Chiropractic And Low Back Pain In Runners

Low back pain is a common nagging injury that afflicts many people who do running for exercise.  Chiropractic care has been proven to not only to help resolve runner’s low back pain but also to improve performance.

Chiropractic Resolves Low Back Pain and Improves Performance

How many television commercials or magazine advertisements have we seen now for drugs or medication where over half of the ad is spent explaining the negative side effects that may occur for some people who take that medication.  It is quite rare when we can actually find something that helps to alleviate or even correct the problem that is causing the symptoms.

Chiropractic is well known for it’s results for correcting low back pain but a lot of people are not aware of it’s affect on sports performance and just basically helping the body work better and more efficiently.

Grimston et al. (Muscular rehabilitation prescribed in coordination with prior chiropractic therapy as a treatment for sacroiliac subluxation in female distance runners.  Chiropractic Sports Medicine.  1990) did obtain subjective reports of improved performance following a trial of chiropractic adjustments combined with muscular rehabilitation for the treatment of dysfunctional sacroiliac (SI) joints (low back area of the body) in female runners.

In the study, subjects were allocated into either the SI dysfunction group (n = 18) or a control group (n = 4) based on the presence or absence of a chiropractic diagnosis of SI dysfunction.
Results revealed that following 4 weeks of adjustments, 83% of the SI group maintained or increased their training mileage, no subjects reported improvement in race times, and 82% of the SI group reported symptom reductions.

Following 4 weeks of SMT and an additional 6 weeks of exercises, 100% of SI subjects reinstated or increased their training mileage, 5 SI subjects reported “personal record (PR)” times for 10km races and 2 SI subjects reported PR times for marathon races, and 100% of SI subjects reported subjective symptom reductions. No control subjects reported improvements in race times and/or training capacities over the entire 10 week course of study. The authors concluded that “muscular rehabilitation programs prescribed in conjunction with prior chiropractic care, may provide an effective means of alleviating low back pain due to sacroiliac subluxation (dysfunction) in female runners.”

Being in chiropractic practice at Fish Creek Chiropractic, your Calgary Chiropractor, examples of the above study are reports that I hear from my patients on a fairly regular basis, where someone comes in for a problem in one area and then starts to tell me of other things in their life or associated with their health that had gotten better since starting care.  This is not a mystery to me and isn’t to the patient when they start to understand how chiropractic affects their health and wellness.

The basics of chiropractic are that your brain controls your entire body.  Every stimulus that your body encounters is recognized and reacted to by your brain.  Your brain receives the stimulus and then sends the response out to the rest of the body through the nervous system.

Due to stress in your life from either a chemical, mental or physical source, or a combination of the three, that is beyond your own adaptable range of stress, will cause interferences to occur in your nervous system function. Chiropractors are trained in the detection and correction of this nervous system dysfunction, which is referred to as a vertebral subluxation.

Whether you are suffering from low back pain, looking to increase health and wellness, or just wanting to shave time off your next run, we would be happy to work with you to achieve whatever your chiropractic needs may be.  Please contact us at Fish Creek Chiropractic 403 271 7224 to set up your appointment today.

Dr. Aaron Cain has spent his life researching everything there is to know about health and maximum human performance. While earning his Doctorate of Chiropractic he also earned a Masters Degree in Sports Chiropractic, and the Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist certification offered by the National Strength and Conditioning Association.

As the CEO of Fish Creek Chiropractic, a family chiropractic office, Dr. Cain has created a program that has helped thousands in the Calgary community to optimize their brain-body connection, eat better, move more and create a healthier state of mind. He maintains a busy family chiropractic practice, and finds time to implement the principles and practices of Life By Design in his own life.