Dr. Jeff Echols: Hi! I'm Dr. Jeff Echols and today we're going to talk about back pain and we're also going to demonstrate a machine that we use in our clinic to help identify areas of stress in the body. We're actually going to use it on a patient and afterwards we're going to adjust that patient or provide him treatment to respond and give him some therapy and then we're going to go back and retest them and see of there's been any improvement in that computerized analysis.
Now before I get started, there's something very important that you need to know and this is what I often tell my patients about how to go about handling pain. I ask them have you ever had a pebble in your shoe and they all say well yes sure, I go, did it hurt? Yes off course it did. I go well I want you to know that the reason you're having pain in your foot was because that pebble was actually putting physical, mechanical pressure on a nerve. And as you walked around you put more and more pressure on that nerve it started getting more swollen and sore until finally you had it pull over and actually pull the pebble out, didn't you? And they all said yeah.
Now I also ask and I say now look, if somebody was to come up to you and see you limping around and say hey! What's wrong and you go, well I've got this stupid pebble in my shoe and it's just killing me and they go oh! Here why don't you try some pain medication or why don't you try some muscle relaxer. Well what would you think about that person? You think they were crazy. That's because we're trying to handle a physical, mechanical problem with a chemical solution and that just doesn't work. The only real solution to having a pebble in your shoe is to sit down and take that pebble out which in effect removes the pressure from the nerve and the person gets relieved.
You could take pain medication until cows came home. You would never ever fix that problem or handle it. It may give you some temporary relief, but I think it's pretty obvious that it would never handle the situation. You could also say some one might suggest you that you inject that area with cortisone or some other steroid because there's all that pain and inflammation in there. Again as soon as that were off the problem would still be there and come back.
Some people also suggest surgery for this kind of thing. Well, why don't we cut the bottom of your foot out so that the pebble will rest up there without putting any pressure on there. That would be kind of a drastic solution. Again this is a mechanical issue, a mechanical problem, a physical problem and it can't be solved by a chemical needs.
Okay, so this is one of the machines that we use in our office. It's called a surface electromyogram, but actually all you need to know about it is that it really measures stress along the muscular muscular vertebrae of the spinal column and today we're going to demonstrate it on Shannon here and see what kind of results we get.
Look straight ahead and just stand relaxed.
So normally a normal scan will be in the green areas here and the little bars are fairly balanced and even and they're in green. When we start running into problems we'll see the red or the purple bars and you can see how much larger it is over here on this side than this side and also a big problem appear in the neck area. It actually has turn to 61% greater on this one side which can indicate some sort of a spinal imbalance here. So let's get you some treatment and we'll come back.
Now we've got Shannon on the adjustment table and what we are going to do is going down to the spine and we're going to locate areas of stress. That I can feel that in the muscles and may possible even in the spinal column itself and that can indicate that there's been some pressure on those nerves which is what we just saw on the computerized program earlier and then we're going to actually going to perform an adjustment and take some of that pressure off of the nerves. The adjustments are very gentle and they actually feel very pleasant.
And I can feel some areas in Shannon's spine that are a little bit tense. Breathe out and Shannon had also some problems up here in her neck especially on this left side. Now I'm going to take some pressure off of this area just relax that here for me good. There we are, very good, as well as in the lower portion of the back. Shannon roll over on your side for me. Good, now roll over on your other side. There you go and just like that. There, okay! Shannon has also got some areas of tension up here in the upper part of her spine. I'm just going to gently move this over and over here for me. I made a lot of racket in there, didn't I? That was good. Alright now let's go and get a little bit of therapy on you.
Shannon: Okay!
Dr. Jeff Echols: We're going to follow up Shannon's adjustments with some physical therapy, in this case its called muscle stem and these are little pads that we put in place right here on the neck area and what these are going to do is provide a light stimulation to the muscles which brings blood flow to this area and helps to reduce pain and spasm. You could lay down on your back for me now. This table that Shannon is on is also what we called a roller table and has a gentle roller that rolls up and down the spine providing a lot of relaxation to the patient. Okay, Shannon let me know when this is strong but comfortable.
Shannon: It's okay.
Dr. Jeff Echols: Okay! Now I'll let you relax for about ten minutes, see you in ten. Okay so we're going to talk a little bit about some of the different causes of lower or back pain in general and it's actually a little bit more complex than you might think. Pain can originate from any one of several different structures. For instance, they can come from the muscular vertebrae that lies on top of the spine. Somebody can have a blunt force trauma to that. They're hit in the back with the baseball bat or a baseball. That's going to bruise that muscle and that can cause pain. Also there could be pain that is actually coming from the joints themselves and when I say the joints I mean where one bone is actually sitting down on top of the other one, that's a joint. It's supposed to move and glide. Often times those joints can get frozen or locked into place and when that happens, pain and inflammation will result in that joint there causing discomfort.
Another thing that can cause pain is actually the nerve itself. The nerves come out right off the spinal cord out through these holes in the spine and sometimes these nerves can get irritated. And when that happens, of course there's going to be pain in robe and this is what often times people complain that the pain is radiating down into the leg or down into the arm. So doctors are chiropractor trained to discriminate and differentiate between these kinds of problems so that they can give the best treatment possible.
So now that Shannon has had her therapy, she has had her adjustment, she now some relaxed. We're going to redo the test and see if there's been any improvement.
You have back pain. You should always try the most conservative means first in order to handle your problem. If that doesn't help you, you can always go to less conservative means, for instance taking medication. Now if that doesn't work you can even try something more aggressive or radical and the last of course the thing that you want to try is surgery, that's the last thing that's going to help.
However another thing I want to you to know is you don't necessarily have to live with back pain. About 90% of the people like go to the chiropractor get absolute relief from their pain. So don't give up, don't think that there's nothing that you can do about it. If you've tried chiropractic before and you didn't get good results try another chiropractor because different chiropractors have different methods and different results, so good luck to you and live a pain free life.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services