity: muscles are responsible for proper movement of joints in the spine. Injuries cause altered and restricted motion and this results in a loss of function of the critical muscles that hold us up against gravity. The most important muscles to get working are a series of muscles referred to as the “Posterior Chain”. These are the muscles that run from the bottom of the feet up the back of the legs, hips, and spine.

4. Lowered Inflammation: chronic inflammation continues to fire off the pain message. Anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen and acetaminophen only block the signal. They do nothing to change the inflammation. Restoring structural balance and posterior chain activity do a great deal to remove irritation that causes inflammation.

Quality sleep is critical to lower inflammation. The problem is often that with chronic pain sleep quality is lowered, perpetuating the pain. By improving structural balance, removing nerve irritation, and activating muscles you can lower pain enough to start to improve sleep that will help to further lower inflammation and pain.

The medical approach is only good for temporary management of pain. This approach has created the opioid crisis. 

A better approach is to help the body return to a state where it can better maintain balance and reduce the factors driving inflammation and pain. Chiropractic is an approach with a focus on the nervous system that can help restore structural balance and remove nerve irritation. Posterior chain activation is an amazing adjunct to corrective chiropractic care. 

If you are looking for chiropractic in Grass Valley consider Life Chiropractic of Grass Valley. 

About Dr. Berkowitz  

Bringing more than 3 decades of practice experience, Dr. Bill Berkowitz focuses on balancing and corrective care, applying his expertise to provide patients with predictable, repeatable and measurable results.

Dr. Bill consistently strives to enhance the well-being of his patients by addressing the root imbalances of their problems and promoting optimal balance, alignment, and function of the spine and nervous system.  

Bill’s wealth of knowledge and experience has allowed him to develop a nuanced understanding of the human body and its intricate connections. With each adjustment, he supports the body in returning to a state of balance that goes beyond mere symptom relief, focusing instead on long-term correction for his patients’ well-being. 

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