A young woman in her late 20’s came to me with over a decade of chronic back pain. She had been all over the place trying to find relief.
Numerous chiropractors, X-Ray’s, medical doctors, etc. All with nothing to show.
The pain continued.
In taking her history she related the pain started playing volleyball her freshman year in college. There was no injury. Sitting is the worst. And she is very stiff waking up in the morning.
While she tried many chiropractors over the years, she didn’t notice much change in seeing any of them.
Medical doctors diagnosed her with degenerative disc disease due to some mild disc space narrowing at L5-S1 (the lowest disc space before the pelvis).
She was desperate to get back to having no back pain. With two young kids, she wanted to be able to play with them without pain and on top of that get back to playing volleyball regularly.
She had heard from numerous people that I did things differently. Although I’m a chiropractor, her friends and co-workers told her I was looking to solve the issue once and for all.
We have some really fun stories from several of these people.
So, back to her history….
I noticed numerous injuries, c-sections, broken bones, but the one that stood out was the wisdom teeth removal less than 1 year prior to the start of the back pain.
This was a red flag for me and I filed that in the back of my brain as I moved on to the exam.
Now for the exam….
As you no doubt know, I test muscles for neurological function. I’m looking for the imbalances that create these problems to begin with.
In her exam I found that all of her muscles were in a state of hypertonicity. Essentially, they all had too much tone. Too tight so to say.
Her brain was telling her muscles to protect her at all costs.
This is a survival move.
Yes, her brain knows that by tightening everything it will create problems. But, something was happening inside of her that was far more important in the short term to protect.
And that is what I had to figure out next.
What was so significant that her brain would sacrifice the long term health of her spine?
Now think back to her history. She had her wisdom teeth extracted less than a year before.
There are a few options:
- There is a possibility of having deep infections in the jawbone after having wisdom teeth surgery.
- Quite often the bones of the skull get locked up or jammed from going through the procedure of extraction.
In her case it was #2.
When I adjusted the bones of her skull, her muscles normalized. Okay, good sign.
But when she came back the next week they were right back to being too tight and not turning off when they should.
Strike 1.
I adjusted them again. And again the muscles normalized taking pressure off her spine.
But once again, she returned in the same state as the first visit.
Strike 2.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like strike 3. So I knew I had to do more testing and figure out a better solution.
There is a specific type of cranial adjusting I have to do from time to time. I don’t start with it because I want to understand how the persons body is responding. And, it’s a little more invasive. Nothing terrible, but you definitely feel something is happening.
Most of the time I can get away without using it, but in her case it was needed. Her skull bones were way too stuck and glued together with scar tissue.
So, I did the procedure, and again all her muscles normalized.
This time, however, when she came back the following week, not only were her muscles still normalized, but her pain was gone as well.
Excellent.
We spent the next few visits fixing some weaknesses that were still there. Mainly her Psoas Major (hip flexor) muscles and Multifidus Lumborum (deep lower back muscles).
It’s been at least 3 months now and she is doing great.
Now why on earth would jammed skull bones be causing terrible lower back pain?
Easy.
There is a membrane that runs around the brain and inside the skull called the meninges. This membrane also runs all the way down the spine surrounding the spinal cord.
If you twist or torque something on the top end, it will twist and torque something on the bottom end.
And your brain being the supercomputer that it is will make commands to protect the person at all costs.
Your brain makes these computations every second of the day without you even knowing it. You are designed for survival.
We have to respect that and work with it. And we need to realize that whatever the body is doing….
…..it’s doing it for a darn good reason.
You can make all the chiropractic adjustments you want to the lower back vertebrae and you will never fix this particular problem.
In fact, I would argue that you are doing more harm than good. You are going against the protective mechanisms the brain is trying to put into place.
Trying to free up the spine and make it more mobile? Sounds good in theory since she was so limited and restricted.
And we know motion is life.
But in this case the brain doesn’t want the lower back to be mobile. It is specifically creating a cast or splint to protect the lower back.
It’s trying its best to keep her safe.
We need to respect that.
And we need to dig deeper to figure out why it might want that. Just doing therapies isn’t good enough….