Is your back pain making you sad?

It has been known that those suffering with prolonged back pain often present with associated psychological and emotional issues. Emerging research explains the reason for this. Individuals suffering from chronic low back pain (CLBP) undergo changes to their brain’s anatomy, chemistry, and function. The brain’s normal mapping of the body and its positioning become distorted when pain is left untreated for a long time. Your brain is constantly modeling and mapping your body’s position. This makes such unconscious movements as simple as standing and walking possible. There is an everpresent unconscious connection between the two. When an injury causing low back pain occurs due to unstable or improper movement patterns, this connection is impaired. Furthermore, this miscommunication between brain and body eventually leads to a measurable decrease in brain volume. These brain areas responsible for coordination and movement also control higher cognition and emotional decision-making. This helps explain why commonly related mood disorders such as anxiety and fear avoidance are often observed in those with CLBP. Luckily, work in the treatment of brain injuries provides the possibility of reestablishing these connections and functions. Chiropractic care can help re-establish brain mapping and body interpretation by firing these connections between the brain and the body. And it does it in a unique and powerful way! Although it may seem that your chiropractor is merely adjusting your neck or back, more importantly the adjustment is also stimulating essential brain centers in ways that few other modalities can. This explains why chiropractors have observed that adjustments can have extremely powerful and sometimes far-reaching effects other than just relieving pain. If you have been suffering from unchecked, unattended spine pain you owe it to yourself to consider chiropractic before it affects other parts of your health. The sooner the better!