You’ve suffered long enough with back pain. Taking pain relievers only provides temporary relief. You’ve tried them all: Aleve, Advil, Motrin, and maybe even considered taking some of the stronger prescribed medications to no avail.

You’ve been avoiding your favorite exercises or other routine daily activities like lifting your kids or your groceries out of fear your back pain will flare up again. You’ve heard that chiropractic treatments for back pain can work, but you don’t know how.

You might have even tried physical therapy, seen an orthopedist, or consulted with a spine surgeon and still feel lost about what to do or still be in pain. We’ve seen back pain now for the last eleven years every single day and we can spot an acute flared up back with a shift in the torso and a shuffling gait when someone walks through our door.

Here’s the deal: Chiropractic care for back pain has a long history of success. You are not alone: back pain is a common medical problem that affects up to 80 percent of people over a lifetime.

Back pain affects up to 80 percent of people over a lifetime.

There are different types of back pain. It can come on suddenly or have a slow gradual onset that annoyingly nags at you. It can come and go or last a few days, several months, or even longer. It can be lower back pain or upper back pain, or it can affect the sciatic nerve that extends from the lower back down each leg. Ouch! We’ve seen all these different kinds of cases in the clinic every single day.

Risk factors include a family history of back pain, smoking tobacco, being overweight or obese, anxiety, depression, and living a sedentary lifestyle. Hello, New Yorkers: we sit 12-14 hours a day and don’t think twice how we are training our bodies to become really good sitters and that’s about it. Women are more likely to experience back pain than men are, and poor posture or bad ergonomics can lead to back pain. If you don’t fall into one of these categories above, we’ve seen patients in the clinic who sit all week then want to be a warrior on the weekend to get their body moving and feeling better, and wind up tweaking their back.

What a Chiropractor Does for Back Pain

If you’ve got back pain, a good chiropractor can help. The best part? You can get relief quickly and easily and avoid back pain through exercises you can do at home. Especially for acute low back pain, spinal manipulation can be one of the best modes of relief to take the edge off. Best of all: Chiropractic for back pain is safer than pain medications.

How long should it take for a chiropractor to fix a bad back? That depends on what’s wrong:

Chiropractic for Lower Back Pain:

At Urban Wellness Clinic, our approach to chiropractic treatment for back pain centers on aligning the spine and joints for a healthy network of the skeletal, muscular, and nervous systems. In turn, we ease pressure on slipped discs and nerves, improve flexibility, and reduce muscle tension. Being movement specialists we also focus on what joints are not moving enough or are stuck and which joints are too mobile leading to instability.

First, we perform a physical evaluation to assess lower back pain symptoms and determine the cause of back aches or chronic back pain. Then we use chiropractic adjustments and massage, specifically Active Release Technique, to treat lower back pain.

We may use the osseous adjustment, which involves gentle manipulation of the spine to relieve muscle tension and restore range of motion of the joint. This chiropractic treatment for lower back pain addresses misaligned and contracted muscles and connective tissue. The high velocity, low amplitude adjustment gives a quick stretch to the ligaments and the joint capsule creating a neurologic reflex that helps temporarily relax the muscles in the area. We always end with rehabilitation exercises and create stability so the joints that were just treated don’t get pulled out of alignment.

Sometimes, we use the Graston Technique®, when we manually mobilize soft tissue using hand-held instruments that break up adhesions and reduce inflammation. We assess your lower back and then use cross-friction tissue release to relieve pain. After treatment, we teach you stretching and strengthening exercises to perform at home, helping reduce reinjury. It’s all part of a healthy way to take care of your back so it takes care of you.

Chiropractic For Sciatica:          

Here’s what you need to know about sciatica: It’s a symptom, not a diagnosis. It’s leg pain that can be caused by a variety of problems, including a bulging disc, a compressed joint, or a tight piriformis muscle. Chiropractic can relieve sciatica pain, no matter the cause.

At Urban Wellness Clinic, we use a variety of chiropractic, massage, and physical rehabilitation techniques to relieve sciatica pain:

• chiropractic adjustment
• Neurokinetic Therapy to determine where muscles aren’t working, taking pressure off the disc
• McKenzie Method to manipulate the disc pressure with exercises
• Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization to “reset” the body back to its natural movements

Chiropractic for Upper Back Pain:

We can use a variety of chiropractic techniques that work for both lower and upper back pain. One of them is Neurokinetic Therapy, a foundation of our holistic philosophy at Urban Wellness Clinic. It’s based on the concept that injury causes muscles to weaken or stop working, forcing other muscles to overcompensate. This leads to tightness and pain, including in the upper back.

Upper back pain can also be caused by poor posture and excessive sitting, which puts strain on the shoulders and neck. So can texting, which keeps the head tilted forward.

Bottom line: We can teach good posture, which requires feet flat on the floor, low back support, lined up ears, shoulders and hips, wrists in line with the keyboard, and elbows at 90 degrees. Why does this matter? Because poor posture and bad ergonomics can cause rotator cuff injuries, tendinitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and back pain.

We can use the Active Release Technique® (ART) to treat scar tissue and tightness in the muscles, nerves, tendons, and connective tissue, which can be caused by overuse and poor posture. ART helps with shoulder pain and upper back pain through a system of specific movements and massage methods.

We can also show you how to stretch the upper and middle back to reduce injury and back pain.

Don’t worry, we don’t send you home without guidance. All of our exercises are online for you to reference how to do them with the correct form. All of our exercises are found in our Video Exercise Library.

Urban Wellness Clinic Can Ease Your Back Pain

We can assess the cause of your back pain, perform chiropractic techniques to ease upper and lower back and sciatica pain and teach you stretches and exercises for back pain. If you have back pain, contact us today. Call us at 212-355-0445 or email us at info@urbanwellnessclinic.com. We’re here for you!

Best in health,

Dr. Emily Kiberd