Pain Relief Tips

Most people who wake up with back pain do the same thing: they wait. Sometimes that works. But the spine that hurt for six weeks is, in a very real sense, better at hurting than the spine that hurt for six days. Here's what back pain actually needs — and what it doesn't.

Most chiropractors go straight to the adjustment. I used to wonder what we were leaving on the table by doing that. The order in which you treat a body isn't a minor detail — it's the clinical argument. Soft tissue work, therapeutic stretching, then the adjustment. Each stage earns the next. By the time I position a patient for the adjustment, their nervous system has already been given two reasons to cooperate.

He came to me in a Ford Transit van parked outside his house, the way most of my patients do. He was 55, had been waking up at 3 a.m. for three months, and described his pain in three words: sharp, burning, aching. Most back pain is mechanical. His wasn't. Here's what his medical history revealed — and when lower back pain and sciatica are a sign that chiropractic care alone won't be enough.

Yoga champions flexibility, strength training demands rigidity. But can they coexist—or does one undermine the other? Drawing from Stuart McGill’s spinal biomechanics research, this article explores why mobility can heal or harm, how rigidity protects under load, and where chiropractic care in Sioux Falls fits into the equation for long-term spinal health.