How A Problem In Your Spine Can Manifest As Pain Elsewhere

28 December 2017
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When you think about the spine causing pain in your body, do you primarily think about back pain? While it's true that a misaligned spine can cause plenty of back pain, it can also cause problems elsewhere in your body - even if you're not detecting a problem on your back. You might be surprised to discover that if you have pain in a leg, hip, neck, or even torso, it could be due to an issue with your spine. Read on to learn how this happens and what you can do about it.

Nerves and the Spine

The spine is a lot like the information highway of the body. While the brain is the one processing and sending out information, that information goes through the spine and its associated nerves.

When the spine is well-aligned, information flows freely through the spine and into nerves, and from the nerves back to the brain. This is how the brain receives signals that there are problems elsewhere in the body, like due to an injury.

However, when the spine is poorly aligned, these nerves can become crowded or pinched and don't work the way that they should.

Crowding

Nerves are extremely sensitive. When they're pinched or crowded by the spine moving out of alignment, the touching or pinching is sent as a signal back to the brain. However, this signal is essentially just noise. Rather than a refined, purposeful signal, the only thing it tells the brain is that there's a problem where the nerve ends. So, for example, you could have a pinched nerve that's pinched in your spine, yet the brain will perceive the pain as being in your hip, where the end of the nerve is.

The biggest problem with this ailment is that people often believe the problem lies where the pain is and don't even think about the spine. As a result, you could end up spending a great deal of time and money attempting to repair the problem to your hip when you have a back problem.

Treatment

If you've already sought help for where your pain is originating from and having sought relief, it might be time to look for help from a chiropractor.

Chiropractors are experts at realigning the spine, as well as finding problems with the nerves that run through them. Your chiropractor will perform a physical examination to determine if they can feel any issues with your spine. Since chiropractors are well-trained in which nerves lie in the spine, they'll be able to determine if there's a problem in a correlating part of your spine that matches where your pain is.

If they discover an issue, they'll set to work realigning your spine. This is done in a variety of ways depending on your needs and physical condition. Some chiropractors manually adjust spines using their hands and arms, while others use tools, like the activator tool. While the methods are different, they achieve the same end, so you can be sure you're in good hands.

Chiropractors are very good at finding issues with spines and nerves, so you're likely to find relief if you visit a chiropractor. You should begin to feel relief as soon as your adjustment is complete since pressure will immediately be taken off of your nerves. To learn more, visit a website like yourfloridachiropractor.com