Keys To Sciatica & Leg Pain Relief
Pain sucks! We get it. Maybe you're one of the thousands of frustrated patients in Northern Colorado who suffer with symptoms of chronic leg pain or sciatica on a daily basis? Are you tired of trying to mask the pain every day? You know you can't keep messing around with over the counter NSAIDS or addictive opioids. That's not a solution, but you're not sure how else you'd get through your day. Possibly you’ve tried exercises, stretches, massage, PT, Chiropractic, but you still struggle with the pain that just won’t seem to go away and you definitely would prefer to avoid surgery. Take a deep breath... it’s not too late. We see patients like this – like you – every single day in our office and help them get their quality of life back. Don’t give up.
Are you suffering with any of these spine-related conditions?
- Radiculopathy (Pain In The Front Of Your Leg)
- Sciatica (Pain In The Back Of Your Leg)
- Inability to perform regular tasks requiring basic strength that used to be easy
- Inability to walk long distances without aching pain
- Striking pain each time you change positions, i.e. sitting, standing
- Interrupted and uncomfortable sleep is the new norm
- Pain that seems to get worse as the day wears on
Are you tired of hearing that your only options are surgery, injections, or even more pills? Are you ready to feel better again?
We share in your frustration. We see patients everyday who have been through exactly what you are going through, which is why we've put together this educational report for folks just like you. We want to equip you with information and knowledge that will help you make good choices about managing your pain and assure you don’t get bounced around the “system” with no answers and no help.
We can’t look back but can move forward … with knowledge and a clear path to follow … providing you freedom from the pain that is stealing your quality of life.
Your Pain-Free Tomorrow Starts Today
Here's what you're about to learn...
- The 4 keys to properly promote nerve and joint healing and restoration to ensure the highest chance of a successful outcome to care.
- The truth about back surgeries – and why you may want to (you definitely want to) stay as far away from that option as you possibly can.
- Why your primary care physician / family doctor might not be (is definitely not) the best option for you seek advice from about your musculoskeletal condition.
- Why, humbly speaking, Rocky Mountain Spine & Disc in Fort Collins is your absolute best option for pain relief and restored function from these debilitating conditions. Since 2009, we've offered the most comprehensive treatment approach for sciatica, chronic leg pain, and other spine-related pain disorders. We've developed and perfected cutting-edge treatment protocols that provide the relief you’re seeking without the side effects of medications and the unavoidable risks of dangerous surgeries. No drugs. No surgery. No injections. Just results!
What’s Wrong With The Traditional Medical System? Why Do You Still Struggle With Pain At A Time Where Access To Technology and Medical Advancements Is At An All-Time High?
Today in standard allopathic and general practice offices, patients are frequently given expensive testing, but despite the fact that they may be able to determine what condition you have, the solutions remain ineffectively similar. Another prescription of narcotics, another injection, the standard “go get some PT” recommendation, or they simply send you in for surgery right off the bat.
The fancy tests are able to better describe WHAT is happening but they don’t lead to HOW to fix what actually CAUSED the pain in the first place. Do you really care if you have “degenerative discs” or “stenosis” if it doesn’t lead to you getting better treatment or actually fixing the problem without the most invasive procedure possible?
Many patients are simply given rounds of different prescriptions, series of injections, or pawned off to a PT after your doctor has “tried everything”. While it may help for a brief time, all too often it doesn’t keep the pain away and it’s not uncommon to hear that the injections didn’t help much at all and the PT even made them feel worse.
The Truth About Back Surgeries
Consider the normal your medical approach. It's not uncommon for people to come to us after having multiple series of injections or, in many cases, a back surgery that didn’t turn out as planned and they desperately want to avoid another one. Think about it. How many people do you know, directly or indirectly, who have had multiple back surgeries? 2, 3… we’ve even seen a patient who had seven! The craziest part is that this isn’t even uncommon. If surgery was so great, if it really “fixed” the problem, then why do so many people end up getting multiple procedures?! Before you make that leap, it’s best to know the facts.
Of the 56 Million Americans Who Have Back Pain, Only 5 Percent Need Surgery: http://www.orthopaedicsurgery.uci.edu/pdf/rosengoodhousekeeping.pdf
Charles Rosen, M.D., clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine. “An enormous number of back surgeries don’t give patients long-term relief,” he says. There’s even a term for what happens when an operation doesn’t improve a patient’s condition — “failed back surgery syndrome,” said to be the only diagnosis named for a treatment that hasn’t worked. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5913031/
Back surgery is a booming business. According to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), we spend more than $11 billion each year on operations to relieve back pain. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always buy relief.
In the U.S., more than 1,150,000 people go under the knife for spinal problems every year, a rate double that of most developed countries and five times that of the United Kingdom.
We strongly encourage you, don’t just blindly be led into the most invasive form of treatment there is without knowing full well what you may be facing after the fact. There’s a time and a place for surgery, no doubt. But it should always be the last resort.
Why Your PCP May Not Be Your Best Option For Advice About Your Musculoskeletal Condition
You’re probably used to seeing your primary care doctor for advice about any number of ills throughout the years. In most cases, you’ve developed a nice rapport with them and you trust them. The only problem with that is that when it comes to the majority of musculoskeletal disorders, they are not the expert. Not even close, actually. If you need a particular prescription or antibiotics, then they are definitely who you want to see. If you need a referral to a specialist for a visceral condition (GI issues, Endocrine issues, etc), then your PCP should be the first stop. However, if you are dealing with leg pain or sciatica then you certainly want to consider your other options first, as the most common treatment recommendations you will find in a primary care office include some combination of muscle relaxers, pain pills, rest, or the “I’m not sure what to do with you” referral to a physical therapist. Unfortunately, this standard of care is far too often woefully inadequate.
Check out this brief excerpts... (read the whole article yourself, if you should choose)
“When (patients) do consult a primary care physician, the physician may not be an expert or interested in the management of the musculoskeletal problem. Undergraduate medical education is inadequate in musculoskeletal conditions and many primary care physicians do not gain any further specific training in the management of these conditions. Many doctors will, therefore, have little or an outdated understanding of what can be achieved with modern treatment.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1754992/pdf/v063p00517.pdf
Accounting for 10-15% of all visits to a PCP; ” The education and training of GPs (general physicians) may not match demand from patients with musculoskeletal disorders, and this may stem from inadequate teaching at medical school, particularly in clinical skills, evidenced by a low awareness of musculoskeletal disorders amongst junior medical staff.” https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/41/5/503/1778912
The Majority Of Sciatica and Leg Pain Treatments Will Ultimately Fail Because:
- There is no true understanding of the cause and mechanism of the problem. In other words, they’re treating the pain and ignoring what caused the pain the first place.
- The treatments are not designed to heal the dysfunctional joint … they only attempt to minimize the symptoms while bringing side- effects with them.
There are four key elements to properly heal a damaged joint and the supportive soft tissue. Only with these four keys can you create real, lasting relief. Just like a recipe; if you leave out an ingredient or don’t put the right amount of the ingredients, you don’t get the result you are looking for.
At Rocky Mountain Spine and Disc, we have combined these four key elements required to heal the damaged joints and provide true and lasting relief.
Some treatment approaches include one or maybe two of these key elements in healing while completely ignoring the others.
Before we address the Four Keys however, the first step is always a proper evaluation. We need to determine the extent of damage to the spine or joint itself.
This consists of a comprehensive, detailed functional orthopedic and neurological examination to determine the extent of injury. Range of motion loss, sensory loss, vibration sensation, and reflex coordination must be performed to understand the full range of the problem.
The type, extent of damage, and location of joint damage are different for each individual and the first task at hand is gaining a thorough understanding of the underlying issue.
After determining the extent and exact location of your problem, treatment to heal a damaged spine or joint is going to require 4 more key elements that make up the "ingredients" to successful treatment. Predictable. Reliable.
Key Element #1: Reduction Of Inflammation
Painful, shooting, aching legs are ultimately inflamed. When the nerves from the spine and the soft tissue are inflamed, they become swollen within the joint and along the entire path they travel … leading to decreased function. When this happens you feel sharp pain, aching, and stiffness depending on the extent of the inflammation.
An extreme example of an inflamed joint is Gout. This is when a joint (in your toe, using this example) has a form of arthritis and may experience swelling, pain, and redness.
Proper treatment for leg pain and sciatica must have the ability to reduce inflammation both locally and systemically, meaning it needs to reduce the inflammation around the irritated area while at the same time reducing inflammation throughout the body.
Some treatments reduce inflammation either systemically OR locally but almost never are they able to reduce inflammation from both perspectives simultaneously.
Key Element #2: Metabolic Balance
You have to work on the issue not just from the outside-in, but from the inside out - metabolically. Your cells produce energy in a little power house called the mitochondria. It produces little molecules called ATP which your cells then burn to produce energy. If you are not producing enough ATP, your cells become tired and worn out … to the point that they can no longer perform their normal functions.
True healing of sciatica and leg pain requires an increase in these life-giving energy building blocks. There is no pharmaceutical medication available today that increases cellular energy. When you can stimulate the internal production of energy, you accelerate the healing process and provide rapid relief of your pain symptoms that are long lasting.
Key Element #3: Correcting Structural Imbalances
Do you remember the old song; “the hip bone’s connected to the…knee bone…” and so on? That couldn’t be more true and it is such an overlooked component of most sciatic and leg pain treatments. Not in our office.
When you understand the symbiotic relationship of how the back affects the pelvis… how the sacrum affects the hip… how the pelvis affects the sciatic nerve… Get the picture? It doesn’t take a medical degree to understand the importance of ensuring those neighboring joints are no longer contributing factor.
We've discovered a very specific set of gentle treatment protocols that, when delivered effectively and precisely, can dramatically speed up the healing process. Too much and you can actually hinder the recovery process and too little or the wrong combination of structural imbalance and you get no benefit and will never fully allow the joint to reach maximum healing.
This key to successfully defeating leg pain and sciatica is missing in 99.9% of all allopathic treatment approaches available today … either because they are completely unaware of the importance or they have not put the pieces together to give this element the attention that it warrants.
Key Element #4: Neuromuscular Re-Education
Key number 4 in successfully treating and beating leg pain and sciatica is resyncing the lumbo-pelvic joints, biomechanically, and the brain.
After restoring your lost function you must re-coordinate the feedback between the brain, the muscles, and the lumbo-pelvic girdle itself.
If the newly healed spine, pelvis, and brain are not on the same wavelength, you will continue to be at a high risk for re-occurrence of pain. This is why bouts of pain tend to be so chronic.
It Takes A Whole-Person, Functional Approach
After reading this far, it should be obvious that we don’t take the standard approach to treating leg pain and sciatica. We don’t give injections that come with risks and side-effects or prescribe cookie-cutter treatments that do little to improve the pain, aching, and stiffness you experience on a daily basis.
These conditions may be simple in presentation, but are more often than not a complex condition with a lot of moving parts – both literally and figuratively – and it takes a Big-Picture approach that utilizes the best science and technology have to offer to manage it effectively and create the relief you need and want.
We treat your pain from every angle, including every critical element necessary to promote healing of the joint itself and provide maximum symptom relief.
How To Use This Information To Ensure You Take A Straight Path To Long-Lasting Relief
As you can now see … successfully treating your particular condition is not going to just happen by accident. The pain meds you have been taking for months or years are not all of a sudden going to start working better. You need to ensure that the treatment path you take includes all elements of successfully defeating leg pain and sciatica.
What Do I Do Now?
Since you have invested your time in reading this special report and educated yourself on your condition – we invite you to click or call today to schedule. Simply complete the short form on this website or call us now at (970) 682-2667
We'll work together to determine if you qualify for our unique treatment program. You'll begin with a free consultation with the doctor.
Far too many patients ultimately undergo unnecessary surgeries and may even lose hope in ever getting lasting relief. The medical community just throws injection after injection, pill after pill at them resulting in side-effects without lasting relief.
It Doesn’t Have To Be A Losing Battle!
Pick up the phone and call us now at (970) 682-2667 to schedule your New Patient Special Evaluation, or simply complete the short form and we'll call you.
We look forward to the opportunity to help and can't wait to meet you.
To Your Health,
Dr. John A Smith, DC, BCN, CME
Dr. Carla Irven (Smith), DC, BCN, CME, CAC