600 million suffer from lower back pain, knee pain, mid back pain, neck pain, and even shoulder pain. This specialist model of looking at ourselves as parts rather than the whole is mostly to blame for the industry that has a pain reliever for everything, but solutions that are often invasive and will do more harm than good when we ignore why we hurt. Part of the problem is that the incentives are wrong. Patients are incentivised to stay away from needed care by high copayments and high costs, while often being underinsured with high-priced insurance. doctors are incentivised to perform tests and ignore minor symptoms in the young. Medications help us ignore our bodies as we grow older and more chronic. This has fed a medical industrial complex that replaces knees, hips, shoulders and does spinal procedures, resulting from years of ignorance in most people. Worse, patients have been trained on this model for temporary relief, you can take …. This is why so many older Americans come in with spinal degeneration, knee problems, shoulder problems etc. and while the problems developed over many years, they have often been told that you can medicate it and as it worsens over years, we have a person in a while coat who will diagnose and treat the thing. Eventually, one surgery or procedure leads to another, and we can do less but suffer more. But wait, there is always a stronger drug. Drugs do not fix mechanical problems, chiropractors can by finding mechanical solutions that are simple, sometimes time-consuming but help us live more active and healthier lives, while avoiding the side effects of medications, medical procedures, and other methods designed to control pain medically, often invasively, as we worsen over time. Watch anyone with a replaced knee, hip, or shoulder, and you will see what I mean. How do they walk? The joint no longer hurts as it is a prosthesis that no longer has feeling in the joint, and then another joint goes, and so on. How much did they suffer to overcome the surgery, and what about the risk of anesthesia as we age, or the post-recovery risk and difficult rehabilitation to learn how to overcome the pain from the surgery? One surgery often leads to the next and the next because, unless you move better, more joints will become problems too. There is a better way. One surgery often leads to the next and the next because, unless you move better, more joints will become problems too. When I became certified with Titlist under their TPI certification program, they made movement easy to understand. The building blocks of better golf were movement, and the chiropractors were the best doctors to understand the concept of alternating stable and movable areas in the body. Stable vs. Movable joints. Foot Ankle Knee Hip Lumbar spine, Thoracic spine, and ribs You get the idea. Titlist realized chiropractors were best equipped to diagnose problems related to motion, and their program relies on them to diagnose and treat golfers. The most common problem for golfers is back pain. The most common problem for most Americans is back pain, which is merely a symptom that also results in symptoms in many of the joints in the body. Plantar fasciitis is a common symptom that is caused by slamming our feet into the ground. The problem is always above the feet. When you have lower back pain, always see a chiropractor first. A better evaluation of a mechanical problem leads to fewer tests, which tell us a history of malfunction, rather than the reason we hurt. The chiropractic idea of holistically evaluating a patient is always better than a basic workup and an MRI. Often, the patient will improve with chiropractic methods such as myofascial release and manipulation, and exercises for a lower cost than medication, an MRI, and therapy to the area of pain. Better care leads to fewer episodes of pain and a better quality of life. A recent article talking about the core 4 foundation shows that chiropractors understand back pain by understanding how we move and function. This begins from the ground up. Check out the article below. We need to change the incentives, the ideology that has never worked and caused great harm in many cases, and replace it with holistic thinking. This is yet another reason to think chiropractic first for lower back pain and the many other symptoms that are part of movement issues, including shoulder pain, neck pain, lower back pain, knee pain, sciatica, ankle pain, foot pain, plantar fasciitis, wrist and hand pain. Stop Chasing Symptoms: The Core 4 Foundation For Lower Back Pain