I have a long standing lower back injury that flares up every 6 months or so. I cant remember exactly but think it is S2 damage / bulge that went untreated so the area around has now over compensated and stiffened up.

Usually when trouble flares I do my stretching, if particularly bad I go back to my physio and he bends me around and soon enough I am on the go again. Regular hurdlers stretching of hamstrings seems to help.

Things took a dramatic turn for the worse last week though with excruciating pain down my leg. I assumed sciatica but apparently it is femoral nerve. Now one week on with little improvement.

I’m happy enough to persevere with physio but a few people have recommended a chiropractor. Is this a good alternative or compliment to physio? I always been a bit skeptical of a profession where they often refer to themselves as Doctors of Chiropractics but they are not actually doctors……

I don’t even know where to start with Osteopaths……

A good X beats a crap Y whichever way you go.

Personally I favour my Osteopath for when my back is playing up. But Ive also known a good Physio. I’ve also known a shit physio.

There was a thread in here in the last year covering this too. Will try and find it…

Usually when trouble flares I do my stretching

This is not helpful right now, but maybe you should be more proactive, and stretch yourself out regularly, and not just when you’re in pain.

This is not helpful right now, but maybe you should be more proactive, and stretch yourself out regularly, and not just when you’re in pain.

I know, and every time it happens I promise myself that I will do regular stretching but I soon forget or lose interest.

Never again though, this has been a whole new level of pain and I will do anything to avoid it happening again.

Personally, I’d avoid Chiropractors due to the snake oil element.

My experience with Osteopaths is that the massage is probably what does give the benefit.

Physio with not only some physical massage but also a plan of stretches/exercises for the longer term woudl be my preference.

My experience with an undirected physio (i.e. a physio working without instruction from a doctor and information from a scan) did harm not good.

The osteopath seemed quite superficial but helped with me less worried that he was damaging me than I was with the physio.

But as with most others my thoughts are purely anecdotal and might bear no relevance to the people you meet.

Physio does do pretty tough massage and also acupuncture so will probably stick with him. always interesting to hear other peoples thoughts and experiences though

Physio (although private) has copies of my scan results, he insisted on a scan after my GP initially refused!

Thanks

Not the first time this has been asked. Further reading:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/chiropractic-care-is-this-too-much

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/physio-osteopath-or-chiropractor

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/chiropracters-and-damaged-backs/

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/doctors-sports-physios-chiropractors-experienced-knowledgable-types/

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/difference-between-a-chiroprator-osteopath

… and many more.

Ask for personal recommendations.

There are brilliantly gifted, exceptionally perceptive, well trained and sensitive examples of all 3, who would be able to help, their personal skills and approaches being more important than the training path they took.

There are some not so good examples of all 3 as well.

Where are you? There are enough broken, or formerly broken people on here that someone will know somone near you.

I’m in the Scottish Borders and have been using Danny at Border Physio. He has spent most of his career bending rugby players back into shape. I have no complaints whatsoever about him, just wondered if I’m missing something by not using one of the other services.

I asked on here for physio recommendations as had recently moved to a new area. Am pleased to say that the one who had multiple recommendations proved to be excellent and, furthermore, recommended an osteopath who’s good too.

nedrapier talks sense ^

Chiropractors get a bad press on here clearly by folk who’ve never used one. Mine found out the problem when the NHS did nothing.

clearly by folk who’ve never used one

refer to Cougar’s links for all the old arguments about why they’re quacks. A massage may help whatever the person who does it calls themselves though.

A massage may help whatever the person who does it calls themselves though

Excellent. Off to the sauna I go then… 😆

An experienced Thai masseuse can be very helpful…. But ime is somewhere akin to torture.
The Thai lady I see just laughs at me as she has her knee, foot or elbow somewhere tender. She’s been fantastic in helping my itb issue and getting my hips moving better.

Ah great I was going to ask this, have ongoing issues with torticollis and muscle spasms in neck and back.

Someone suggested seeing an osteopath which sounded good until they used the word ‘holistic’.

We have a good sports injury clinic here in Edinburgh so maybe that should be my first port of call.

People have already said it but competence is FAR more important than the label

Avoid Chiros…

If your physio has a track record with top-level sports people then he probably knows what he is doing.

If you need a manipulation to ‘straighten’ you up again because of sitting badly or a fall then an osteopath probably has more experience than a physio, but if you don’t then only bother with an osteo if he has an outstanding reputation for massage.

And if you do go to an osteo look for one that does give a remedial/deep tissue massage before any manipulation, and then the manipulation tends to ‘stick’ better.

I had piriformis syndrome which gave sciatica type pain and stretching combined with deep tissue massage got it in the end – but deep-needle acupuncture might be another option – where they effectively seem to damage body parts with the needles, that then repair themselves back to correct functionality.

My osteopath works in much the same way as my old physio did, but without the accupuncture. And he hasn’t aggravated anything yet like the physio eventually did, hence the switch.

I see him every 6 weeks to be straightened out. Expensive but this is the first time in years I’ve had 12 months with no time off work with back pain.

Always fun getting him to loosen up my neck as well. I always wonder if the last sound a hanged man hears is the same clicking sound when my neck gets pulled straight 😕

sounded good until they used the word ‘holistic’.

Bad word if you’ve got bad associations.

What they could have said was that the osteopathic approach is to look at the body as a whole, as a system of interacting and interdependent parts, and to look beyond the immediate problem area to determine the root cause or causes, which might well be in a different part of the musculoskeletal system.

I had a bad chiro who made things worse, then I got a recommendation for a good one. He has been great, a totally different approach to treatment than the first. The first just did loads of ‘adjustments’, the second hardly does any ‘cracking’ adjustments and uses a range of methods to treat, including stretching and massage. He is fairly high level martial artist so has a good ‘sportsman’ perspective.

I find mixing this up with some longer deep tissue massage sessions works well. I have a lovely pretty little blonde (yeh I know that’s not relevant, but just painting the picture 🙂 ) massage therapist, who’s size belies her strength.

a good physio to start you off, then a reputable massage therapist should be able to help. Not all massage, especially sports type needs to be painful to work. Most folk like to feel the pain to then feel the benefit, but the no pain approach works just as well if not better (I could back that up with some pain related studies but it’s all borrowed from my wife who has her head in books and research papers when she’s not treating people)

bigjim, just read your note again.

copied and pasted from another thread, cos I couldn’t be arsed to type it out again!

I’ve had this, on and off for a few years. Never had a pain which I could find with my fnigers by pressing it, but it was a very localised, very sharp pain between vertabrae, feels as though it’s in the muscle off to one side of the spine?

It was episodic; it would get to a stage where I’d think “I can’t live with this any longer, I must see someone.” but I’d wake up the next morning and the pain would have subsided a bit.

The pains/spasms became more frequent, more painful and longer lasting: once a month for a week or more. I went to A&E (Bad, I know, but it was out of hours and it felt like my neck was going to fall off), GP, sports massage therapist. Only got drugs and a “come back if it’s not better in a week” from the NHS, which is really all I expect from them for this sort of thing. The sports massage therapist told me to go and see an osteopath or a chiropractor.

A friend recommended an osteopath in London. I saw him, he said I had a hyper-mobile neck and a very immobile upper spine, so all of the movement my head and shoulders needed was put through the same few vertebrae and the muscles around them.

I think cycling has something to do with this, your shoulders stay where they are in relation to the bars, an your neck does all the looking around.

I was blown away by the knowledge, skill and sensitivity of the osteopath, and the fact that I haven’t had a single relapse in 4 years since my single vist to him.

Hope some of that helps!

Could be that an equally skilful chiro or physio could have sorted me out. Turns out this guy is very well regarded professionally, I’ve recommended him to friends who’ve had very successful treatment from him too.

He’s been doing it a while, and I’m sure if he’d started his training in a different place, he’d have found his way to a similar understanding of the body and set of techniques that he uses as an osteopath.