Chiropractor in Freehold NJ Shares a Key Component Missed by Many Doctors in Treating Low Back Pain

Over 80% of the population experiences back pain at one time or another.  Unfortunately many people wait, thinking it will go away, then wonder why it keeps coming back.  Many others seek care from their medical doctors that just put them on a series of pain medication and muscle relaxers.  The medications at best only give temporary relief, while the underlying cause actually gets worse.  Just imagine if you went to a dentist for a painful cavity, but the dentist only shot the cavity with Novocaine but didn’t treat the cavity itself:  You might feel better as you aren’t experiencing pain, but the cavity is actually decaying more.   The same thing happens when you just go to a medical doctor and they prescribe medications.  You feel better, but the underlying cause keeps getting worse.

Chiropractors and Physical Therapists take a different route and actually have the goal of correcting the cause, but only chiropractors find the actual cause of the pain and therefore have a highest success rate in correcting the back pain.  By finding the spinal vertebra that are misaligned which are putting pressure on the nerves and causing dysfunction of the discs, chiropractic utilizes specific adjusting techniques to realign the bones and joints to get the pressure off the discs and nerves.  It’s as simple as that!

My name is Dr. Russell Brokstein and as a chiropractor for the past 13 plus years, I have done a lot of work on patients experiencing low back pain.  Most chiropractors just look at the spine, but some of us specialize in full body mechanics, including the ankle, foot, knees and hips.  Most times, patients have imbalances in their legs that can cause misalignments in the spine, all the way from the pelvis, lower back all the way up to the neck.  By examining the legs and correcting the involved joints, we are able to further stabilize the spine from repetitive misalignment.

If your feet are misaligned, it causes you to walk off balance and translates into stress into knees, hips and the entire spine.  This is similar to a car with misaligned wheels and you start to feel the car pulling to one side or the other.  If you leave it that way too long, the tires start to wear down and you can have more problems build up including brake problems, struts, etc.

In my treatment of patients, I check everybody for misalignments of the ankles, feet, knees and hips to further correct the imbalances occurring in the spine that are causing the pain.  A major part of the problems in the leg are due to collapsing arches that don’t get support from the shoes you wear.  By measuring the arches with state of the art equipment, we can have custom made orthotics built to put in your shoes to provide the proper support to help stabilize the adjustments we perform.

A study reported in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics evaluated the efficacy of custom-made shoe orthotics in managing low back pain.  50 subjects were split into 2 groups of 25:  one group received the orthotics, while the other group were put into a 6 week waiting period before being put into orthotics.  The group wearing orthotics showed a significant decrease in back pain, while the second group didn’t show any improvement until being allowed to wear the orthotics from the 6th thru 12th week of the study.  Foot pain also decreased in the orthotic group, while the non orthotic group showed no improvement in the first 6 weeks.  The study concluded that the use of foot orthotics appear to play a significant role in reducing the effects of both foot and back pain in patients.

If you have been experiencing lower back pain that won’t resolve with the other approaches you have taken, I recommend coming in to our Freehold, NJ office, Hometown Family Wellness Center, for a full body examination and consult for me to show you the cause of your back pain once and for all.  I will demonstrate for you how your feet and legs are a major contributor to your problem and then we will address the cause once and for all so you can once again be out of pain and on your way to enjoying your normal daily activities.

For more information on our practice click here to go to our website:  www.ChiropractorFreehold.com

Reference:  Cambron JA, Duarte M, Dexheimer J, Solecki T.  Shoe Orthotics for the treatment of chronic low back pain:  A randomized controlled pilot study.  Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 2011; 34(4): 254-260