Is it just wear and tear or your age? How Vitametik in Stockport might be able to change your perspective on back pain.

To some point you noticed it.

That back pain that keeps coming back.

At first you shrugged it off. You’d just spent cleaning the house yesterday, or you over did it in the gym, or you sat on the floor playing with your child.

However, looking back now you can see the trend. And you can also see the trend seems to more and more frequent as well now.

No matter what stretches you do, how much you strengthen your core, or look after yourself with regular massages, the pain gets more, gets worse, gets to worry you.

You went to have it checked out, and after waiting for months, you had your scan and nothing really serious was picked up. Simply some wear and tear.

So you think, of course because I am not getting younger. I have been active all my life. So it must be the wear and tear that causes my pain.

What the research says about wear and tear related back pain

If we look at the research, we find something interesting.

A 2015 systematic review looked at spinal imaging in people who had no symptoms of back pain. It found signs of disc degeneration in an estimated 37% of people aged 20. By age 80, that figure had risen to 96%.

In other words, signs of what we might call "wear and tear" are extremely common, even in people who don't have back pain.

This doesn't mean that disc degeneration can never be relevant to back pain. In fact, research suggests some degenerative findings are more common in people with back pain than in those without it. But the presence of degeneration on a scan does not, by itself, tell us why someone is experiencing pain.

So this leaves us with an important question:

If a scan doesn't fully explain the pain, what else could be contributing to it?

For this we need to look at our body. It’s your nervous system that registers the pain. The nervous system is a huge network and is everywhere in our body and has different functions. One of the functions is sensory feedback. Like when you feel the pressure of hand shake, the weight of a backpack, the temperature of the water in the bath. And it is those nerves that also tell us about pain.

A compressed nerve -> pain, tingling, numbness

An inflamed nerve -> pain

An irritated nerve -> pain

And there are many reasons why a nerve might be compressed, inflamed or irritated. We have excluded the structural causes such as herniated discs, so we need to look at something called functional causes.

Functional does not really relate to the function of the nerve itself but to musculoskeletal system.

Let me ask you, if you contract your bicep, what happens?

You get that typical bulge of the muscle, but also your forearm is pulled closer to bicep and shoulder and your hand forms a fist. You cannot efficiently or effectively contract your bicep without those other things happening.

And what is happening is simple. Your muscle contracts, it changes its tension and frequency in order for that movement. But it is not an isolated action due to neighbouring muscle parts being connected. And this does not just happen in your arms, go and try it with your legs, or try and clench your glutes without moving anything else.

So how does this relate to your back pain?

Along your back and spine, we have many muscle, bigger muscle groups and smaller muscles. Contraction of one of those muscles would have a similar domino effect as with our bicep.

Now imagine, if that same kind of bulge would happen in a muscle in your back. What would happen?

It could most likely compress or irritate the nerves in close vicinity. Compression reduces nerve flow and causes what we notice as tingling, numbness or pain.

The good news is that it is functional, because it’s your muscle tension or contraction being the cause. And in most cases it is reversible.

Just imagine your bicep again. Once contracted, you can relax it and the bulge disappears and your forearm lowers. There’s a small caveat, we might not necessarily be able to consciously relax all the muscles in our body.

And time plays another important factor.

Going back to your bicep. If you were to contract it for weeks, months maybe even years, what do you think would happen?

Your body would adapt. It would overwrite information to make it easier to hold that tension, to use less energy to do so. This information is stored in your brain. And after weeks, months or years of constantly contracting your bicep, it’s simply not as easy to relax it.

The same principle applies to any muscle in your body.

With Vitametik we work with exactly this. Your body needs a precise input, almost like a reset, to let go of that long held tension. Using the body’s own language, we can tap into that muscle tension, we can make use of the body’s unique network and how it communicates.

Without long sessions, forceful adjustments or heavy body based work.

You don’t have to get undressed. All you need to do is to relax and let go of that tension.

It is not an overnight fix. It is not a one-time wonder. After all we are working to let go of years’ worth of tension.

Book your consultation today to not just explore but also experience this unique approach.

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Disclaimer: Vitametik does not replace treatment by a doctor or health practitioner; however, it can be a valuable complement to ongoing treatments. Current medical treatments and instructions should be continued, and future ones should not be delayed or avoided. Changes to other treatments or medications need to be discussed with your doctor or health practitioner.