No, I’m not here to tell you to be careful not to injure your back while tackling your spring cleaning. You should be careful, but that’s not the point. I’m here to show you how you can look at achieving deep back pain relief like you look at completing various levels of cleaning.
Levels of Cleaning
There are basically three levels of cleaning. You have your daily “pick up” and “wipe down,” your rigorous Saturday chores, and your ultimate, deep-down cleaning commonly referred to as “spring cleaning.”
Daily cleaning includes things like:
- Making your bed
- Doing the laundry
- Washing the dishes
- Taking out the trash
- Picking up after yourself or your family
- Wiping down counters
Saturday chores are a little more extensive and may include:
- Scrubbing the bathrooms
- Sweeping and mopping floors
- Washing bedding
- Vacuuming carpets
- Dusting
- Cleaning appliances
- Washing windows
- Yard work
- Cleaning the garage
Then spring fever hits and you get to projects like:
- Cleaning closets
- Washing walls, doors, trim, and baseboards
- Cleaning gutters and window seals
- Cleaning under heavy furniture
- Cleaning and organize junk drawers
- Reorganizing the garage
- Decluttering
- Collecting items for donation
- All the other projects you have waited for the right motivation to do
Your daily and weekly cleaning keep you in the game — they keep you sane and your home functioning. But let’s face it, things still pile up and you can’t wait for that moment when you finally get a burst of motivation and are ready to conquer the tasks you’ve put off for far too long.
How Does This Relate to Back Pain?
Back pain happens from overuse, injury, and inflammation. Just as there are levels to cleaning, there are levels to achieving back pain relief.
Your daily goals may be:
- Stretching
- R.I.C.E. (Rest, Ice, Compress, Elevate) as needed)
- Supplements
- Pain relief creams
Occasionally (could be a couple times a week, weekly, or a couple times a month)
- Strengthening
- Chiropractic care
- Massage
Sometimes regular maintenance just isn’t enough. If you continue to experience chronic back pain, even after consistently doing the care mentioned above, it could be a sign of functional imbalances in the muscles. Muscle function imbalance is a sign that your muscles have not been able to keep up with your recovery from injury or overuse. When this happens, your brain decides to protect your muscles from further injury by transmitting a message to your system to shut down or inactivate the affected muscles. Muscles that are shut down will not work properly and continue to ache. Surrounding muscles will tighten and work harder to stabilize the affected area of weakness. The imbalance of both the inactive and overworked muscles causes continual pain. Until you reactivate those muscles, you will continue to experience back pain.
The Advanced Muscle Integration Technique
Thankfully there is a technique that can help you move past the imbalance and chronic pain. The Advanced Muscle Integration Technique (AMIT), a specialty of Dr. Knight’s, can reboot your system by signalling the brain to reconnect and communicate with the affected muscles, returning their ability to thoroughly contract and function as normal. Relief can occur after the first treatment, but may take multiple treatments to fully restore complete muscle function. What’s more is the AMIT technique not only enables the muscles in your body to work properly, but helps avoid further injuries to the area.
Let’s face it, most of us don’t wait for Spring to come before we tackle big projects. We do them during the year as they are needed. You also shouldn’t put off back pain relief. If chronic pain is holding you back, contact Dr. Knight today to see if the AMIT therapy is right for you.