Every week we get patients coming into our Oakville Chiropractic Clinic located in Glen Abbey complaining of severe back pain. Most of them do not have cool stories of athletics or saving kittens from burning buildings. The patients usually complain that the pain is coming right across the belt line in their low back or attacking one of their gluteal regions. If you are in pain contact our Oakville chiropractic clinic for the back pain treatment you need.
Anatomy of SI Joint and Low Back
Sacroiliac Joint Treatment (SI Joint): Oakville Chiropractor Back Pain.
Low back pain, mid back pain, sciatica, butt pain, glute pain are just a few of the symptoms patients describe on a daily basis. Our Oakville chiropractors say some pain occurrences are brand new and others are chronic and only become symptomatic once or twice a year.
Our Oakville chiropractic team usually focus on the low back for strengthening and stretching, but what if your low back pain was coming from your butt and not your back. 9 out of 10 low back pain patients have a Sacral Iliac Joint Dysfunction and some sort of muscle imbalance in their pelvis. The pain is usually caused by a combination of quadratus lumborum tightness, hip flexors and psoas tightness and your glutes and piriformis muscles not working properly.
Best Back Pain Treatment and SI Joint Pain Treatment in Oakville
Your Glutes consist of three major mucles: Gluteus Maximus, Gluteus Minimus, Gluteus Medius. Learn more about your Glutes Here. In some of our patients the gluts have a hard time contracting, possibly being the root cause of ones back pain. If they are too tight, you might also experience pain.
If you have ever had treatment by Dr. Steve you will understand the pain you feel when he digs into the area of discomfort to loosen up the effective tissue or blasts the shockwave gun to get even deeper. In other patients its their psoas or that are the main culprit in their back pain.
Chiropractic approved stretches in information about hip flexors can be found here.
Learn How To Stretch Your Glutes And Piriformis Here!
If you feel your Glute Muscles could be the cause of your back pain here are some basic exercises to get you going in the right direction.
Chiropractic Exercises for SI joint and low back pain:
The Bridge Exercise for Low Back Pain
- Lay on your back with your hands by your sides, your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Make sure your feet are under your knees.
- Tighten your abdominal and buttock muscles.
- Raise your pelvis up to create a straight line from your knees to your shoulders.
- Squeeze your core and try to pull your belly button back toward your spine. The goal is to maintain a straight line from your shoulders to your knees and hold for 20 to 30 seconds.
The Clam Exercise for Low Back Pain
- While lying on your side, keep both knees bent and flex the pelvis to 30 degrees.
- While keeping your heels touching and pelvis still, open your knees by contracting your glute medius. This is a
- very slow, small and targeted movement.
- Place your hand on your gluteus medius (just below and behind your hip) to ensure that it is firing during the movement.
- Repeat the movement slowly 10 to 15 times and switch sides.
The Single Leg Bridge Exercise for Back Pain
- Lay on your back with your knees bent and your feet are under your knees.
- Tighten your abdominal and buttock muscles and slowly lift your pelvis up to create a straight line from your knees to shoulders.
- Slowly raise and extend one leg while keeping your pelvis raised and level. If your pelvis sag or drop, place the
- leg back on the floor and do a double leg bridge until you become stronger.
- Hold to position for 10 seconds and lower. Repeat with the opposite leg.
The Quadruped Extension Exercise
- Start in a quadruped position (on your hands and knees).
- Tighten your core and contract your abs to stabilize the spine.
- Focus on contracting the left glut. You may need to place your hand on your glut to be sure it contracts.
- Slowly lift the left leg up while keeping a 90-degree bend at the knee.
- The left thigh should be nearly parallel with the ground.
- Slowly lower to the start position and repeat 10 reps per side.
- To increase the intensity of this exercise, place a small dumbbell behind your knee or add an ankle weight.
For help with pain or discomfort please contact your local chiropractor in Oakville at 905-827-4197
or
Treatment for SI Joint pain and back pain in Oakville
Depending on the nature of your injury and the severity of your back pain, treatment can vary. Most patients present to our Oakville chiropractic clinic with some sort of “glute”, “low back” or “butt” pain. Some find more pain when they are seated. Others have more discomfort when they move from sitting to standing, think getting out of your car and having to lift your leg because it hurts to much to move. ALL of them have extremely tight and hypertonic gluteal muscles that are most likely pulling the Sacroiliac Joint out of position. This imbalances the pelvis/back leading to further problems and more difficulty in correcting the issue over time.
Oakville Orthotics for Back Pain!
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Oakville Chiropractic Treatment: Glute Pain
Treatment by our Oakville Chiropractor comes in many different forms. Most patients will receive IFC with a heat pack, ART, Shockwave Therapy, Manual Adjustments and an at-home exercise and stretching protocol. Most injured patients will get shockwave on the affected area to help loosen up tissue and allow the Doctor to get the SI joint moving. Learn more about Shockwave for back pain.
IFC Treatment (Interferential Current Therapy) for back pain treatment:
After the physical exam and history taking, most patients will begin treatment with a 10 minute session of IFC on their low back, glutes or both. The IFC machine is an electric stimulation unit much more powerful than a TENS machine or a Dr. Ho device. It feels like a deep massage and helps promote blood flow and loosen up the tissue before the adjustment. Heat is usually applied at this point to further loosen the tight glutes and pelvis muscles and to help aid in blood flow. Heat should only be applied at our Oakville Chiropractic Clinic. At home, you will be icing and not heating. You wouldn’t heat a sprained ankle, so why would you heat a sprained back and SI joint?
Chiropractic ART and Muscle Release for Glute Pain and Low Back Pain Treatment:
After the injury has been “zapped” and heated our Chiropractors will begin
a series of pressing and prodding around your glute muscles. The pressure will range from soft to painful, and will be used to further mobilize the “stuck” muscles and get the joint ready for the adjustment. Our Oakville Chiropractors use a combination of Active Release Therapy and other Muscle Release Techniques to aid in healing. Essentially they will put thumb pressure on the effected muscle or tendon and move the joint above or below the muscle while maintaining pressure. This will help stretch the tissues under their thumbs, breaking up scar tissue and adhesions to improve overall mobility. Think of your injured muscle like frozen bacon or hamburger patties. Its the Chiropractors job to get the meat freed up and not stuck to each other.
Chiropractic Approved Low Back and Core Exercises for Glute and SI Joint pain and back pain:
Our Chiropractors recommend most patients do not start their exercise component of care until they are 80% pain free in normal day to day activities. If any of the exercises are painful or cause the symptoms to get worse you are starting the active component of treatment too early. Stop, Ice and walk or minimal physical activity without any pain.
Here is chiropractic link to countless exercises and information on how to improve your strength, flexibility and overall mobility to avoid further glute and SI joint damage. Once you are 80% pain free you can begin the video listed below. Perform the exercises once a day 2 to 4 times a week.
Shockwave Treatment for Glute and SI Joint in Oakville. The best back pain treament!
We expect most patients to get 80% better by visit 8 to 12, depending on a ton of factors. Some patient’s scar tissue and adhesions in their glutes are even too much for Dr. Steve to handle by himself. Their 30 years of desk work and Go Train commute with limited physical activity and basically ZERO stretching can lead to complicated issues in the low back and glutes and SI Joint. If this sounds like you, don’t worry! We have you covered. Shockwave Therapy in Oakville is used for our more drastic glute and SI joint pain patients. It is essentially a pneumatic gun that fires an enclosed bullet at 10 to 16 beats a second to break up scar tissue and improve blood flow. Treatment ranges between 1.5BAR and 5BAR with the frequency between 1000 and 2000 beats. Patients will feel like they are getting a tattoo on the side of their glute. It is mandatory that you ice the area treated after any shockwave therapy session.
Chiropractic Adjustment for SI Joint and low back pain:
One of the best tools our Oakville chiropractor has is the ability to adjust a stiff and/or painful joint. The SI joint is big AND important. It is crossed by a thick network of ligaments that are there to provide us the support to walk upright (much unlike our quadruped ancestors). The joint helps transfers forces up our bodies and absorbs shock every time we take a step. It is a very important weight-bearing joint, and if it ever gets angry, it can cause a lot of pain and even difficulty standing up.
These joints are big and strong, but sometimes it doesn’t take much to tick them off. Bending forward and vacuuming for a little too long or a slip and fall onto the butt can both irritate the joint. This is where the adjustment can work it’s magic!
An adjustment is a quick, firm thrust through a joint that is stiff and/or stuck. Our Oakville chiropractors are highly trained to detect problematic joints and assess which movements are limited. Most cases of sacroiliac joint pain would benefit from an adjustment, and the relief the adjustment can provide is dramatic. Patients can walk into the clinic bent over in pain, and leave standing up straight with significantly less pain. The adjustment is most often done with the patient in a side-lying position, but for patients who struggle to get into the position, the adjustment can also be delivered with them laying face down. The adjustment often leads to the best, quickest, long-lasting results!
Acupuncture for Glute Pain and back pain treatment in Oakville
Here we go, talking about acupuncture again at our Oakville clinic. But it works like a charm! The three glute muscles can also send pain into the butt and even down the legs if they get really tight. A great way to get to the glute min and med, that lay underneath the larger glute max muscle is via acupuncture. The needles are great at getting deep down into the muscles and creating a change in the tension and activation efficiency of the muscle.
If your muscles are too tight, the needles will draw more blood flow the area and help the muscles relax and release. The great thing about this is that you won’t even feel the needles go in. It’s a painfree experience that gets amazing results. As mentioned above, muscle imbalances can also cause glute and SI joint pain. Inserting needles into ‘sleepy’ muscles that need to wake up and activate better can also create positive change in this painful position.
Our chiropractor and acupuncture provider, Dr. Jenn, can also insert some muscles into the joints themselves. With patients laying face down, and a pillow under their pelvis, this opens up the joints in the back. Small needles can be placed into the SI joints, right around the area of the ‘back dimples’. These needles stimulate the healing response and lead to a quicker recovery time.