7 Steps to Natural Back Pain Relief
A farmer is staring at this year’s crop. He’s disappointed. He planted seeds but nothing is growing and in his frustration, he plants some more. After a few weeks he looks at his crop and again, nothing. So he decides that the next step would be to again plant more seeds. A neighboring farmer is watching him and asks him about the lack of growth on his land, hears the story about the repeated seed planting and sighs. He looks at his friend and says, “Did you ever think about how much water you’re using? What about fertilizer? And are you using the right nutrients in the soil to promote growth?” The farmer was disappointed in himself but really excited that there were other steps he could take to grow his crops.
Maybe you treat your pain the same way. Something hurts and you try the same thing over and over again, not realizing that there are many components to improving the pain you experience. If you take a well-rounded approach, you’re most likely to determine the cause and the cure for your pain.
I’m Dr. Emil Tompkins and over the last 13 years, we’ve been helping people end their pain and regain their health. Our 7 Step System for Pain Relief is going to do that for you. Just remember, the information provided in this report works well for roughly 80% of people who try it. Your specific situation may be different and if so, you will require an evaluation from a healthcare provider, like your Family Chiropractor. You are welcome anytime to schedule a complete evaluation in our office. You can go to our website http://meetme.so/tompkinschiro Until then, dive in and feel better!
1. Understand the problem:
Imagine a person driving down the road and suddenly his vehicle breaks down. It’s making frightening sounds and now there’s smoke coming out of his vehicle. So he stops, gets out and immediately grabs his tools and begins to work on his vehicle.
He removes a few spark plugs, he changes the oil, he replaced one of his brake pads. He took a bunch of steps that are positive for his car. But, when he went to turn on his vehicle again, it made the same loud noise. His problem wasn’t solved.
You can spend lots of time simply doing things that are nice, but if you’re trying to get out of pain, you want to take steps that are going to help you relieve it and as quickly as possible. So the first step is to understand the problem.
You have to ask yourself. What caused the problem? How long have you felt the pain? Is it a sharp, dull, burning? What makes the pain better or worse? Once you understand these questions, you’ll get closer to understanding the causes and cure for your pain. Most people need help interpreting the answers to these questions. In our chiropractic office, your new patient visit will include lots of time understanding the nature of your pain and discomfort. Once we have that complete understanding of your pain. The right steps to improve it will then be taken. To schedule a consultation in our office to completely understand your pain, go to this link to schedule your appointment.
2: Exercise to Relieve Pain
A few years ago, my children were outside playing. We had a brick wall that surrounded our home. You would think this brick wall was pretty sturdy. But one day as the kids were playing, they knocked a couple of bricks off the wall. When I heard the story I didn’t believe them because a brick wall should be pretty stable. But I went out to look, saw the blocks off the wall, looked closely and learned how this wall was built. You see, this wall had grooves that would allow it to fit together, but there was nothing at all, no sand, no cement, nothing to keep that way from buckling under pressure.
Our bodies can respond in a similar way. When you’re in pain, you can take steps to put yourself back together, but if you don’t take steps to strengthen and stabilize the spine, you’re going to set yourself up for failure later.
What can you do to stabilize your spine when you’re dealing with back pain? Exercise. Here are 4 exercises that will stretch and strengthen your spine so that you can experience complete corrective change.
- Hamstring Stretch – Your hamstrings run down the back of your leg and connect your leg to your pelvis. Tight hamstrings are one of the most common causes or contributors to back pain. So it is vital to keep your hamstrings as mobile and flexible as possible. Perform this hamstring stretch daily and watch your pain disappear. Hold your body in the stretched position for 10 seconds and repeat both sides 5 to 10 times.
2: Hip Flexor Stretch: Your Psoas muscle (A major hip flexor) connects your spine to the front of your hip. Imbalanced or tight piriformis muscles are another major contributor to back pain. Here is a simple way to stretch your psoas muscle.
Piriformis Stretch: This stretch will help you especially if you’re dealing with sciatic pain. Since the piriformis commonly swells or tightens if you’re spending lots of time sitting. Stretching out the piriformis muscle is vital to improvement in your pain. Here’s how to stretch your piriformis muscle.
Bird Dog exercise: Your lower back muscles need to work together to hold normal postured create enough stability to relieve your pain. The bird dog exercise activates your spinal extensor muscles, and your glutes to encourage normal spinal function, strength and stability. You’ll perform 10 repetitions on each side.
Perform these exercises daily to encourage normal strength and stability in your lower back. Your spine will be much stronger than that block wall my children could knock over. And you’ll feel better too.
Sometimes you may need more detailed or specific exercises for your condition. When that happens, we perform a complete evaluation in our office so we can provide you with an individualized solution to your pain.
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Change your posture for pain relief
Your posture is a window to the function of your spine. If you’re dealing with pain and you know that your posture is a problem, correcting it is the first step you should take to improve your pain. Here are 3 steps to improve your posture.
1.Your head should sit directly over your shoulders. Forward head posture increases the weight of your head that your spine needs to hold up. The pix: Pretend someone is pulling up on a string attached to your head. This will decrease your FHP and help you feel much better.
2.Your gluteal muscles (butt muscles) should be activated. The gluteal muscles are very important in the function of your hips in maintaining normal posture. Here’s one simple exercise to activate your gluteal muscles.
3.Keep your feet forward. Many people have their toes pointed outward. However, this forces the pelvis to be tilted inward which increases pressure on the lower back. Point the toes forward and you’ll have more balanced posture in your hips and hold you more upright.
4. Lock your shoulders: slightly pull your shoulder blades together. Then pull them downward slightly. This position will create lots of stability in your shoulder joints and mid back.
Follow these 4 steps and your posture will help and not hurt you.
4. Nutrition for pain relief
If you’re going to take a complete approach to your pain relief. Paying attention to your nutrition is key. Here are 3 steps to nutritional pain relief.
Step 1: Drop the sugar. It’s time we taught our bodies how to process fat correctly. Surprisingly, you have to drop sugar to accomplish this.
Step 2: Don’t fear fat. Fat if used the right way will provide a great amount of energy and put your body into fat-burning mode. In order to take advantage of this effect, you’ll have to lower your carbohydrate intake and consume more fats. Not junk food fats. But high quality fats, like olive oil, coconut oil, fatty fish, and other sources of omega 3 fatty acids. Over time, this will teach your body to burn instead of store fat and you’ll lose weight the right way. Eating a diet high in good fats will also help lubricate your joints which will relieve arthritis pain.
Step 3: Know your supplements – Once you’ve dropped the sugar and optimized your fat consumption, supplementation can make a large impact on your pain levels. There are about 14 different supplements that can help you with your pain, but I’ll discuss 3 of them today.
Boswellia: The resin extract from the boswellia tree is also known as Boswellia. It has strong anti inflammatory properties. In vitro studies and animal models show that boswellic acids were found to inhibit the synthesis of pro-inflammatory enzyme, 5-lipoxygenase (5-LO) including 5-hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acid (5-HETE) and leukotriene B4 (LTB-4), which cause bronchoconstriction, chemotaxis, and increased vascular permeability[33–38]. Many supplements will combine boswellia with a few other plant based anti-inflammatory compounds like Turmeric:
Turmeric: a spice commonly used in cooking. Turmeric has very strong anti-inflammatory properties. Reviewing some 700 studies looking at turmeric benefits, Duke concluded that turmeric appears to outperform many pharmaceuticals in its effects against several chronic, debilitating diseases, and does so with virtually no adverse side effects.
Omega 3 Fatty Acids: Fish oil and omega 3 fatty acids. The EPA in fish oil has been shown to help people dealing with arthritis pain. The DHA in fish oil has been shown to provide the raw materials your brain needs to function optimally. Ideally you’d want 1-3 grams of EPA and DHA combined to relieve pain.
5. Traction for pain relief
One of the main causes of pain is pressure. If there is too much pressure on one or more of your joints, pain receptors are activated and you’ll experience much more pain. If you’re going to see complete pain relief, you must remove the increased pressure from your joints.
As a chiropractor, there are many techniques that we use on our office to relieve the pressure, but one of the ways you can make a difference is with traction.
Traction is simply apply a distractive force to increase the space between specific joints. Traction can be applied to your body with certain tools, machines, devices, or by the hands. Gentle traction should increase the spaces between spinal joints, relieving the pressure and pain. Certain types of traction units not only increase the space between joints, it can also improve normal curvatures in the spine as well.
6. De-Stress for pain relief:
Stress can be a major factor in your pain. Unhealthy stress responses will cause muscle tightness leading to increased pain. It can also lead increased inflammation production in the body. If you experience an overwhelming amount of stress, helping your body to deal with that stress will cool down those painful points in your body. Over the years, I have developed a system for Stress management called the IDEAS system. Here are the steps.
I: Identify your stressful triggers. Once you identify what’s causing your stress, consider changing those triggers that you have control over and you’ll experience less stress in your life. If there is a trigger you don’t have control over, use some of the other techniques to improve your body’s response to stress and you’ll feel better in no time.
D: Diet – a healthy balanced diet will help your body to have normal hormone function. A diet too high in sugar or processed carbohydrate will cause your body to produce cortisol, a stress hormone that will make you gain weight and give you more pain.
E: Exercise: Your brain has all the stress relieving chemicals living inside it. You just need to know how to release it. You release those brain boosting and mood lifting chemicals with exercise. You can look at the exercise section above to get ideas of how your exercise can reduce stress.
A: Attitude – consider how you approach stressful situations. If your reality is completely different from your expectations, you’ll be disappointed every day. But if your expectations are similar to the reality you’re experiencing, your stress will decrease.
S: Survey the different stress management techniques out there. Identify what works well for you, and spend time doing them. When you do, you’ll feel better, physically and mentally.
Putting it all together.
You have now learned 6 different ways that you can help yourself to relieve pain, lose weight and achieve ultimate health. 1. Understand the problem 2. Improve your posture 3. Exercise for pain relief 4. Traction to improve spacing along your spine 5. Nutritional healing 6. Managing your stress levels. Now it’s time for number 7: Putting it all together.
What area of your body controls each and every function inside of you? If you said nervous system. I’d say that you’re right and it starts in your brain. Your brain sends messages down the spinal cord out to all the nerves to every part of your body. Your brain sends messages to the muscles that stabilize your posture. Your brain coordinates the way your body is going to respond to the exercise you’re performing. The nervous system controls the way your digestive process the foods and supplements you’re taking to improve inflammation. And, of course, your nervous system is what determines the stress you’re under and how your body responds to that stress. You must ensure your nervous system is functioning at 100%.
Unfortunately most people go through their lives damaging their nervous systems daily. The physical, chemical, and emotional stresses your body goes through can stress your nervous system to a point where you’re creating areas where either the brain stem, spinal cord or spinal nerves are compressed, irritated, or stretched. When this happens, those neural networks stop functioning optimally and you’ll begin to experience poor health.
As a neurologically based chiropractor, we focus on relieving pressure off those areas of the spine and nervous system that aren’t functioning well. When we do that, your body functions better, you feel better, and you’re healthier because of it.
If you really want to experience the most optimal health you can, you must experience chiropractic care for yourself. See someone who not only will adjust your spine but will help you to understand better the 7 steps. You need a doctor who can help you understand the complete picture of how your spine is functioning, how to incorporate proper exercise in your program, how your food affects your pain, and relieving that stress.
In our office we are thankful for the opportunity to help thousands of people for the last 13 years experience greater health. Not just injury prevention, but health for a lifetime. You too can make a drastic change in your you’re feeling and how your body is healing. Experience chiropractic today.
We have a very special offer for those who want to try chiropractic today. Go to our website at www.TompkinsChiropractic.com/special-offer and we’ll see you on the inside.
