Back Pain

What is Back Pain

It is very common for clients who attend Aiden’s physical therapy clinic to have had pain in their back for a number of months or even years and in this period they have tried other forms of treatment to relieve the pain. One of the more common mistakes in relation to treatment is to only treat were the pain is being experienced in the back area. There is clearly many different ways to experience pain in any part of the body especially the back area as you can experience pain from several sources including dominant hip flexors, weak core, visceral referral, poor postural control, emotional stability and referral from your vertebrae among others.

Main Causes of Back Pain

Treatment methods will vary to match individual needs and Aiden will conduct a consultation to ensure that the treatment plan is effective and suits your individual needs. You will receive a full examination of the kinetic chain to ensure that the source of the problem is being treated. Treatment methods include

Pain from dominant Hip flexors

The iliopsoas muscle is a hip flexor muscle which for example moves our legs in a forward motion towards our hips, meaning the motion that moves our knee towards our stomach. There are several other contractions from the iliopsoas that is involved in the motion we use very regular throughout the day like walking, sitting, driving and standing up from a seated position.It is because of this repetitive daily actions that this muscle can become short and tight. In amgtherapy it is the most common muscle treated and continues to give fantastic results to persistent lower back pain.

Weak Core Muscles

The core is not your abdominals, it is not the “six pack” that everyone desires, it is a complex series of smaller muscles which is inclusive of everything except your arms and legs. The core is involved in almost every movement of the human body in both isometric and dynamic stabilising during contraction. The incorrect understanding of core will cause pain throughout the body as people work on their ‘core’ by working on it as a prime mover, such as abdominal crunches, back extensions and completely disregarding the smaller stabilising muscles and their role in controlling movement in the body planes.

Emotional stability

Although the majority of us fail to identify our emotional wellbeing as a common factor to pain in the body, it is the case that there is a direct link between emotions and their storage as a factor to muscle tension. This is why for example when you are feeling stressed after a hard week at work that your shoulders can feel stressed and irritated. Emotions are a physical thing, they are not something just to “get over” the memory is part of us and the body will store this memory in our muscle tissue. The area they are stored depends on the emotional response. It may surprise you to hear that our organs is where our emotions originate from.

Visceral Referral

The term visceral referral refers to our organs and how they impact the muscle tissue. There are many examples of this in different clients both severe and moderate. The main thing to understand with visceral referral is it’s the body’s immune systems way of getting any infection or potential threat away from the organ and into the muscle tissue or skin where the body feels it will be more capable of disposing the problem. A very common connection to this is flu like symptoms and the aching you will have in your muscle tissue, the flu is affecting the organs not the muscles but the body is referring the infection from the organs in order for it to maximise its ability to recover.

For more information or to enquire about appointments please contacts us at any time.