How Long Is Treatment for Back Pain?

You’re helping a good friend move. As you bend over to pick up another box to take into the moving truck, you feel a sharp pain in your lower back. Although you’re used to feeling chronic back pain from sitting at a desk all day at work, you’ve had enough this time. You finally decide to see a chiropractor for help with the unbearable pain. When you arrive at your chiropractor’s office, you desperately ask, “How long will treatment take before I feel better?” In this post, you’ll learn about two ways of answering this burning question both in terms of immediate results and long-term relief.

What to Expect from One Visit

One treatment with your chiropractor is typically about 20 to 30 minutes long. During that short time, you can do the following:

• Get adjusted to correct any alignment issues in your back or neck.
• Learn exercises and stretches to increase your range of motion.
• Address the cause of your pain, not just the symptoms.
• Avoid the unnecessary use of medications to manage pain.

From this single visit, you can apply the exercises and stretches you learn at home, helping you achieve better results and prevent future injury. However, even with these valuable methods at your disposal, additional treatments may be necessary, depending on the severity of your pain and the extent of the problem.

What to Expect from Multiple Visits

It can be fairly easy to eliminate most, if not all, pain temporarily with a single chiropractic visit, but the pain will likely return within a short time, although it shouldn’t be as severe as before. True relief comes with long-term treatment. In other words, the real trick is to keep the pain from coming back, which requires multiple adjustments and repeated therapy with your chiropractor. Over time, these multiple visits can retrain your body to be in a more stable, healthy alignment, thus alleviating your pain and enabling you to have a healthier, happier quality of life.

What Other Problems Your Chiropractor Can Treat

Your chiropractor can do much more than simply adjust your back. They can treat spinal stenosis, which is the degeneration of the discs in the spine, and herniated or bulging discs through decompression therapy. Also, if you struggle with headaches or numb or tingling legs, feet, hands, or arms, they can help you determine the cause and how to fix it.

Ultimately, one visit can take away some of your pain, but it often takes repeated, consistent treatment to reduce your back pain. The worse the condition is, the more procedures you will likely need to get back to feeling normal and fully functional again. If you are experiencing back pain to any degree, whether from an injury or your desk job, don’t wait! You can heal sooner and better through the right treatment. Make an appointment with your chiropractor today!

About the Author

Dr. Chad Wills has been serving patients in the Naples area for almost two decades. He earned his doctor of chiropractic degree from Life Chiropractic University in Atlanta. Since then, he has earned certification in whiplash injury biomechanics and brain traumatology by the Spine Research Institute. Also, he has advanced training in chiropractic physics and scoliodracina is certified to treat scoliosis. To schedule an appointment with Dr. Wills, click here or call (239) 331-6060.