When is back pain serious?

I had a new patient in here last week asking just this question, “When is back pain serious?” Back pain will affect most adults at some point in their lives. Since it can interfere with the activities you love so much, it’s helpful to know when back pain is serious and when it is not.

First question, how long has your back pain been there? Any back pain that has bothered you for more than a couple weeks probably isn’t going to improve on it’s own.

Secondly, does your back pain travel anywhere? Does it radiate down your arms or legs? This gives us very helpful clues diagnosing where the pain is coming from. If the pain has a neuritic quality and is radiating down the front of your thigh, there is a good chance it is coming from the L3-L4 disc, back of the thigh, we look at the L5-S1 disc. There can be lots of other explanations, so please use caution when trying to diagnose things on the internet. Leave that part to a chiropractor.

Has chiropractic care helped your back pain resolve? If someone is starting to see improvement over time, we can guess that will most likely continue. Most insurance companies require a trial of conservative care before they will pay for MRI’s. In my office, we tend to use a six week standard of care. If we aren’t getting significant results and your back pain isn’t starting to resolve within six weeks of complying fully to my treatment plan, I tend to worry if there is something more serious going on. In those scenarios, we refer for MRI’s or CT scans depending on what we are suspecting we will see.

The bottom line is that if back pain is interfering with you doing what you love, you need to see a chiropractor to resolve it. Chiropractic care is the #1 choice for resolving back pain. Chiropractors get the best results with back pain of any health professional around. If you would like our help improving your health and getting you back to doing what you love, please call our office today at 763-553-0387

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