Conditions We Treat
Do you suffer from back pain, neck pain, headaches, or extremity pain? Whether your pain is chronic or acute, I can help. Your pain may be from an obvious injury or from an unknown cause. You may have a diagnosis attached to your symptoms, such as sciatica or arthritis. While such a diagnosis is helpful, getting at the cause of your condition is the key.
Often, stresses, usually both physical and emotional, can bring on backaches, neckaches, headaches, and other symptoms. You will never get relief until the appropriate stressors are identified, understood, and neutralized.
Even when your pain is from an obvious injury, these factors slow down healing and turn minor injuries into chronic problems.
Luckily, there are methods in chiropractic designed to identify and neutralize these stresses so that you can get out of pain and begin to heal. Remember, your body IS capable of healing! Even when you are suffering with a terrible backache, if you cut your finger, it still heals. We only need to identify and neutralize whatever it is that is getting in the way, and then your body will have a chance to heal.
The following are some conditions that are typically suitable for treatment, along with excerpts from a few testimonials. For full testimonials, click on the testimonials link in the sidebar.
Headaches
Headaches are an extremely common ailment. Tension headaches, migraine headaches, and cervicogenic headaches should all improve with treatment. While the source of the pain in each is different, the process appears to be similar. In tension headaches, tension in the muscles of the face and head appear to be the source of the pain. In migraines, constriction (a result of tension) of the blood vessels appears to be a more likely cause. Cervicogenic headaches appear to originate in the upper cervical vertebrae. Reducing the tension in the neck is therefore helpful in these types of headaches.
To read more about headaches and some simple techniques for dealing with them, click here.
"During my pregnancy, I got the traditional end of trimester headaches... I hadn't been able to do anything about it. Dr. Pinkerton used the B.E.S.T. method on me for one half hour. When I got up the next morning, I was very amazed to realize it was completely gone. It never came back." I.T. from Moraga
Low Back Pain
Many of us suffer from back pain, specifically, low back pain. In some cases there was a clear injury that brought on the pain. A large percentage of cases of back pain have an unknown cause (idiopathic). In these cases, the pain may have come on gradually or suddenly, but has no clear origin - there has been no injury and there is no underlying pathology. An episode could start with waking up in pain, being seized with pain while doing something innocous like sitting, getting up from a seated position, walking or jogging, or it could start gradually. Naturally, nothing can exist without a cause. By identifying and neutralizing the cause, your system will have a chance to heal. To read more about the relationship between the mind and body in back pain, click here.
"Recently, I injured my low back, the site of a previous herniation. There was no position that I could lay in to relieve the pain. Halfway through the treatment I noticed the pain was gone. It has not returned in 2 months! Remarkable!" B.A. from Castro Valley
The Vertebral Subluxation Complex
If you have experienced chiropractic before, you are probably familiar with the subluxation. A subluxation in chiropractic is a misalignment of a vertebrae in the spine. Typically, the area of subluxation is characterized by tense and/or tender musculature, a feeling that the vertebrae is out (out of alignment), and generally restricted segmental motion (discovered by palpation of the doctor). X-rays may show a vertebrae that is not in proper alignment with the vertebrae directly above and below it.
In my treatments, subluxations are found and reduced by working to reduce tension in the local musculature. Muscles move bones, and tight muscles will restrict motion and pull vertebrae out of alignment. In my experience, vertebrae will subluxate in response to local muscle tone. Change the muscle tone, and the subluxation will change.
Sciatica
Sciatica is a general name used for any pain that runs along the sciatic nerve, shown in the picture to the right. Any pain involving the buttocks, back of the thigh, and/or the lower leg below the knee can be called sciatica.
Though sciatica can be frightening and certain conditions should be ruled out, it is a common disorder, that while extremely painful and even disabling, is not commonly associated with a disease process and does not indicate that any further problems will develop.
In some cases, sciatica is linked with a disc herniation, lumbar stenosis, or other structural abnormality. However, in many situations, even when a structural abnormality has been found, the abnormality cannot adequately explain the symptoms. Tension in the muscles through which the sciatic nerve travels can explain many symptom patterns seen in patients with sciatic pain.
In treatment, we will work to discover if tension is playing a role in your case, and, if so, we can expect significant improvement.
Injuries
There are two types of injuries. There are those in which structures in the body are damaged by an acute trauma (broken bones, torn ligaments, muscle tears, hernias, sprains, etc.). These injuries occur as a result of physical activity that is beyond what the structures of the body can withstand - the force is enough to do clear damage. Sometimes, in individuals who have been weakened due to osteoporosis or other physical conditions, damage may be done with minimal force (for example, a 76 year old female with osteoporosis misses a step and breaks her hip). In injuries of this type, you will need to see a medical doctor to get the appropriate imaging studies and treatment (such as a cast, brace, or surgical intervention).
Because the adjustments are not forceful, treatment after an acute injury is possible. Adjustments will help bring blood flow to the injury site and reduce muscle guarding, which in my experience, speeds up the healing process, reducing recovery time. Adjustments are also good at preventing lingering pain from an injury.
Injuries of this sort should naturally heal. We are self-healing organisms. Just cut your finger and watch the innate, automatic process of healing occur. However, people often find that they have lingering pain after an injury, even months and years later. In fact, people with limbs that have been removed often have pain in the removed limb! This is called phantom limb pain. In both cases, the pain can be addressed if the mind is engaged in the healing process. B.E.S.T. work is uniquely suited to lingering pain that has no structural basis.
The second type of injury are those in which pain is extreme, but out of proportion to the actual damage that could have occurred. If you or I picked up a book from the floor (which we have done many times before) and suddenly were seized with back pain, unless the book weighed 150 pounds, our pain would likely not be due to structural damage. In such cases, it is likely that there was some conflict or stressor, and the muscles were in a high state of tension at the time of the injury. By unjamming the system, the body is able to finally heal.
Extremity Pain
Many problems within the body are related to muscle tension from mental/emotional stressors. When these are combined with physical activities, we may end up with unexpected pain or injury, such as tennis elbow and frozen shoulder. B.E.S.T. treatments can be surprisingly effective in treating pain of all types.
"He...relieved a tendonitis that had been developing over a three month period in my right elbow joint in two sessions. This was interesting because I did not stop working, but continued to use my arms in my work as a massage therapist." B.A. from Castro Valley
Copyright 2007 Michael Pinkerton D.C.
Update: June 1, 2007
7:30 pm
