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Get help with your low back pain from a Charlotte chiropractor

When you hear that Charlotte NC chiropractors deliver relief from low back pain, you can believe it. Chiropractic care has been shown time and time again to be more effective for long-term relief from back pain than more traditional medical approaches.

Common causes of low back pain

A common cause of low back pain is a ruptured, or herniated, disc. All along your spine, nerves branch off from the spinal cord and travel to various parts of your body, enabling you to feel and move. When a disc herniates, it can press on the spinal cord or spinal nerves. Symptoms of a herniated disc can include dull or sharp pain, muscle spasm or cramping, sciatica, and leg weakness or loss of leg function. Pain is intensified when you cough, sneeze, or bend. Sciatica symptoms of pain, burning, tingling, and numbness which extend from the buttock into the leg, result when a ruptured disc puts pressure on the sciatic nerve.

Why we need relief from low back pain

As our bodies age, natural biochemical changes cause spinal discs to gradually dry out, affecting their capacity to absorb shock from body movements, which is one of their main jobs. Other factors come into play, as well. Lifestyle choices, such as poor nutrition, tobacco use, and lack of regular exercise, also contribute to poor disc health. Poor posture, combined with chronic stress on the lumbar spine from improper lifting or other daily movements including incorrect ergonomics at your desk, can also affect how well your lumbar spine performs. When you combine these factors with daily wear and tear, injury, incorrect lifting, or twisting, it is easy to understand how a disc might herniate. For example, lifting something incorrectly can put several hundred pounds of pressure on a single disc.

How to reduce risk of back pain

Despite the fact that aging is a major contributor to low back pain, it does not mean there is nothing we can do about it. There are several factors that are within our control: you can take good care of your spine, watch your posture, quit smoking, make healthy food choices, exercise, and use proper body mechanics, especially when lifting. Doing all these things cannot guarantee you will never get a ruptured lumbar disc, but they are generally healthy steps you can take to try to prevent lower back pain. Regular chiropractic care can put you on the road to a lifestyle that allows you to be as active as you want to be.

The chiropractic approach

Pain of any kind, at any age, is a sign that something is wrong. It is how our bodies let us know that a limit has been reached or a problem has developed. If you were to wait for the pain to simply go away, which it might on its own, without attending to the cause of the pain, the problem could slowly worsen until it becomes more difficult and expensive to resolve. Chiropractic care typically includes specific chiropractic adjustments to help improve spinal function. By restoring the way your spine works, discs and soft tissues can heal, nerve involvement can be reduced, pain can ease, and your spine and central nervous system can be restored to normal function. Your body is programmed to grow, repair, and recondition itself to full function; chiropractic care can provide the environment necessary for your body to reclaim balance.