Lower back pain and sciatica (posterior buttock and leg pains) are frequent reasons for people to come to see Dr. Walsdorf. Lower back injuries are a leading cause of missed work, lost productivity, and medical expense. As a patient with lower back problems, he will tailor his treatments to fit the reasons behind your back condition. He has a system that addresses the different parts of a patient’s problem. The following are the four main therapies that a patient with lower back problems might receive.
Skeletal Adjustments
Lower back misalignment can cause stiffness and pain in this portion of the spine. You may have a hard time bending forward or leaning backwards with a noticeable discomfort in your lower back, and even pain shooting down into your legs (sciatica).
A misalignment to the vertebrae causes the classic pinched nerve pain in the spine. In other words, a misaligned spine puts compression on one’s nerves. A spinal adjustment is the safest and most effective way to remove nerve pinching, and has a higher patient satisfaction than drug care, physical therapy, acupuncture and surgery.
Dr. Walsdorf uses x-rays and an extensive orthopedic-chiropractic exam to see these misalignments. There are three types of misalignments: Subluxations, Fixations, and curve loss. Each can play a role in nerve pinching and slipped discs, as well as any arthritis within this region.
Postural Therapy
The postures we settle into having are the manifestation of how we have been living our lives. Our posture can either help us or adversely affect us. Although posture may be an important cause of people’s problems, most do not pay much attention to the way they hold themselves. Fortunately, improving your posture is always possible.
Posture is a crucial factor in keeping your lower back and pelvis in good working order. It is not very easy to quickly change one’s posture. It takes effort by both the doctor and the patient to effectively change one’s posture. Stress also can lead to low back posture problems by the way you tighten your muscles when emotionally stressed.
Dr. Walsdorf looks for hidden postural issues involving the legs, feet, or other structural elements supporting lower back. Not only is the lower back the foundation for the spine, but so are the feet and the legs. You will sometimes hear him say “posture begins at the feet level”.
The exercises Dr. Walsdorf employs will help you improve your posture, and remove the nerve and skeletal strain in the lower back. Our Center also has an assortment of lower back cushions to help you at work and in the car, and special belts to wear to speed up the healing process of your injured ligaments.
Nutritional Therapy
We notice that people who have a hard time getting over their lower back injury often have a history of poor nutritional habits. Your body depends upon a host of nutritional materials to keep its bones, joint tissues, muscles and ligaments strong.
The lower back’s discs and sacroiliac ligaments are its most nutritionally vulnerable components. Both are dependent upon minerals, like manganese and silica, and on vitamins, like vitamin C. Moreover, other parts of the spine rely on important nutritional elements so their bones, nerves, and muscles are able to be strong and resilient.
Improving your RQ or “resiliency quotient,” is an important goal in nutritional health. Resiliency determines how well you will heal after an injury. In other words, the lower your RQ, the more your body will suffer the consequences of injuries, or day-to-day physical activities. Therefore, the difference between patients who heal quickly and those who do not is often due to the differences in their nutritional states.
Consider two people with very similar spinal alignment and ergonomic stress patterns. One eats well, the other lives on soda, pizza and other “counterfeit foods”. Both get injured in similar car accidents. Guess which one is going to have a harder time healing? The one with the lower RQ.
Acupressure Therapy
The acupressure channels of the body are pulsing with energy. It is responsible for your level of “chi”, the Chinese term for life force energy. The more chi you have, the more energy your body has to heal your lower back problem. Dr. Walsdorf helps his patients draw more chi into their lower back. This is accomplished through his hands-on therapies, his exercise therapies, and his special physiotherapies.
Dr. Walsdorf uses acupressure massage and a variety of “Oriental Therapies”. These include infrasonic therapy (the “chi” machine”), electro-acupuncture, breathing techniques, and a powerful set of health rebuilding exercises called 4 Element Yoga. In fact, he is the originator of the 4 Element Yoga System, which works to strengthen your weak areas by way of special exercising movements.
Dr. Walsdorf finds that invigorating the acupuncture channels of a patient can be the missing key to helping them heal strong and quickly. 4 Element Yoga stimulates the various physiological, anatomical, and psychological principles, which acupuncture works upon. These movements work to pump more chi, or life force energy, into your painful and diseased places.
After my car accident 5 years ago, Dr. Walsdorf helped me get my lower-back back from terrible pain. Now that I’ve been in another car accident, I know I’m in the right place to get my injured back healed up. I always look forward to my office visits with Dr. Walsorf. He is one of the most caring and engaging of doctors I’ve ever had.
Jerry Evans