Lower back pain is by far one of the most common ailments ever experienced. Just about everyone deals with it at one point in their life. For some, the lucky ones, perhaps, the pain is just for a day or two as a result of a particularly gruelling day of yard work or a slip-and-fall accident that landed you flat on your bum with a bruise to prove it. For others, the back pain is something that lingers for years and years, getting worse as a result of improper footwear or particularly unsupportive furniture, and never really healing or going away.
Lower back pain is estimated to be the leading cause of workplace disability worldwide. It is also one of the most common reasons that people miss work and is the second most common reason that people visit the doctor’s office. When you put those two facts together, the cost of dealing with back pain really starts to add up.
Unfortunately, a lot of those financial resources go into dealing with back pain through pain management and medication, but that is not an effective long-term solution for dealing with it. A far healthier and cost-effective solution is through physiotherapy, massage, acupuncture and chiropractic services offered at Equilibrium Massage Therapy in Victoria, British Columbia.
Lower Back Pain and Physiotherapy
According to Bone and Joint Canada, “In Canada, the cost of medical expenditures alone for low back pain are estimated between $6 and $12 billion annually with additional costs associated with the impact on society due to the loss in worker productivity from time off work and the associated disability payments.”
Physiotherapy is a great resource for lower back pain because it addresses the cause of the pain, rather than simply attempting to hide the symptoms.
Working with a physiotherapist can help you to experience an improved range of motion, restore strength to muscles in your lower back that may have experienced atrophy through lack of use, and also reduce tension in your lower back muscles through targeted massage.
When working with a physiotherapist, you may also be guided through different lifestyle changes that you can make that can help you begin to overcome your back pain with everyday activities. This can include:
- Making changes to the type of shoes that you wear so that your back is getting more support with every step. Sometimes, using special insoles can significantly improve your back pain.
- Adjusting your sleeping habits, or perhaps investing in a new mattress so that your back has more support at night.
- Using more lumbar support at work or on your commute by using a special chair or chair cover.
Our integrated clinic also offers massage and chiropractic services to help our patients living with back pain to find much-needed relief.
How massage therapy can relieve lower back pain
Any time you receive an injury to your back, your body will form adhesions — bands of tough scar tissue — around the injury. These adhesions will end up restricting your movement, result in some serious inflammation and pain, and can delay your recovery for a very long time if they go left untreated. Your massage therapist’s techniques can deal with those adhesions very efficiently.
A licensed massage therapist can use specific techniques that target and break up the adhesions. In turn, this will loosen and unbind your muscles. Massage is a very important part of your therapy program because being adhesion-free is important for relieving pain and restoring a proper range of motion.
Find true pain relief through our chiropractic services
Typically, you can expect your chiropractor to perform spinal adjustments and/or mobilization moves to help ease your back pain. These moves aren’t painful, although you might hear some minor “popping” sounds during the treatment. The aim is to correct your spinal alignment, so that pressure isn’t put on surrounding muscles, joints, and nerves in your lower back.
A spinal adjustment is performed by your trained practitioner, usually, after you’ve been placed on the chiropractic table at a specific position. The chiropractor then makes a precise, quick move on specific vertebrae in your back, often to push them just beyond their current range of motion.
Spinal mobilization is a useful alignment method either to complement the more firm spinal adjustments or to replace them when the patient’s health or comfort level dictates more gentle methods.
Call our clinic today if you would like to learn more about the benefits of chiropractic services, acupuncture, massage therapy, and physiotherapy for the treatment of low back pain. We’re here to help you find true pain relief, once and for all…because you deserve it!
