Lower Back Pain Treatment in Decatur GA
(404) 558-4015
- 35 years + experience including orthopedics, physical medicine, physical therapy and neurosurgery
- Participated in the care of 40,000+ patients.
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Lower back pain Treatment - How Dr. Craig Castanet Can Help You?
Are you looking for chiropractor near me in Decatur GA for treatment chronic lower back pain? You can contact Dr. Craig Castanet anytime. Just check our contact us page & give call.
What Are The Symptoms Of Lower Back Pain?
This is a better question than you might think. Low back pathology can be felt in many more places than just your low back. In fact, most pain that is felt anywhere from your low back, down to your knees, is most likely coming from low back pathology. When we say “low back pain”, we don’t just mean pain that is felt in the low back, but rather, any pain that is arising from low back pathology. It is just as common to feel low back pathology in your buttocks as it is to feel it in your low back. And low back pathology can also be referred down your thigh as far as your knee. And then there is sciatica, which is pain that is felt anywhere from your buttock to you foot, and it may vary from place to place in this distribution.
What Are The Common Causes Of lower back Pain?
The most common causes of low back pain are small tears of your spinal disc. There is some debate about this because we cannot actually see the problem that occurs when someone complains of low back pain, unless the problem is large enough to show up on an x-ray or an MRI scan. And most bouts of low back pain don’t need diagnostic imaging, nor would the results show us, with certainty, what caused the pain.
But, given the natural history of spinal degeneration, it is most likely that the most common cause of low back pain is the intermittent, microscopic tearing of the spinal disc that occurs. And these tears don’t heal perfectly, so they aggregate over time, resulting in bulging, herniations, and collapse. That can give rise to joint pain and pinched nerves which are the next most common causes of lower back pain. Less common causes are piriformis syndrome, spondylolisthesis, sacroiliac joint, and maybe even psychosomatic causes.
Can A Chiropractor Help With Lower Back Pain?
Chiropractors treat, and help, low back pain as their most common problem among patients. In fact, low back pain is the first or second most comman complaint treated by all doctors, including medical doctors. About 70% of patients who go to chiroprators have lower back pain as their chief complaint. So it is the primary focus of chiropractors and they help patients with lower back pain very effectively. Rarely, less than 10% of the time, will patients need injections, and about 2% of the time they may need surgery. For the vast majority of patients, chiropractors can help them resolve their lower back pain.
What Does A Chiropractor Do For Lower Back Pain?
Chiropractors use a variety of methods to treat lower back pain, depending upon the patient, their problem, and the particular chiropractor. The most commonly known, unique method to chiropractors is the chiropractic adjustment. And there are several ways to deliver an adjustment, including the hands and various machine instruments. There are also soft-tissue techniques and instruments, to treat the muscles, ligaments, tendons, and fascial tissues. And there are passive modalities like electrical stimulation, ultrasound, laser, and traction.
How Does Dr. Craig Castanet As A Best Chiropractor In Decatur GA Diagnose Lower Back Pain?
Diagnosis is a product of many considerations, including the patient’s history, their exam findings, any diagnostic imaging they may have. And this information, in the context of more than 35 years of clinical experience in orthopedics, physical medicine, physical therapy and neurosurgical clinics also provides an intuitive sense of the diagnosis, including whether it is typical, atypical, or some combination, that might suggest a non-mechanical, visceral source of pain as causative or a co-morbidity. The first important thing to diagnose is the absence of something life-threatening, e.g. cancer as a source of pain.
Diagnosing any pathology, including lower back pain, is establishing a conceptual framework of the problem, hierarchically, from most probably to least probable, and then, given your diagnostic assumptions, does the treatment result in progress and improvement the way I expect, or is the response suggesting a different diagnosis?
In general terms, lower back pain, arising from a lower back pathology, will be in the lower back, or buttocks, or anywhere in the thigh, leg or foot. And it will respond predictably to mechanical loads, usually worse with loading and flexion of the spine, and alleviated with recumbency and reduced loads. There are atypical presentations, frequently.
Many times, my treatment is helpful in confirming my diagnosis. If the patient improves as expected, then my diagnosis is correct. And if they don’t improve as expected, then I need to reconsider the diagnosis. That might including doing other diagnostic testing, or referral to another physician.
How Does Dr. Craig Castanet Treat Lower Back Pain Issues?
This varies somewhat, but for most of the patients that I treat, I have found spinal decompression treatment to be the most effective treatment, by a very large margin. The reason is that the human spine becomes progressively compressed over a lifetime. And for acute and chronic pain, decompressing the spine provides the most effective redress for this universal process.
Once the pain is better, strengthening the spine can improve the pain, maintain improvement, and raise the pain threshold, so that the person can tolerate physical demands and loads with a reduced risk of exacerbation or aggravation of lower back pain. The the purpose of strengthening, I think the most effective tool for that is a roman chair exercise.
What Should I Expect During My First Visit To Dr. Craig Castanet For Lower Back Pain Treatment?
The first visit will include getting a history of your problem, doing an examination, reviewing any diagnostic imaging and medical records you may have, and explaining your problem to you, if you don’t already understand it. I will also show you your imaging and grade the problem, so that you have some sense about how bad it is. Surprisingly, many doctors don’t show patients their imaging, nor explain the problem in detail. Usually, I will then lay out the recommended treatment, what to expect, and when, and sometimes, what I’ll recommend if I can’t help the problem sufficiently. For serious problems, I lay out a grand overview of everything. I also explain my expectations very critically, so that if I don’t help them quickly, they wont waste their time and money doing pointless treatment with me. I think I am the best provider they can find. And, shockingly, also the least expensive.
We will also do your first treatment, and all this takes about one hour, or so, to complete.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. There are contraindications to all treatment. For chiropractic treatment we cannot treat infections, tumors, cancer, fractures, and dislocations. Instability is also contraindicated, but grade one spondylolistheses are usually treatable if they are stable. For common lower back pain, chiropractic is an excellent choice for treatment, and usually effective. The specific type of chiropractic treatment has variable success rates for various pathologies. The objective for chiropractic treatment, as others, is to find the right treatment, at the right time, done in the right way, for the right problem in the patient.
This varies a lot. I sometimes see a patient once, and they’re fine after that, but that’s exceptional. Other times I may need to treat someone 20 times, but that is also exceptional, and if it takes that long, it’s because they are improving, just slower than we might like. A more typical range of treatments would be four to twelve treatments to resolve a lower back problem.
The reason for the variation in treatment numbers is that the causative problem can vary from simple to complex, from a simple strain to a large herniated disc, from nagging, annoying pain, to severe and incapacitating. But, whatever the problem and severity, you should expect to start improving within three to six treatments, and the majority of people will get some relief from the first treatment they receive.
