Today’s article is about the significant link between your lower back and your intestines, and how back pain can actually be caused by poor gut health in many cases.
As Osteopathic therapists, we are often asked how Osteopathy is different from Chiropractic, and here is an example to illustrate it: Paul came to the clinic for a treatment because he “pulled” his back again after shovelling some snow. This happened quite regularly for Paul in the past few years, and Chiropractors have only been able to help his lower spine for short periods of time.
Knowing that moving to a warmer country without snow was not a realistic answer to the problem, he thought he would try Osteopathy with no prior knowledge of what it is, but thinking “osteo” probably meant that we can fix bones, so we would fix his lumbar spine.
Osteopathy treats the body as a whole, which means that the pain is a signal, but not the cause of the problem. So we assess the body by, yes, looking at the bones, but also the muscles, the ligaments, the guts, the connective tissues, the nervous system–all of it.
In the case with Paul, here are the reasons that made me think his back pain was caused by his guts more than anything:
- The pain happened without reason, except for shovelling snow a couple of days prior, and started in the morning. Morning pains are often related to the guts.
- He described the pain as horizontal across his lower back. Osteopathy believes that when a group of vertebrae in a row get “stuck” the problem is caused from the inside by the viscera or the organs pulling them, and not by the spine.
- He was bloated and gassy often, and was having irregular bowel movements.
- His lifestyle was quite busy (his fight-or-flight system didn’t allow him to digest properly)
- Chiropractics did not seem to help (then it wasn’t a “bone” problem or the chiropractor would have fixed it).
In the illustration below, you can see in green the connective tissues attaching the digestive track to your back:
Paul’s treatment involved treating his whole body, but required a lot of work on his small intestine and his colon (we talked last month about how these two are strongly attached directly to the lumbar spine). We spoke about making sure he kept his lower back and core muscles strong, and how Naturopathy could help him change his diet and assist with some supplements for his particular gut dysfunction.
And good news: it seems that this winter hasn’t caused any problems for Paul!