Low Back Pain Chiropractor in Jacksonville, FL

We’ve helped many people get rid of their low back pain. It’s one of the main reasons people come into our center, and it’s almost always something we can help eliminate.

If you’re suffering from low back pain, you’re not alone! Low back pain is one of the most common symptoms worldwide. It’s also one of the most debilitating. Roughly 80% of people will suffer from low back pain during their lifetime. In fact, of all the causes of disability, low back pain ranks number one. The prevalence of low back pain has increased in all age groups over the past thirty years. At this point, the people most commonly affected by low back pain are between 50 and 54.

Low back pain is increasing rapidly as more people move into an ever-more sedentary lifestyle. Our spines and bodies are meant to move, stretch, and work, not to remain stuck in fixed and damaging positions for long hours at a time. The increase in office work and deskbound occupations are major causes of low back pain.

All these numbers and statistics don’t really matter. What matters is not being able to play with your seven-year-old daughter. It can be easy to think of your low back pain as ‘just one of those things’ or that ‘everybody has it.’ But we all know that there’s a difference between common and normal. Just because all your colleagues suffer from low back pain doesn’t mean you have to.

It’s critical to take care of your low back pain early. Low back pain doesn’t just come along out of the blue. There’s always a cause, sometimes more than one.

There are a lot of questions to answer about your low back pain:

• Do certain activities make it worse?
• Better?
• What’s the quality of the pain?
• Is it acute or chronic?
• Was there an accident?

At Beyond Bones, we take low back pain very seriously. It affects too many people and is far too disruptive to ignore. You, and everybody affected by low back pain, deserve a better quality of life. That’s why we take our time during your evaluation process. It starts with a thorough consultation and examination, and it often involves X-rays to give us as clear an understanding as possible of what’s causing your low back pain.

When it comes to correcting the problem (and keeping it corrected), the plan’s foundation will be chiropractic adjustments. When appropriate, we’ll also assign some exercises/movements to strengthen the spinal muscles along your lower back. We may also see how we can improve things like your sleep habits and workstation ergonomics to maximize your results.

By working to improve the existing problems in your spine and remove the cause of those problems, we’re often able to help eliminate the low back pain and keep it away.

Ignoring your low back pain leads to the very real possibility that whatever’s causing it could progress to something significantly more serious. Don’t let that happen!

How We Treat Low Back Pain in Jacksonville, Florida

Comprehensive Consultation and Exam

Here are three simple tests you can do at home, on your own, to start identifying the cause of your low back pain. Remember! These tests are clues, pieces of the overall puzzle.

1. Forward Bend Test

• Stand relaxed and balanced, feet shoulder-width apart.
• Bend forward and reach down toward your toes.

Negative test (we need to keep looking): if nothing changes.

Positive test (we may be onto something here!): if your lower back pain comes back or worsens.

Indication: disc, nerve root, or facet joint irritation

1. Quadrant Test

• Stand relaxed and balanced, feet shoulder-width apart.
• Put your hands on your waist.
• Extend your low back so that you’re looking up toward the ceiling.
• Bend toward your left side.
• Come back to the center and bend toward your right side.

Negative test: if nothing changes.

Positive test: A) if you feel pain in your low back. B) if you feel pain at the top of your hip or down one of your legs.

Indication: A) facet joint irritation, B) nerve root pressure

1. Slump Test

• Sit on the edge of a bed or a chair with your feet flat on the floor.
• Dorsiflex one foot (leave your ankle on the floor and point your toes up toward the ceiling).
• Straighten that same knee so that your foot comes up off the ground. Keep your foot flexed!
• There will come a point when you feel a pull at the back of your knee. Stop there.
• Look up toward the ceiling.

Negative test: your pain does not decrease.

Positive test: your pain is relieved by at least 50%.

Indication: nerve pressure (not necessarily damage)

And that’s that! Use the above tests to start to get an idea of what might be causing your low back pain. The next best step is a thorough consultation, to see how we can help you feel and live better!

Specific Chiropractic Care in Jacksonville, FL

Chiropractic works to eliminate low back pain by changing the way your body operates and getting rid of the cause of that low back pain. Subluxation is a state of being. It’s the state of having more stress in the body and spine than is healthy and manageable. That stress puts your nervous system under pressure and causes major problems in your health and how you feel. Low back pain is one of the most common (and disturbing) signs of subluxation.

Chiropractic works like a powerful reset. It alows you to move from a state of stress to a state of ease. Each adjustment lowers the amount of stress in your body and brings you back closer to a pain-free state of balance and ease. You’ll be able to feel that.

Of course, this isn’t only meant to be a temporary thing. Over time and with repetition, your adjustments have the cumulative effect of helping you enter a state of relaxation and ease your normal mode of operation. A spine and body that are relaxed and flexible have the best possible chance of keeping your low back pain away for the long term

Common Causes of Low Back Pain in Jacksonville, FL

Bulged Disc

Your spine is made up of 24 small, moveable bones called vertebrae. Sandwiched between your vertebrae are your vertebral discs. Your discs provide cushioning and flexibility to your spine and make space for the nerves to exit your spine and travel all throughout your body. Not only are the discs softer than bone, but they’re also subject to degeneration and dehydration. The discs can be forced out of their proper places when they degenerate or dehydrate.

That degeneration can involve parts of your discs pushing out of their usual space and into the space normally occupied only by nerves. When this happens in the low back or lumbar spine, it’s called a bulging lumbar disc. The bulging part of the disc can irritate the nerves found in that area, and cause pain in the low back which sometimes radiates down the leg. These symptoms can be pretty severe and should be investigated early.

Early action will always give you the highest chance of getting control over your pain and getting back to the quality of life you deserve!

Degenerative Disc Disease

Degenerative disc disease is an age-related condition in which the vertebral discs break down, or degenerate. They wear away. One of the primary purposes of the disc is to maintain spacing as the spinal nerves exit the spine, to keep the hole open for the nerve to pass through. The problem is as the disc shrinks, the hole gets smaller and smaller, leading to pressure on the nerves. That nerve pressure leads to all sorts of problems and symptoms in the lower back and legs.

While DDD is related to age in that it’s more common (and worse) in older people, you can also do many things to immediately decrease your likelihood of suffering from DDD. Smoking, obesity and work that’s hard on the spine can all contribute to degenerative disc disease. Avoiding those activities as much as possible will keep the problem away.

Degenerative disc disease can be slowed down, but it, unfortunately, can’t be reversed. That’s another reason why it’s vital to start taking care of your spine as early as possible! Stopping problems like this from worsening is essential to keeping your quality of life as high as possible for a lifetime.

Sacroiliac Joint

Dysfunction is another common cause of low back pain, responsible for 15-30% of cases of low back pain. The sacroiliac joints are two joints where the pelvis meets the sacrum (the triangular bone that includes your tailbone). The sacroiliac joints don’t move very much, but they’re very important in how we walk. Among other things, one of the most critical tasks performed by the SI joints is to serve as shock absorbers for the impact between the pelvis and the upper body.

That constant, repeated impact at the SI joints isn’t the only stressor on the sacroiliac joints. Problems may also be caused by discrepancies in leg length, pregnancy, and repeated stress on the joints. Dysfunction at the sacroiliac joints can lead to hypermobility (too much movement) or hypomobility (too little movement) in the pelvis. As with many of these problems, SI joint dysfunction is mostly preventable. By keeping your spine and pelvis moving well and well-adjusted, you’re most likely to be able to avoid sacroiliac dysfunction entirely.

Subluxation

In many cases, low back pain is caused by subluxation. Subluxation is the main problem that chiropractors work to correct. It’s a state of being where you end up stuck in stress and unable to move out of it. Subluxation can cause the spine’s bones to misalign or be unable to move properly. This puts pressure on the nerves in the affected area, and that nerve pressure leads to various health problems, including low back pain.

Subluxation is also closely related to other leading causes of low back pain. When the spine is misaligned, the bones and discs of the spine experience accelerated degeneration and, frequently, disc problems. Specific chiropractic adjustments are the only solution to subluxation, and that’s why chiropractic gets such great results with low back pain. If nerve pressure is causing the pain, then removing the pressure is the only thing that will alleviate it.

Frequently Asked Questions