What Back Pain Actually Needs — And What It Doesn't
- Dr. Lucas Marchand
- 26 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Most people in Sioux Falls who wake up with back pain do the same thing: they wait.
They figure it will resolve on its own. Sometimes it does. They take ibuprofen, move carefully for a few days, and slowly return to normal. The body heals itself more often than most people realize.
But sometimes it doesn't resolve. It lingers at a 3 out of 10 — never bad enough to stop everything, never good enough to ignore. And that's where most back pain stories go wrong. Not in the acute phase, when pain is loudest. In the weeks after, when it quietly becomes normal.
That's the version worth talking about.
The Problem with Waiting
There's a well-documented phenomenon in musculoskeletal medicine called central sensitization. The longer a pain signal fires without resolution, the more efficiently the nervous system learns to produce it. Pain pathways, like any neural pathway, strengthen with use.
This is not psychological weakness. It's physiology. The spine that hurt for six weeks is, in a very real sense, better at hurting than the spine that hurt for six days.
The challenge is that you can't always tell which version of waiting you're doing until you're already in the second one.
What Most People Try First
The standard sequence for back pain in Sioux Falls — or anywhere — tends to go like this:
Rest. Then ibuprofen. Then heat or ice. Then, if it persists, a primary care visit. Then, possibly, imaging. Then a referral — to physical therapy, or a specialist, or both.
This sequence is not unreasonable. Some of it is genuinely useful. But it has a structural flaw:
it treats back pain as primarily a tissue injury requiring rest and time, when most back pain is a movement problem requiring — movement.
The research on rest for acute low back pain is not flattering. Prolonged bed rest has been repeatedly shown to worsen outcomes compared to staying active. The spine is a mechanical structure. It responds to load. Taking it offline doesn't restore its function.
What Chiropractic Actually Does
Chiropractic care for back pain works through a specific mechanism, not a general one.
The adjustment — applied to a restricted spinal segment — restores joint motion that the surrounding musculature has locked down, usually in response to perceived threat. That lockdown is protective initially. The muscles tighten around an irritated joint to prevent further movement. But the tightening itself becomes the problem: it compresses the joint, reduces circulation, and perpetuates the pain cycle.
Restoring motion breaks that cycle. Not because it fixes the original injury — often there's no structural injury to speak of — but because it removes the mechanical blockade that's preventing recovery.
This is why the sequence matters at MyChiro.
Percussion therapy first, to reduce the neuromuscular guarding. Stretching second, to restore range of motion before the adjustment. Then the adjustment itself — applied to a joint that's already been prepared, requiring less force, holding longer.
It's not magic. It's mechanics.
The Sioux Falls Patient I See Most Often
After nearly a decade of practice in Sioux Falls, the back pain patient I see most often looks something like this:
Mid-30s to mid-50s. Works long hours — in an office, in a vehicle, on their feet. Has had low-grade back pain for months, sometimes years. Has tried stretching, and it helps temporarily. Has tried a gym program, and it helps — until it flares. Has never seen a chiropractor because they're not sure it would help, or because finding time to drive across town, park, wait, and drive back isn't something their schedule accommodates.
That last part is worth addressing directly. The logistics of traditional chiropractic care are a genuine barrier in a city like Sioux Falls, where most people are busy and most clinics run on a schedule that assumes you have a flexible afternoon. Mobile care removes that barrier. The mobile chiropractic clinic comes to your driveway, your office lot, your home. The appointment takes twenty minutes. You don't lose a half-day.
When to Act
Back pain that has persisted beyond two weeks without clear improvement deserves attention. Not alarm — but attention.
Red flags requiring immediate medical evaluation include pain that radiates past the knee, numbness or tingling in the legs or feet, bowel or bladder changes, or pain that is constant and unrelated to movement. These are uncommon but real, and they fall outside what chiropractic treats.
Everything else — the mechanical, movement-related, posture-driven, activity-aggravated back pain that accounts for the overwhelming majority of cases — responds well to the right intervention at the right time.
The right time, more often than people realize, is now.
Dr. Lucas Marchand is a Doctor of Chiropractic practicing in Sioux Falls, SD. MyChiro is a mobile practice — appointments come to your home, office, or driveway. Same-day availability most days. Book here.