Expedition Chiropractic Podcast

Your Back Pain Has a Story, Expedition Chiropractic is Here to Decode It

• Garfield • Episode 3

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Can Chiropractic Care Help With Back Pain, Neck Pain, And Migraines? 

Back pain, neck pain, and headaches drive 80-90% of all chiropractic visits—but what's actually happening when your spine hurts? Dr. Steven Barger takes us deep into the mechanics of spinal health with striking clarity in this enlightening episode.

Picture your spinal discs as "very hard jelly donuts" with firm exteriors and soft centers. When these critical structures bulge or herniate, they can compress nearby nerves, creating that tingling in your extremities or shooting pain down your leg. The brilliance of Gonstead chiropractic technique lies in tracking down the true source—your pain might manifest in your lower back, but the actual culprit could be a misalignment in your pelvis.

Dr. Barger skillfully differentiates between various pain patterns, from classic morning stiffness to sciatic "pain in your butt" to debilitating headaches that originate from different spinal regions. Whether you're dealing with acute, excruciating pain requiring intensive short-term care or a chronic issue needing longer-term treatment, understanding these mechanisms empowers better health decisions. 

Ready to address your pain at its source? Connect with us to discover how proper spinal function might transform your health beyond just symptom relief.

To learn more about Expedition Chiropractic visit:
https://www.ExpeditionChiropractic.com
Expedition Chiropractic
3233 SW Port St Lucie Blvd
Port St. Lucie, FL 34953
772-245-7069

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Expedition Chiropractic Podcast, where your spine embarks on an adventure toward better health. Hosted by Dr Stephen Barger, your severe spine specialist, we offer expert Gonstead chiropractic care right here in Port St Lucie, Florida, serving the entire Treasure Coast. Whether your back has taken an unexpected detour or just needs a tune-up, you're in the right place. Let's get started.

Speaker 2:

Dr Barger breaks down the science behind chiropractic adjustments and pain relief. Welcome back everyone. Benjamin John, co-host and producer, back in studio with Dr Stephen Barger. Dr Barger, how are you doing today?

Speaker 3:

I'm doing great.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for sitting down with me today, and I think we're going to be able to help a lot of people with this. Absolutely, I'm excited about this topic, and so let's just get right into this question that I have for you. Can chiropractic care help with back pain, neck pain?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's a really good question. That would be the three most common things anybody would go to any chiropractor for. That would be 80, 90% of the people that come into my office. They have some type of neck pain, back pain or headache as their main complaint, and they may have other things related as well to that neck pain or that back pain that is causing issues as well. But generally speaking, they have some type of neck, back pain or headache when we're talking about like neck or back pain.

Speaker 3:

And in the previous episode we talked about the Gonset technique and a big part of the Gonset technique is to make sure that the disc is working properly. So in her spine we have all the vertebrae and all those vertebrae sit on a disc and that disc is really important to make sure it's functioning properly. That does not function properly, that's when you start to get a lot of these symptoms. So the best way to explain like what does a disc look like? It's kind of like a very, very hard jelly donut. So it has this like hard outside and a soft inside. And if that disc starts to bulge or herniate which a lot of people will have, like a herniated or a bulging disc, that's when there starts to be issues in the spine. And if that bulge or herniation is putting pressure on a nerve, that's when you start to get lots of symptoms. Most common symptom from like a bulging disc onto a nerve is like tingling into your hands or tingling into your legs.

Speaker 3:

So those are like the most common things. So a lot of people will have like a pain in the back that also sends like a tingling into your leg. So what that is is, again, the disc isn't working properly. So my job as a gonstip chiropractor I want to see why is that disc bulging? Why is it herniated? And more than likely it's herniated or bulging because there's a biomechanical dysfunction in another part of the spine. So say they have a pelvis misalignment but they're fourth or their fifth lumbar. I might have to fix their pelvis to fix their disc bulge. Or I might have to work on the vertebrae itself that the disc sits on. And that's our job and that's what we're trying to figure out with each visit. So my job is to make sure that that bone is sitting on the disc properly and then that can start to alleviate a lot of their symptoms.

Speaker 3:

Now, not everything is 100% disc related, but you can have a facet joint. A facet joint is the joint in the spine that sits there. If that gets irritated or inflamed, that can cause certain types of pain as well. My job is to make sure that the biomechanics of the spine are working properly and when that happens, a lot of these cassette joints or disc injuries will start to heal themselves. And then there's also lots of different types of back pain. You can have your classic low back pain where you just have pain across the low back, generally caused from like bending or sitting. The standing are like the two most common things. That's very classic. That's back pain that generally happens when you start to get older. You wake up in the morning you feel that stiffness in your low back. That's very common.

Speaker 3:

But you can also have different types of pain. You can have like a hip pain where it hurts on the side of your leg and it travels down into your leg as well. Or you can have like your SI joint is your sacroiliac joint. That can cause like a sciatica-like pain. You'll get like a pinch in your butt. They have the old saying like a pain in your butt. That's like classic sciatica-like pain. If you're getting a piriformis muscle that's putting pressure on your sciatic nerve, that can cause pain down into your leg.

Speaker 3:

The severity will change a lot between people. You can have a little back pain that's just chronic. Or you can have the most excruciating pain in your back that's shooting down your leg and you can't walk. So we are able to take care of all those different types of cases, and then the frequency of what we have to see for that person is going to change a lot. So if we have somebody, that's an excruciating amount of pain.

Speaker 3:

We're going to have to see them a lot of visits in a shorter timeframe but they'll probably start to see results fairly quickly in a shorter amount of time. Whereas somebody has a chronic issue, I will see them less upfront but we're going to see them longer. Over a couple months we might see them twice a week than once a week for a longer period of time to let that chronic issue start to heal. If it's been there for five or 10 years, compared to somebody, again, that's an excruciating amount of pain. They've only been like that for maybe a day or two. We're able to get those people faster results, but we have to get them more often in a shorter amount of time.

Speaker 2:

Wow, it's very complex. I've noticed the way you describe it. It's almost like figuring out a puzzle. As you said, who committed the crime? Who's the accomplices? Now, where's it coming from?

Speaker 3:

no-transcript.

Speaker 3:

Your shoulders get really tight, either sitting at a computer all day and you'll feel it like kind of start in the base of your neck and shoot up into the base of your skull. Those are very common or you can also get like a frontal headache it hurts behind your eye or like in your temporal area. Those are very common as well and those are going to be coming from two different areas of your spine. The occipital headaches in the base of your skull are generally coming from, even like your thoracic spine. You're going to be your T1, your T2, the lower in your neck, where, if you're having a headache more in the front of your, behind your eye or in your front, that might be coming from the top of your spine, your atlas.

Speaker 3:

So the location of your headache is really important. What times a day you get your headache. You might wake up with one in the morning or you might get a headache later in the afternoon after you've been working all day. So all those different things are things that I want to know so that we're able to address it, make sure that we start to get you the proper care and get you symptom relief fairly quickly.

Speaker 2:

This is fascinating. I've learned a lot. A couple of questions for you here. In regards to how does chiropractic care compare to medication for managing chronic pain?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So anytime we say have like a back pain or a neck pain, if we're just taking a medication, it's ultimately just covering up the symptom. If I was driving my car and the check engine light turned on and if I just put a piece of tape over the check engine light, it wouldn't really fix the problem and that's ultimately what happens if we're just taking an excedrin, migraine or a pill just to cover up our back pain. Society has actually gotten really good. I really don't have anybody that comes into my office and they're like I love taking pain pills. They ultimately know they're just doing that to manage the pain, but they ultimately want to get that corrected.

Speaker 3:

So I would say in the last 10 to 15 years people have really turned to be like I don't want to take these long-term and I think people are understanding that some pain pills can be addictive or they have long-term side effects if you start taking a lot of them in a short amount of time. And people understand that I'm just taking this to get over my headache right now, but ultimately I'm going to need to get this fixed eventually. Some people it takes a year for them to realize that. Sometimes it takes five years, or some people. They'll have a headache for just a week or two and they'll want to get that fixed. Depends on the person how long they've had the symptom, but ultimately my job is to make sure that their body's functioning properly, and if their body's functioning properly, these symptoms won't arise. So if we don't have to add anything to the body and let it heal, naturally that's going to be your best outcome. There's no negative side effects to a chiropractic adjustment, except just feeling better, sleeping better, having less headaches and stuff like that.

Speaker 3:

So that's really what we're focused on. We ultimately know, that your body doesn't lack eccentric migraine. That's not the problem. It's ultimately just covering up the source. You don't need more eccentric migraine. You need a properly functioning nervous system, and that's what we focus on.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Treating the getting to the source. So I like the way you put that. What are some signs that someone may need chiropractic adjustment?

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So one thing that's really interesting are only about 10 to 15% of your nerves in your body have some type of pain receptor. So you can have pressure on a nerve or problems with your nervous system and not really like feel any pain from it. So almost anybody can see a chiropractor and do some type of maintenance or wellness. But the most common things are just like your chronic aches that have just like either they might have just started recently or they've been going on for 10 or 15 years and you wake up in the morning and your back's stiff but as the day gets on it gets better and you kind of just live with it. But really almost any type of health condition can be helped by chiropractic care. I don't treat back pain or headaches. I have the body function properly and the body heals itself. So a roundabout way is just if you want your body functioning better, you can see a chiropractor for that all right, I got one more question for you here.

Speaker 2:

Are there any specific lifestyle changes that that can enhance the benefits of chiropractic care as well?

Speaker 3:

yeah, for sure. The biggest thing I encourage everybody is to make sure they stay active. You have to use your spine and use your body because if you don't use it you're just going to lose it and there's going to be aches and pains from even using it too much. But those aches and pains are much easier to deal with and much better long-term than the chronically sitting down. Say, if you have a desk job, you're sitting at a desk for maybe eight to 10 hours a day and you're not doing anything outside of those eight to 10 hours to increase your activity and get yourself moving properly, those aches and pains are going to be a lot harder to fix long-term and actually get corrected if you're not making sure that you're staying active in doing that.

Speaker 3:

And the most important thing I tell somebody is that whatever activity you enjoy doing, that's the best one you can do for yourself. If you're not going to do it consistently and you don't enjoy doing it, you're not going to do it long-term. So say, if somebody told you like, hey, you need to go swimming every day. If you hate swimming, if you like walking or riding your bike or anything like that, that would be a better activity for you to focus on and start doing, because swimming is a great exercise. But if you hate it and you're not going to do it consistently, you don't need to get into it. It's better to find something you enjoy doing and dive into that and try to master that and get better at that over time.

Speaker 2:

Very good advice. Well, dr Barger, this has been great. I learned quite a bit myself and no doubt I'm sure you share a lot of value here that people can pick up some valuable information from. So, once again, you have a good rest of your day. We'll catch you in the next episode, all right, Awesome, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, thank you. That's 9069. Here's to aligning your spine and your life. Until next time, keep moving forward.