Low Back (Lumbar), Hip, Pelvic and Sciatic Problems & Pain
by Dr. Arlo Gordin
Low back pain (which can include hip, leg or tailbone pain too) can be the ultimate drag. It can interfere with and keep you from enjoying many things in life: walking, sitting, at work, home, sports, even sleep and sex. It can definitely hurt you while you work, including giving you pain when you’re seated at your desk or computer. It can make it difficult to sit up, let alone think about exercising, going to the gym or playing sports. When pain in your low back system or hips has become miserable, it ranks as one of the worst around. In the worst of cases, a herniated disc, the pain may be there constantly day and night. And doctors often prescribe damaging drugs; I am currently fixing several patients who were put on addicting pain killer (opioid) drugs and are part of the huge wave of people addicted to drugs by their doctors! Even anti-inflammatory medications, when used for a long period of time, sabotage the health of your “connective tissues” (the ligaments, cartilages etc. that keep your joints proper and functioning and free of pain).
Millions of Americans suffer from low back problems. Lifting injuries, car accidents, falls, or sports cause some. Sitting for long hours at desks and in front of computers causes real back problems, sometimes super severe ones. Some problems seem to have appeared “out of the blue” and for no good reason at all.
I always test the low back on every one of my patients. It is such an important area. Because all of the nerves of the legs come out of the low back, our very sophisticated understanding of which leg muscle tests are strong or weak tells me what is the nature and severity of a low back, pelvic or hip problem. I will test your legs in several positions on the front and back, on the left and right. If some are weak, the low back is the area that is usually at fault. Most of us have good and evenly built muscles. But when, for example, one muscle on the right is strong but the same muscle on the other side is weak, it almost always tells us the nerve connection is not giving that weak muscle the strength it should have. The patterns of these weaknesses tells me a huge amount about your spine. Many times the person doesn’t even know some of their low back/leg muscle strengths are just near zeros! When, of the 8 major low back strength tests of the legs, 4, 5 or more of the 8 are near dead-weak, it signifies what is the problem and WHERE it is and what needs to be fixed. When 7 or all 8 of the leg tests are “shot”, the problem is very bad. These techniques I have for this diagnosis and correction are not very commonly known, even among those of my profession. Because of these refined techniques, I correct nearly all the low back, hip, pelvic problems of my patients. That includes even the problems that make most patients and their doctors morose…bad disc injuries. I just this month got a very huge, over a quarter inch disc-herniated low back patient now exercising and even travelling on planes without pain. A result that was considered near impossible. And which other doctors and chiropractors had treated without any significant improvement under the other doctors’ care.
These muscle tests of the legs in different positions and resisting in different directions will even isolate hip problems. They and the corresponding adjustive techniques have allowed me to clear the pain and malfunction in hip patients, even those with total hip replacement surgeries, where they have pain and cannot walk or run normally or pain-free.
I cannot count the huge number of low back, pelvic, hip and sciatic cases I have corrected. This week I began with a quite young low back and sciatic pain patient with non-stop pain for over 8 years. Night and day, no relief. Just going grocery shopping left her exhausted with pain, and needing to collapse on her bed. In less than a week, we have cut her pain to where she says it’s not even pain anymore. After all her other doctors and therapists had failed to help her for years.
The low-back area is called the lumbar area of the spine. There are 5 lumbar vertebrae (spine bones) numbered Lumbar 1 through Lumbar 5 (which is at the very bottom of your spine).
People who suffer from low back, sciatic nerve, hip or pelvic pain problems can be male or female, and can be any age. Surprisingly low back disc injuries, often among the worst, are common not only in older people, but will often occur in much younger men or women. Even kids and babies can have low back nerve “subluxations”, vertebra that are out of place pinching nerves and interfering with those nerves’ normal and necessary-for-health communication.
The underlying problems can vary. A pinched nerve, a ligament tear, a twisted vertebra, a displaced hip joint, even a damaged spinal disc can cause low back pain. These problems because they are closely related, often occur in combinations. There can be pain or numbness that is in one or both legs. When the pinched-nerve pain goes into the butt or thigh or other areas of the leg even to the foot, it is typically called SCIATICA. Low back problems causing pinched nerves can affect bladder, female or male reproductive organs, intestines, appendix, uterus or prostate gland. All of those organs get their crucial life energy and control from the nerves that come out of the spine at the bottom of your low back. Symptoms you might not at first think of, like constipation or infertility, may be the result of low back spinal problems.
The lumbar spine nerves go to urinary system, large intestine (colon), ileocecal valve (the valve of the large intestine), sex organs and glands that produce male and female hormones, prostate and uterus, hips, legs and feet, to list some of the major areas.
If you have a new (acute) low back injury it is best to deal with it properly as soon as possible. It is easier and faster to fix a spine that is not allowed the time to heal wrong after an injury. And of course if you have a chronic problem that has been there for years, it needs to be corrected!
If you don’t get effective spinal treatment, over time your spine will be expected to degenerate. In the low back, the vertebrae in that area get “crudded up” with deformed bone structures (“degenerative joint disease” or “osteoarthritis”). Permanent damage begins. As that happens the discs (spacers between the vertebrae made of cartilage) will get smaller and begin to “die off”. That will cause the joint to fail even more, and eventually lead to where there is little space and the joint becomes nearly bone-on-bone. It is important you get correctly examined, and treated, for a spinal injury or problem. The spine is the lifeline of nerves that serve your entire body, and its health is essential to your health.
Chronic pain is bad for your attitude and hard on your smile. It is a stress factor that runs down your adrenal glands, and leaves a person under-rested and overstressed.
X-ray or MRI of the low back (when viewed by a doctor who truly understands the spine) can be valuable in determining the cause of a problem and directing its proper treatment. Sometimes an M.R.I. is required. (Magnetic resonance Image: a method of seeing the discs of the back) MRI’s let us see the discs in low back problems. Luckily for my patients, I have the ability to get MRI’s done inexpensively. A test that is often charged at $1,300 I can get for my patients for only $250 (including a radiologist’s report)! And the best news is: most disc injuries I test and treat get well!
Patients with disc injuries or disc disease (the worst of spine problems) now have a superior alternative to surgery or just living with severe unrelenting pain or numbness. With the specialized low back and disc techniques used, nerve pressure can be corrected. Then the patient can return to an active and normal life.
Nutritional supplementation is helpful and important in healing many back conditions. You can repair ligaments, discs and nerves faster and better with the help of the right nutrients. Muscle spasms and pain can many times be reduced better with nutrients than with drugs (and without drugs’ dopey or other undesirable side-effects). Anti-inflammatory drug side-effects include crippling the body's own ligament and cartilage growth. So they worsen the problem while trying only to make you feel the problem less!
It’s not only unnecessary for most low back patients to live with chronic pain, it harms your general health and well-being, and detracts from your quality of life and your ability to get around or even sleep well! Correcting a low back problem, not living with one while it quietly degenerates and falls into ruin, is definitely the best way for you to go.