You Didn’t Hurt Yourself While Sleeping. Here’s What’s Probably Causing That Pain…
This weekend, I had the privilege of being involved in a community event at a local high school. We love to take part in these types of events to reach out to and help educate our Hatboro, Horsham, Warminster and Warrington communities. While at the event, an older gentleman came over to the booth and told me that he has recently been experiencing irritating lower back pain, but he said he didn’t do anything that caused it. He thought maybe he slept on it wrong. Just because you cannot pinpoint a specific incident does not mean that there wasn’t something that happened that is causing the pain.
The truth is that we live in a world of cause and effect. Whether it is neck pain, back pain, headaches, fatigue, etc., this is the effect. However, there must be an underlying cause to these issues. This man’s account of his issue is very similar to many of the patients who come in to the office. Common reasons people give for their aches, pains and dysfunctions are things like “I slept on it wrong” or “I hurt it picking up the laundry basket” (you could also insert any other basic activity that people do countless times per year without incident).
What we tend to find out is that the issues are actually the result of some type of unresolved trauma in the patient’s life. These could be big traumas like a car accident, slip and fall, sports injury, etc. Even if the big trauma didn’t cause an immediately noticeable problem, it could have affected the alignment and overall function of the body, and over time, we can see issues arise. It is like driving a car that is out of alignment. Driving 10 miles might not cause any additional issues, but if you continue to drive for 1,000s of miles, you are probably going to see things start to break down.
Even more common than the big traumas are what we call micro or repetitive traumas. These are things like repetitive actions or repetitive postures, which have huge effects on the body. Many people are sitting for 8+ hours per day, eating poor inflammatory diets, and dealing with chronic emotional stresses. This is the perfect cocktail for body breakdown and resulting aches, pains and dysfunctions.
By asking the man a couple quick questions about his lifestyle, there were some things that popped up that made a little more sense to why he was possibly getting this low back pain. It probably wasn’t the way he slept or any basic activity he did that caused it. How many times had he slept the same way and didn’t experience anything? Most likely, he had exhausted his body and pushed it to the brink of malfunction. He probably could have done almost any activity or motion that would have pushed him over the edge and caused symptoms. This is why, in our office, we stress being proactive with your health. It is much better to prevent issues before they occur instead of trying to correct issues after the fact.
If you’d like to find out more about the state of your health or don’t know why you are experiencing certain aches or pains, call 215-259-5100 to schedule a complimentary consultation today! We’re excited to work with you to get things corrected and move you towards true health and wellness!