For many, seeing and hearing ocean waves is calming. For Manchester neck pain and back pain patients, experiencing the wave of relief from pain can be the same if they understand it. For those who don’t understand that pain ebbs and flows while healing, the wave of healing can be saddening. Manchester Chiropractic & Sports Injuries helps our patients understand the wave of healing, know the research behind our relieving treatment plan, and celebrate the pain relief they experience.
DESCRIBING AND RATING PAIN
Since back and neck pain experiences are complete with fluctuating symptoms as they get better, researchers have worked on a system to classify neck pain patients and their pain patterns by studying 1208 neck pain patients. They produced 16 subgroups! Wow. The largest subgroup was “mild persistent fluctuating” with 25% of the patients in it reporting pain as a 3.4 out of 10 (10 worst pain). The “moderate episodic” group had 24% with a pain rating of 2.7. “Persistent fluctuating” pain patients were those bothered more by pain than the others. (1) Instead of just labeling and rating pain, researchers had patients describe their pain using a visual picture scale about their pain intensity and symptomatology over a year. The patient responses were very similar in defining the pain intensity but not so much for the symptoms and their characteristics. (2) Manchester Chiropractic & Sports Injuries notices that everybody feels pain in slightly different ways and that they find certain sorts of pain more annoying than others do. All of our Manchester chiropractic patients are distinctive!
THE HEALING “WAVE”
For 12 months, another study tracked 1124 neck pain patients seeing a chiropractor. Neck pain patients experiencing “persistent pain” – 75% to 63% over 12 months - and very minor pain stayed relatively stable. Those who had “episodic pain” – 21% to 24% over the year – had greater changes in their pain patterns. (3) This is the reason we inform our back and neck pain patients that recovery is more like a wave than a straight line. While healing, pain ebbs and flows. Going away more than it comes is a positive signal of healing and pain relief. Manchester Chiropractic & Sports Injuries repeatedly tells our Manchester neck pain and back pain patients to not be discouraged along the way. We will get there together!
CHIROPRACTIC IN MANAGING BACK AND NECK PAIN PATTERNS
Research such as explained here regarding the patterns of neck pain and back pain sufferers shows the on-going need for them to have partners like their chiropractors along with general practitioners to manage it, understand it, and care for it. A researcher explained how a patient who underwent spinal surgery 30 years ago now had neck pain and cervical arm pain due to adjacent segment disease – a condition often seen in spinal discs above and below a spinal level that underwent back surgery - was treated with cervical manipulation, flexion distraction decompression (Cox®), soft-tissue mobilization, and therapeutic ultrasound for pain relief. (4) Again, pain relief is seldom sudden, but rather systematic with treatment, coming/going pain intensity, patience, and appreciation for the relief gotten be it 50%, 70% or 90% as supported by the 50% Rule of Cox® Technic.
CONTACT Manchester Chiropractic & Sports Injuries
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. John Murray on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he presents patient cases that were complicated and yet found relief with The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management with time.
Make your Manchester chiropractic appointment now. Together, we will aim for the calming wave of healing and celebrate the pain relief.
