Wack, Crack & Keep em Comin Back.
If you have been suffering from persistent or ongoing pain, no matter what treatment you get it is highly unlikely you will get effective relief from a 5-10 minute treatment, even worse still, if the professional is treating multiple people at once. These are essentially “high volume business models” and rely on getting you in and out as quick as possible, return as often as possible and for as long as possible, or at least until your health fund runs out or you get the sense you are paying considerable money for short term relief. You will get the same cookie cutter treatment every time you go. Unfortunately, I have seen this with some of my chiropractic counterparts and they often use what I call this the “magic 6”. The same 6 adjustments which usually includes both sides of the low back, two in the mid back and both sides of the neck. Pretty much everyone gets the same treatment more or less.
Some may use whatever time is left over to treat the muscles, in my experience 5 or 10 minutes is not even close to enough time to adequately release them. I’ve been a myotherpist and sports therapist for well over a decade, muscles can be extremely difficult to treat especially in chronic situations and the reason why most treatments only provide short term results.
X-rays
X rays are all but useless when it in comes to diagnosing back pain, they are expensive and expose you to unnecessary radiation and potentially makes your pain levels worse. Things that show up such joint and disc degeneration are rarely the underlying cause of pain and are a result of normal ‘wear and tear’. Similarly, things like mis-aligned pelvis’s, decreased neck curvatures, leg length differences, scoliosis etc… are rarely the issue. Research has continuously shown you can get a large group of people with no history of back pain and the vast majority will often show things listed above and showing someone who is in pain their “broken” spine will often lead to worse outcomes.
I have seen x rays used as a scare tactic countless times over the years, with unsuspecting pain suffers committing to excessive treatment based on x ray findings and it is nothing short of a scam.
If you have back pain and a history of cancer, trauma or other more serious symptoms indicting an underlying pathology then x rays may be required this is roughly less than 1% of all back pain suffers.
Excessive Treatment
Most people I treat only need 2- 4 weekly treatments and as needed after that, this is because I use a holistic treatment that isn’t rushed and I educate you on how to become an active participant in your own recovery. You shouldn’t need multiple treatments a week or regular ongoing “maintenance”. More than likely the reason you need regular and ongoing treatment has more to do with the fact the person treating you is ineffective rather than the seriousness of your back pain.
Catastrophizing Pain
Generally, people who are in pain whether it is acute or chronic have an emotional response, which is understandable. But it is vital you understand that the amount of pain you are experiencing pain does not represent the amount of ‘damage’ to your back or spine. In fact with most back pain there is actually no tissue damage and telling someone who is dealing with pain they have a slipped disc, bone out of place or even a weak core (I’ll further into this in another article) actually has nothing to do with their pain but potentially increases the fear and emotional response to it, which often ramps up the body and nervous systems response and can become a viscous cycle.
I have often found that professionals will tend to do all these things together. They will x ray the patient, tell them their pelvis is out of alignment, they have arthritis etc… this then heightens the fear response and they become very dependent some cookie cutter treatment requiring multiple treatments a week and ongoing for months on end.