Building a Healthy Spine After Back Pain

As a San Diego Chiropractor, we see many types of injuries. Common injuries result in neck pain, back pain, headaches, sciatic pain etc.

The causes of these injuries vary from auto accidents and work related injuries to injuries caused by domestic chores that involve around the house work to sports specific injuries and sometimes things as simple as sleeping in an awkward position.

Of these injured patients, I would say that at least 50% of them show interest in preventing their particular type of problem from occurring again in the future and ask me "what can I do for myself to make sure that this doesn't happen again?" This common question served as the inspiration for this article and I will address in this article.

To begin with, pain is a fantastic motivator.

When people are in pain they take a proactive approach to their health. People often inquire about what kind of stretch or exercising that they can start right away. Unfortunately, the best thing that you can do while your injury is new is to apply ice packs to the injured area and rest.

Over my 20 plus years in practice I have seen a large percentage of enthusiastic patients ignore this advice and end up aggravating their condition instead of improving it. The time to start exercising and stretching your back for most of us is when the injury is well into its healing process and is out of the acute stage of pain.

My biggest struggles in practice have been dealing with my patients exercise and diet habits. Exercise is one of the few things that a patient can do at home, outside of chiropractic care, to help prevent or diminish the chances of developing back pain.

After an injury, you should approach exercise cautiously - almost to a point where the exercise that you are performing feels like it is doing nothing. If you can get through a few low intensity exercise sessions like this without aggravating your condition, you should slowly add resistance which allows you to build confidence and strength at the same time.

You have to remember to incorporate a sensible approach to exercising after a back injury. Be sure to exercise and stretch under the advice of a health care professional. Strong and flexible muscles add strength and support to your spine and will provide much needed stability. Stable joints are far less likely to be injured than unstable joints.