Beyond Back Pain: Surprising Conditions Chiropractic Care Can Help Address

We are still waiting on the arrival of our little one at home, Charlotte is amazing and taking it in her stride. But perhaps this is the week? Fingers crossed.

We had great feedback from the rotator cuff shockwave open day last Saturday, this was a great opportunity to get your rotator cuff checked out by our shockwave specialist, Oli.

Stay tuned for the next one.

I get asked a lot “Oh, I didn’t know you can help with that, how does it work”?

I wanted to dispel some myths around what Chiropractors can and can’t help with.

Headaches

Headaches often arise from the neck, from tension in the muscles and can cause pain in the head. No matter what the patient does, they can try painkillers, anti-migraine pills or sit in a dark room.

But if the source of the pain is from the neck, then this will always be an ongoing issue for the patient.

There is substantial evidence that spinal adjustments can provide relief from cervicogenic headaches, (Fernandez et al, 2020). They used a control group and performed spinal adjustments on 7 other subjects suffering with headaches that reported short term and long-term benefit over the control group who were just administered drugs.

The idea behind how this works is because when the vertebra in the neck are adjusted, it takes pressure off the nerves that are causing the headache. It frees up tension in the neck and the neck muscles that blend with the fascia in the head are loosened up as well.

Shoulder Pain

Shoulder pain can be extremely debilitating, I often hear patients tell me “I cannot even wash my hair or put my jacket on in the morning.” Some of our patients have been living like this for years. They have now adapted to how they live and won’t do certain movements.

This does not need to happen, there is evidence to suggest that Chiropractic care with exercise therapy can help shoulder pain and improve function, (Uchoa Santos-Junior et al, 2023).

One of the ways that I treat shoulder pain is to adjust the spine in the lower neck and upper back to improve the shoulder mobility. I also encourage the thoracic spine to move in to extension with mid thoracic adjustments which help to pull the blades back and open up the chest capacity.

I then prescribe home exercises and one of the best exercises in my humble opinion is a push up plus.

Start in a push up position (on your knees if you like)
Lock the elbows out
Drop your chest down to the floor, go to wherever feels comfortable
DO NOT bend your elbows, it is a small movement
Squeeze the shoulder blades at the bottom of the rep
Repeat 10 times, 3 sets

Knee Pain

Knee pain is the one of the most common conditions that we see at West Chiropractic and also one of the most debilitating. If you thought shoulder pain was bad, we need our knees to walk and be mobile.

The most common type of knee pain we see is from osteoarthritis. Where the joint begins to degenerate and cause inflammation and pain.

Research suggests that Chiropractic care can provide relief for knee pain and improve mobility long term, (Pollard et al, 2008).

If you want to stay fit and independent long term then keeping your knees healthy is one of the best things you can do. You can walk with a bad shoulder but it is tough with a bad knee.

This is my favourite knee exercise to prescribe as it builds stability to the knee and helps the pelvis as well.

Start standing
Feet shoulder width apart
Lunge BACKWARDS with one leg
Use a chair to balance if needed
Let your knee touch the floor and then push up, engage the glute
Repeat on the other side, 10 times on both sides.

You can also do this with a dumbbell in your hands to increase the demand, but I would take it easy to start with and build it up slowly.

References

Fernandez et al, 2020, Spinal manipulation for the management of cervicogenic headache: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Pollard et al, 2008, The effect of a manual therapy knee protocol on osteoarthritic knee pain: a randomised controlled trial

Uchoa Santos-Junior et al, 2023, Spinal manipulation combined with exercise therapy could be more effective than exercise therapy alone for shoulder pain and disability: A systematic review and meta-analysis

If you are wanting to chat more about the information above then why not book a call with me and we can go into more detail? Click here to book or if you want to get an assessment then Book a consultation with a Chiropractor here

If you do know someone who wants more advice, please send them our details. You can send them this assessment as well to diagnose their back pain. It is a great tool to understand where your back pain is coming from, it is free and takes 60 seconds. Click here for assessment