On today’s Back & Body Medical video, we’re going to go over the three most common things we hear for people who make the mistake of avoiding getting the proper care they need for low back pain. Dr. Dave Perna here with Back & Body where we offer combined care of physical therapy, chiropractic acupuncture and medical care. We treat patients in Midtown, Manhattan in New York City on 58th and Lexington as well as Route 22 in Springfield, New Jersey offering services to the people of Union County, New Jersey. Today we’re going to talk about the three most common excuses we hear why people say they don’t need care for the low back or they originally said they didn’t need care for the low back and they’re in the office saying why it took them so long to finally decide, maybe their assumptions were wrong. Number 1, people say their problem is muscular.
Now we often hear this a lot. It’s just a muscle, I didn’t think it was a serious problem. Well news flash, if it’s a muscle, it’s still an injury. The reality is if you ignore a muscular injury long enough, it may turn chronic, if it turns chronic, this is something that will constantly come back every time you challenge that area, the muscle will re-aggravate, now this is assuming it’s just muscular. If the problem does keep coming back exactly the same, there’s also possibility that suggests there’s a structural problem underneath. There’s either the muscle guarding going on or a compensation of some kind. It is not uncommon that we see the muscles of the low back tighten up as well as the hamstrings of the legs tighten up when somebody has an ongoing issue with their lower back. “Oh my hamstrings are just tight and low back is sore, it’s not a real problem, it’ll go away” Then you ask them how long has the hamstrings and low back been bothering you like that? and they say “It’s been a couple months now or maybe a few years” and that’s when you say to them, it’s probably good that you came in now.
The reality is that the low back muscles were tightening up over time, usually in the cases like this we see some sort of degenerative process, the low back joints are not moving properly and the muscles of the low back are going to protect those joints from irritating further or the back is not moving properly at all and the muscles of the low back have to work extra hard for the proper motion of the low back to occur. Hamstring muscles will sometimes lock down and guard as well to avoid you from moving the low back too. So that takes care of our first excuse which is “don’t worry, I just think it’s muscular”. Excuse number 2 we hear of the top 3 most terrible excuses that we find people didn’t get the proper care they needed at the right time is “It comes and goes, so it can’t be that serious”. There’s a lot of studies out there not necessarily talking about low back, but there’s a lot of studies out there where they looked at people who had heart attacks and they found that there were symptoms and suggestions that this person should have gotten the care they needed for their heart condition much sooner than when they had their massive cardiac attack. So, the body does give us little signs and hints over time that you need to get care.
If you wait long enough, the constant pain will be there and eventually you’re body’s saying I tried to tell you what to do, you weren’t listening so now we’re in full lock down. Experience in this practice will tell you this, if your problem comes and goes, you need to listen to it. Chances are it will resolve a lot faster when it’s in the “it comes and goes” mode than if it’s in full blown “get my to a doctor now, the pain hasn’t gone away in days”. It’s a lot easier to work with the patient, it’s a lot easier to examine the patient, it’s a lot easier to do care with the patient when they’re in the problem stage of “it comes and goes”. When the pain is there constantly, it is also often very difficult to figure out what are the instigating factors that cause the problem.
If we look at when it comes and goes, and we treat the patient, we can often figure out within a day or so or even the same day what is the exacerbating factors that constantly make it come. We modify that in our lifestyle, we give them the proper care they need and they’re ready to move on with their life. Unfortunately, if the pain is constantly there, it means it’s been going on for a long period of time and it also means that care will take a lot longer to resolve the situation, it also means that everything you do hurts so it’s really hard to figure out what those few things are that cause the problem or aggravate the situation. It also usually means that you have to completely modify your life until the pain decreases enough to the “it comes and goes” stage again. So, listen to your body when it’s tell you that you have discomfort and pain and it’s been there. It’s time to get checked out, come to us and see what we can do to help you out.
The third reason we hear, it’s not exactly an excuse but it is a reason why people take a little bit longer to stop in and seek our combined care, our concurrent care, physical therapy, chiropractic, acupuncture medical care. It is “I’ve already tried chiropractic, I’ve already tried physical therapy”. The first question I’m going to ask that person is “What was your frequency of care?”.Well I’ve already tried physical therapy. “How many times did you go?”I went three times. Okay, for how long? “I went three times in the first month”. Care is going to build off itself. One day builds off the next, to tell a doctor who understands this concept is pretty much telling someone “I don’t understand why I’m not losing weight, I ate healthy 3 times this month” Well what did you do the other 27 days? or “I worked out 3 times this month, I don’t understand why I can’t run as fast as I want to for a race”. There is a build off one day to the next, you do need to give care a consistent amount of time for a consistent period of time. So a certain amount of visits over a certain period of time. Granted, you may have tried it already, what I can tell you is that our care and our approach is much different anyway. A lot of times people come here after doing care for quite some time and were consistent and they’re amazed at how different our approach is on trying to treat their problems. They’re very happy they found us, we hear that a lot.
The most common thing we usually hear at the end of the first visit is “I wish I found you guys sooner, I wish I knew about this place sooner” and that’s why we’re starting to do these videos. So that people understand the type of care we offer. Our combined care of physical therapy, chiropractic and acupuncture together works very successfully. So if you’ve already tried physical therapy, have you tried physical therapy with chiropractic? Have you tried doing physical therapy with chiropractic and acupuncture? Have you done physical therapy with the compression therapy if you have a disc problem? Were they done on the same day, right around the same time? Now rather than run from office to office and doctor to doctor, it’s all done under one roof. I just went over a study in another video where combined care or concurrent care with open communication between the healthcare providers is a much more successful product of care. So even if you do have a chiropractor, or you have a physical therapist, are they talking? Are they talking regularly? I can’t tell you how many times we’ve reached out to other facilities, “I just want to come to you as a chiropractor, I’ve got a physical therapist somewhere else”. I call the physical therapy place multiple times just to get us on the same page and no one ever returns my call. or they have an order from a physician that we can’t really understand, as well all know, the horrible handwriting of the physician on their physical therapy script and we just want to touch base on our findings versus theirs and it takes a couple weeks for them to finally call us back after we’ve called them numerous times, and left messages with their staff. Why not just do it all in one place all at one time and get it done with very quickly? Where the physical therapist, the chiropractor, the acupuncturist sit in a room and discuss your case all together. The medical doctor is there to discuss his input as well. That’s true concurrent collaborative care. So why not give us a call at Back & Body Medical and see if we can help you. Those 3 excuses, I already told you why they’re terrible. There’s plenty of other ones out there too, I’m sure. So if you’re not sure if your excuse is valid or not, why not come in for an evaluation? Let’s see if what we have to offer can help you.