If you have suffered a painful spinal injury from an accident or fall, you already know that living with this back pain can be excruciating. Perhaps you underwent therapy immediately after the injury, but it wasn’t enough. Quite often, long-term therapy and personalized care are necessary to fully recuperate and resume living the life you want to live.
Common Spinal Injuries
Just because a spinal injury or spinal disc injury is common, that does not mean it’s harmless or will subside over time. Each of the following spinal injuries has the potential to cause long-lasting pain:
- Disc bulge: When one of the small rubbery discs that separate vertebrae from each other protrudes, it can put pressure on nerves and cause back pain.
- Herniated disc: What began as a disc bulge has now ruptured and the substance in the core of the disc is leaking into the spinal canal, causing pressure and chronic pain. A herniated disc can also come on suddenly when a disc is torn or shifted in an accident.
- Spinal stenosis: The narrowing and deterioration of the spinal canal compresses the spinal cord and sciatic nerve roots, which can cause back pain and inflammation. While an accident will not cause spinal stenosis, a back injury can cause the stenosis to flare and cause chronic pain.
- Facet joint injuries: When the facet joints, hinges between each of the vertebrae, are damaged in an accident, pain will result.
- Whiplash: While whiplash is usually associated with the neck, any force to this part of the body can clearly impact the spine too. Recurring pain after whiplash is possible.
While back pain is intolerable and unbearable for the sufferer, the good news is that the discomfort caused by these spinal injuries can be relieved with an ongoing, supported health plan customized to your unique needs by your functional medicine team.
Mentally Dealing with Back Pain
Whether a major or minor injury, any damage to the spine, back, and neck has the potential to flare even after therapy. Repeated damage or stress to this area of the body can exacerbate existing pain. Ongoing treatment can relieve pain and improve mobility.
Trying to live with back pain is not only physically taxing, it is emotionally and mentally taxing too. An accident can limit your ability to do many things, and a spinal injury in particular can affect your job performance, interactions with your family, social life, and enjoyment of your favorite activities.
Recovery from a spinal injury involves spinal disc therapy, but it can also involve edits to your lifestyle. In functional medicine, the goal is to treat the whole and to treat the cause of a problem, not just put a bandage on the surface. Changing how you eat and lose weight, altering the environments with which you surround yourself, the ways you put your body at risk for further injury – all of this is taken into consideration when a customized functional medicine plan is created to help you heal.
When you have back pain you want the quick fix to make the suffering stop, but a steady, supported recovery will serve you best now and in the future. Don’t let a spinal injury or back injury limit your love of life. Allow the team at the Restorative Wellness Center in Ann Arbor help you find pain relief. Contact us today to schedule a consultation with Dr. Daniel Geck.
