Back Surgery:  Not Cut Up To What It’s Made Out To Be

These are scary words to many. We’ve all heard the story of failed low back surgeries. Some are necessary, but most are preventable. Even if you have had surgery, chiropractic will still help you and here’s why.  Let’s walk out a common scenario of how people get from here to there. Back pain starts after some kind of injury, big or small, and often times after nothing at all. Many people never know what actually caused their back problems. It can just seem to come out of the blue, to eventually make them feel blue! But know there always has to be a cause, whether we are aware of it at the time or not.

Back treatments usually start with over-the-counter medications, which often work to make us feel better for a while. Then, because medications and therapies can only treat effects, the condition gets worse and the symptoms tend to follow, on a downward roller coaster. Down, down, down. This is the path to prescriptions for stronger doses of stronger drugs. After those stop working to treat the pain, you are now ready for your first cortisone shot. This often works great, at least for a while longer, until “three strikes you’re out”, which is usually the maximum number of times they will give you those anti-inflammatory drugs.

What’s left? The holy grail of medicine: surgery. That has to fix the problem, right? Unfortunately, “three strikes you’re out” often applies to back surgery as well. And believe it or not, once you have had three failed back surgeries, they actually diagnose you with a new condition called “Failed Low Back Surgery Syndrome.” No kidding. But don’t worry, they have a treatment for that too, which is just variations of more of the same treatments you had before. Stop the insanity!!!
        
What went wrong? First of all, therapies are used to treat the effects while the cause just sits there waiting to be addressed, and getting worse. Before you know it, you are a candidate for back surgery. Treating pain, inflammation and muscle spasms can feel better, but what causes those tissues to react that way? The body is always intelligent, and that intelligence is communicated through your nervous system, via your spine. When our body does things we don’t like or don’t understand, it is still always intelligent. But what would make our body do these things? Pain slows us down so we can heal, inflammation and swelling bring healing elements to the injured area, and muscle spasms create a natural splint to protect the area while it heals. Which one these things is bad for us? None of them. However, if something interferes with this process the body can stay in this state of trying to heal indefinitely. And this can end up being bad because it’s just a sign that the cause has still not been addressed.

Spinal subluxations interfere with your body’s ability to communicate with its intentions from your brain to your body, through your spine. Most of the time, the cause of your spinal dysfunction is simply coming from complications of these subluxations. Without treating any of the effects that may happen, chiropractic adjustments allow your body to return to a proper function. Get your spine checked for subluxations as soon as possible so your intelligent body has a chance to cut out unnecessary adaptations, so the surgeon doesn’t get a chance to cut you up!