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Three-step Process to Resolving Back Pain
This is an excerpt from Dr. Andrew Gorecki's very popular book, The Truth about Lower Back Pain. Visit https://www.lowbackbook.com/ to get your FREE copy!
By far the most common treatments for lower back pain are medications, injections and surgery.
All three of these treatments are 100% focusing on masking the pain with pain relievers, or inflammation reducers, or addressing damage in the spine.
But if you have been paying attention at all during this book, you know that there is a bigger problem going on above and below the lower back that is creating pain, inflammation or structural damage. And this problem is being ignored!
This is the true injustice that is happening out there.
Medications, injections and surgery provide people with immediate feedback: inflammation and pain reduction. People feel that they solved the problem, but it is false hope.
It has been proven repeatedly that the success rates for these types of treatments after two years are only 50%.
It’s not because patients are given bad injections, or surgeons perform operations poorly (although sometimes they do), or that the medications are ineffective.
No. It’s because these treatments don’t fix the root problem, the problem that actually caused the pain, inflammation and damage.
So, should you simply avoid medications, injections, and surgery?
No, they all have a place and can be very helpful at controlling our symptoms. But if these treatments are used alone, outcomes will not be as good as when we identify the root cause.
In the case of lower back pain, the root cause is usually a movement problem. So, the most effective strategy that I see is a combination of medication, injections, and physical therapy.
Surgery, in this case, should be used only as a last resort when everything has been tested in combination and tried for a long period of time (to me, that’s at least a year).
I see countless patients who try physical therapy for a few weeks and then jump right into surgery.
It is sad when I see that because I know the movement problem has been developing over years and the expectation to eliminate a movement problem in a few weeks is just simply not going to happen.
Scientific evidence shows that the phases of healing take a minimum of six weeks, and that’s just the beginning. To gain strength and flexibility takes longer—three months is a more realistic timeline.
And that, my friend, is the problem…
When we have pain, we are very motivated to eliminate that pain as quickly as we possibly can. People don’t want to wait three months for their hip mobility to improve so that their lower back pain goes away.
We are an impatient society and that’s why medications, injections and surgery are so popular, even though they have such low success rates.
It is also important to recognize that the motivation we get from pain can be used positively and usually makes us seek out help.
Once that pain is gone, even temporarily because of pain relievers, people become less driven to continue to work on the problem that is ultimately creating the symptoms.
That is the #1 problem with treating the symptoms by using medications, injections, or surgery… once people feel “better” (because they have less pain and inflammation), they think they are cured.
They think the problem is gone because the pain is no longer there. But the body knows differently… it is still dealing with the stress of bad movement. It is still wearing down at an abnormally fast pace. So what you get is a patient who two years later is worse than ever because they have been suppressing the pain and not fixing the problem.
What can you do?
We must think of pain as being very valuable information that our body generates.
Three Step Process to Resolving Your Back Pain
- Stop Ignoring the pain, hoping it will go away on its own
- Stop masking the pain with medications or injections
- Start doing effective, targeted exercises and stretches that really work
If we are looking for long-term, permanent relief and a healthier body, we want to address the root cause of the pain. A good Doctor of Physical Therapy can easily identify the cause of the pain. We call this a movement dysfunction diagnosis.
The goal of forming a physical therapy diagnosis is to find a permanent solution. The goal of a medical diagnosis unfortunately is not - the goal there is to categorize the symptom so that others in the health care community can communicate the symptom to each other.
When we meet a patient in physical therapy, they are usually feeling confident in their doctor’s medical diagnosis. For this example, let’s just say the diagnosis is arthritis. Unfortunately, they may have also fallen into the trap of believing there is nothing that can be done for arthritis.
This is not true. Let me say that again, this is not true.
Often the diagnosis and the potential or ability to heal are not directly related. If 10 people are suffering from arthritis in their lower back, they may have 10 different responses to physical therapy.
When we handle the cause of the pain, you will know it because you get long term permanent relief that frees you from needing the help of doctors or physical therapist or chiropractors or massage therapists.
Truth: The Most Effective Strategy to Eliminate Lower Back Pain Is to Handle the Problem
This means that you must make the choice to stop ignoring the problem and seek help of a professional (and in this case that means a physical therapist).
Healthy people address pain as soon as possible. Unhealthy people ignore pain or try to mask it. This is no different than any other area of our life. Have you ever ignored a problem, and it magically went away? That would be rare.
It is my mission to encourage you to see a musculoskeletal specialist, a physical therapist, about your back pain. Working together with your other healthcare professionals, you can get well again. And take back your life!
Learn more about back pain on our Degenerative Disc web page: Degenerative Disc Disease Treatment | Superior Physical Therapy
