Low back pain and injury is a common and treatable condition. Physiotherapy is your best and safest option for treatment. The back is central, literally, to our stability and can affect the body regions above in the upper quadrant of the body and below in the lower quadrant.
Lower back pain can be caused by a variety of sources:
- A one time traumatic incidence,
- a long term postural adaptation,
- and/or micro injuries little by little along our life’s way.
- (and other non orthopaedic causes)
There is often more than one contributing factor to back pain.
The physiology causing the lower back pain is also often varied. It can be:
- the disc impinging a nerve,
- local inflammation irritating the nerve,
- a joint mechanic that is not functioning properly causing stress on the lumbar joint unit and irritation to the nerve,
- it can also be chronic scarring on the dural structures surround the lumbar joint unit from previous injury,
- lumbar vertebral fracture,
- it can be a ligament sprain,
- or less commonly a back muscle strain
More commonly than not, it is a combination of two or more of the above and please note that the above list is not exhaustive and only includes the orthopaedic causes within normal systemic health.
Physiotherapists are also trained to assess how your lower back pain is affecting satellite regions of your body like you hip, knee, and ankle, feet or vice versa.
Physiotherapists investigate the biomechanical causes of the injury, starting with closely listening to a patient recall the history of the onset of the injury. When did the injury occur or begin?, is this the first injury of it’s kind? How did the injury occur? Sometimes the events leading up to the injury are also, in part, helpful to determine clues for prevention.
There are many ways injuries can occur in a patient’s history:
Traumatic cause – a single clear traumatic event resulting in pain and injury, sprain, strain, fracture, rupture, subluxation from a force incurred by a velocity plus a body position and/or gravity and/or another object or vehicle.
Insidious cause – occurs when a pain or injury starts but the patient does not know how the injury started. Do not be ashamed or surprised if this is your history as this is a common comment in the Physiotherapy office at assessment. At times, a patient may not know why pain has started
Chronic – The current definition of chronic pain is any pain that lasts three months or longer. These are also a common group of people seen in Physiotherapy by our Physiotherapists. Often patients seek out help when the pain is just not going away (!). This is a wonderful time to seek out a Physiotherapist for orthopaedic injury. You will be glad that you did!
Physiotherapists are university trained detectives assessing each individuals biomechanical features, keen observations through subjective and objective assessment. It can be beneficial to see a Physiotherapist even if you don’t have pain. To consult on prevention or assess your specific biomechanical pattern(s).
Physiotherapy consists of a broad-based all encompassing approach to each person, as a unique individual make up, including factors making up the individual in light of their God given body mechanics and their unique environmental scenarios at home and in their workplace and/or hobbies. All of these factors are incorporated into their rehabilitation plan for Physiotherapy.
Even though each athlete may be playing the same sport, each worker may be sitting at a desk/office, it never fails that each and every individual has a unique set of priorities of posutres, exercises, load education, pain education, pathophysiology education, strengths and weaknesses in their alignment in which a Physiotherapist is an expert at revealing to them to enhance their performance, abolish or decrease and prevent their pain.
As always we are here to provide Physiotherapy services to the people of East Gwillimbury, Newmarket, Bradford, Holland Landing, Sharon, Queensville, Aurora and the surrounding York Region.
Vertigo and Lymphedema treatment is available at East Gwillimbury Physiotherapy Newmarket location. Click here
A Physiotherapist is a university trained profession that has been trained in normal and abnormal pathology that may affect injury and pain to parts of the body and is educated in incorporating these different health and alignment and lifestyle factors to make a treatment plan to eliminate or alleviate your lower back pain.
We are here to help!
To book an appointment please click here.
East Gwillimbury Physiotherapy’s treatment team is here to serve East Gwillimbury, Newmarket, Bradford, Aurora and our surrounding York/Simcoe region.