Stress and Chronic Back Pain: What’s the Connection?

Are you one of the millions who are affected by back pain? Do you ever feel like your chronic back pain is holding you back from doing the things you love? Have you ever had to miss work, school, or an important social event because your back was aching? Do you ever feel like your back pain is taking over your life? Do you ever worry about your pain getting worse? Have you tried everything to ease or eliminate your chronic lower back pain, but nothing seems to work? Did you ever consider stress to be the biggest trigger to your pain? How often do you experience elevated stress levels? 

How Stress Can Cause Chronic Back Pain

Stress is your body's natural reaction to the demands of everyday life. But when it's chronic, it can have a negative impact on your health, including your back. Here are some of the ways that stress can cause chronic back pain:

  1. Muscle tension

When you feel stressed, your body releases hormones that can tense your muscles and cause stiffness and pain in your back.

  1. Increased sensitivity to pain

Stress tends to make your body more sensitive to pain. This means that you may feel pain more easily when you're stressed.

  1. Inflammation

If you experience chronic stress can lead to inflammation throughout your body, including your back, which can also cause pain.

  1. Poor posture

When you're stressed, your breathing patterns change and your shoulders hunch, straining your back muscles and leading to pain.

  1. Reduced blood flow

During stressful times, your blood vessels may constrict, reducing blood flow to your back muscles. This can also cause pain.

A study involving 8,473 people found that severe stress can increase your chronic lower back pain risk to 2.8-fold. If you're struggling with chronic back pain, it's essential to identify your key stressors and find effective ways to manage them.

But if you're doing everything you can to manage stress and your chronic back pain is still not improving, there may be an underlying condition that needs to be addressed. A common issue is a misalignment in your upper cervical area, which can be resolved with Upper Cervical Care.

How Upper Cervical Care can help with chronic lower back pain

Your upper cervical spine connects your head to your neck. It comprises two bones, the atlas, and the axis, which are essential for maintaining proper alignment of the spine and head.

When these bones are misaligned, the rest of the bones can follow. This misalignment can put stress on your spine, starting from the top all the way down, affecting the surrounding areas, including nerves, muscles, tissues, ligaments, and joints. This undue stress can lead to pain, stiffness, and other symptoms.

Misalignments don't heal or resolve on their own, but the proper balance and alignment can be restored through Upper Cervical Care. This gentle, non-invasive approach is designed to correct misalignments of the atlas and axis bones using precise adjustments.

Correcting the alignment can relieve stress on the spine, which can lead to a reduction in pain, stiffness, and other symptoms. So, if you're ready to break the cycle of stress and back pain, explore different ways that work for you to lower your stress levels. Also, getting your spine alignment checked regularly by an Upper Cervical Chiropractor can help you get back to living a pain-free life.

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The content and materials provided in this web site are for informational and educational purposes only and are not intended to supplement or comprise a medical diagnosis or other professional opinion, or to be used in lieu of a consultation with a physician or competent health care professional for medical diagnosis and/or treatment. All content and materials including research papers, case studies and testimonials summarizing patients' responses to care are intended for educational purposes only and do not imply a guarantee of benefit. Individual results may vary, depending upon several factors including age of the patient, severity of the condition, severity of the spinal injury, and duration of time the condition has been present.

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