Question
I an 25 yrs old and I have had back pain for the last 4-5 years.  There is a spot starting at the bottom tip of my right shoulder blade about the size of a baseball that is always numb or hyper sensitive as the doctors say.  This spot pulsates with pain 90% of the time.  There are days that i go with not pain but not many.  When the pain is there it is in a few different ways.  One is just a constent dull pain, the second it a sharp pericing pain like someone is poking me with a red hot knife, and the third is an extreem uncontrolable pain like i want to just keel over and die.  I have seen multiple doctors for this and I keep getting the same thing.  "We are unsure but it is more or less just weak back muscles."  Or I get " There is nothing wrong with you and we are unsure why you have pian."  I have had 1 MRI, 2 sets or X-Rays, and have gone to physicel theropy for it and all tests came up clear and the theropy did nothing for it.  There are times when I could be doing the most simplest of things like taking my hand out of my pocket and my entire back will lock up.  I lose all my breath and my body just freezes in place and when i do get my breath back I can barely stand on my feet for about 2 min.  I have a lot of trouble sleeping because of it and I am afraid that if I don't get this fixed i will either be in pain the rest of my life or wind up in a wheel chair before i am 50.  The pain does not just stop at that spot.  It also strikes from the right side of my spine over to just under my arm, from the top of my right shoulder blade down to the middle of my back.  I would like to know if I am just losing my mind and need to seek help or if I am not crazy and that I am truely in pain and there is something that can be done for me.

Thank You,
Mike

Answer
Dear Mike,

Thank you for your question about your back pain and various other reported problems.  In order to answer it properly, I抣l first need to give you some background on anatomy and physiology and how they relate to the chiropractic profession.  

There are two branches or schools of thought in chiropractic.  Briefly, they are differentiated by whether they deal with the limited therapeutic approach for aches and pains (commonly termed "mixed" chiropractic because it represents a mixture of a chiropractor with a non-chiropractic matter) or a non-therapeutic approach to optimum body performance (termed "straight" chiropractic because there is no mixing of chiropractic with anything else).  My expertise is in non-therapeutic straight chiropractic.

Therapeutic "mixed" chiropractic is the older approach based on a split from the founding principles of chiropractic about a century ago.

Non-therapeutic "straight" chiropractic is the more modern of the two.  It deals with a particular, common situation called a vertebral subluxation.  This is not at all the same as the matter of back pain or the other pain symptoms mentioned in your question, but they may exist together.  The spine is made of many bone segments which house and protect the spinal cord and the smaller spinal nerve branches that come off the spinal cord and exit between the bones.  These nerve pathways carry information or messages between the brain and the cells of the body.  These messages are essential for the life of the cells.  Without brain messages, the cells immediately begin the process of dying; i.e., they can no longer function the way they should to maintain life.

Because the bones are moveable, they can misalign in such a way as to interfere with the messages and, ultimately, the ability of the person to function at their best or express their optimum potential, whatever that may be.  People with vertebral subluxations are not able to get all they can out of life.

Vertebral subluxations can be caused by a wide variety of factors, what we'll generally call stresses.  These stresses can be physical (such as work posture, sleep posture and mattress condition, exercise routines, the birth process, sneezing, falling down, etc.), mental / emotional (in its many forms, probably the most familiar use of the word stress), or chemical (such as pollution, drugs, perhaps even alcohol or caffeine, etc.), which are, unfortunately, typically uncontrollable and regular parts of daily living for all age groups.  In short, a vertebral subluxation can occur for a multitude of reasons.

Tragically, vertebral subluxations are rarely obvious to the individual they affect.  They usually have no symptoms.  The reason is that most of what goes on inside you happens without your awareness.  For example, try specifically to "feel" your liver.  Try to be aware of exactly what it抯 doing right now.  You can't, so you can't know if it's functioning at its best or something less.  To complicate things, nerve pathways that carry messages of control (termed "motor" nerves) have no way of transmitting ache or pain messages, so your body function may be far from perfect and you'd not have any alerting signal whatsoever.  The branching of the nerve pathways is complex and extensive, making it exceedingly difficult to predict or determine exactly how the person will be affected.  For this reason alone, it is impossible for anyone to give you reliable answers as to a connection between the spine and specific symptoms of any kind, including back pain or any of the other symptoms or difficulties you report having.  Certainly, every part of the body must have connections to the nerve system so that vital information may be transmitted between the brain and the cells.  There are some who would attempt to review the possible nerve connections between a nerve root and specific organs or tissues, but this ignores the multitude of variables that determine the expression of function.  The question of how your individual body carries out the myriad of activities just to maintain life is enormous and would require your Creator抯 (or creator抯, for the agnostic) knowledge, or at least far more than our educated knowledge of the complexities of life.

Now that you have more information about the body and vertebral subluxation, how do you make use of it?  Well, first understand that this is not an explanation of why you may have back pain and other issues or whether these may be related to vertebral subluxation.  Are there reasons for what you抮e experiencing?  Even though they may be beyond our ability to identify, yes, there must be; but pinning them down is not relevant to the matter of whether you will benefit from being free of vertebral subluxations.  

In direct answer to your question about what is happening in your body, it抯 impossible for me to know, particularly in such a setting as e-mail, however, vertebral subluxation is, in and of itself, detrimental to your life.  It is not valid or reliable to try to connect it to pain or any other organ or tissue conditions.  The only way to know if someone has a vertebral subluxation is to have that person抯 spine checked by a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor using a method of "analysis."  When a vertebral subluxation is detected this way, it is obviously important to correct it as soon as possible.  The term for this procedure is 揳djustment.?br>
Since vertebral subluxations are caused by so many different things, people choose to go to a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor on a regular basis to enjoy the most time free of the life-robbing effects of vertebral subluxation. There's a saying that straight chiropractic is not about your back, it's not about pain, it's about your life.  Each person has a unique potential in life.  With vertebral subluxation, it's impossible to realize that potential!

A key question to ask for your purposes, then, would be, Is someone with back pain and a variety of resulting symptoms better off with vertebral subluxation / nerve interference or free of subluxation / with the nerve channels open?  It is easy to see that having all the available nerve messages getting through is better than only some of them getting through, regardless of the person's situation otherwise.  It抯 not that you should see a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor FOR your pain, etc. ?you should visit one in an effort to be free of vertebral subluxations, even WITH such complaints.  

Non-therapeutic straight chiropractic is not about diagnosing and/or treating back pain or any therapeutic-model or medical condition.  It is entirely separate in its goal.  Back pain is not the reason for attending to the vertebral subluxations.  In fact, those who understand the effects of vertebral subluxations choose to have their spines checked regularly and on an ongoing basis independent of symptoms.  This is the best recommendation that anyone can give you regarding vertebral subluxations.  I have no reason to tell you otherwise.  

That said, it would be wise to have your spine checked by a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor - even if you still elect to have therapeutic attention or advice for your reported back pain and other complaints.  That does not mean that this is one of the therapeutic options to consider, though.  You may have many therapeutic options, but that is a very separate matter.  Visiting a non-therapeutic straight chiropractic office is for a different, much larger purpose.  It is the only way to know if vertebral subluxations are present and interfering with your potential.  As I mentioned earlier, not all chiropractors adhere to this and it is important that you be able to distinguish which ones do if you're going to seek this type of service.  You need to understand very clearly that the practice objectives of therapeutic mixed chiropractic and non-therapeutic straight chiropractic are quite different, as described above.  What I can tell you must not be interpreted from the mixed viewpoint.  

If you are interested in finding out how to locate a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor in your area, please contact me at this site again or at [email protected].  You may also visit www.gschiro.com, a site that represents non-therapeutic straight chiropractic organizations on a state level.

Mike, I wish you the best in understanding what non-therapeutic straight chiropractic has to offer.  It has been my pleasure to provide you with some information.

Sincerely,
James W. Healey, D.C.