The Secret to Fixing Chronic Low Back Pain for Good
There’s a secret to fixing most chronic lower back pain even if you’ve tried everything under the sun including injections, surgery, chiropractic, physical therapy and massage therapy. I’ve helped thousands of patients with chronic pain over the past 15 years with incredible success rates. We’ve even had patients who had a nerve stimulator get rid of their pain completely as well, rendering the nerve stimulator useless. Surgery for Lumbar disc herniations but still have pain? Sciatic pain or sciatic neuritis? Yep, this 99.9% is the reason why you’re still having pain and why the lumbar vertebrae herniated in the first place. Often this fix can help fix chronic weird aches, pains and injuries from the ribcage down to your toes. We’ve had numerous patients with chronic hip pain or knee pain that resolved once their SI was stabilized. We once had a 14 year old girl with chronic groin pain whose parents legitimately spent over $100K in testing and doctors trying to get to the root of her problem. In 2 seconds of testing the SI joint, I was able to show her parents that the SI joint was the root cause. Needless to say, many tears of joy followed.
The secret is your SI or sacroiliac joint. The SI joint sits all the way below your lumbar vertebrae and is formed by your sacrum and your hip bones. It’s not surprising that this area can cause so many issues above and below. The sacrum is considered to be the keystone for your lower back and pelvis.
A study showed that with SI joint dysfunction: 94% experience Buttock pain, 72% Lower Lumbar pain, 14% groin pain, 50% Lower Extremity pain, 28% Lower Extremity Pain below the knee. Bascially the SI joint can cause pain anywhere from your ribs all the way down to your toes!
Slipman CW. et al. Sacroiliac joint pain referral zones. Arch Phys Med Rehab. 2000;8 1:334-8.
Part of the secret sauce of resolving this common dysfunction is realizing that a tight muscle can cause dysfunction of joints above and below. If your butt muscles are tight, it will no doubt cause knee instability and lower back instability. The same with your ribs. Tight ribs can cause shoulder, neck, and lower back instability. So our first goal is to stretch our butt muscles and ribs.
One of the most common imbalances of the SI joint is an “Upslip” (figure B) where the hip bone becomes hiked up, creating a jamming of the SI joint and compression of the lumbar vertebrae.
We are going to fix that by strengthening the glute medius muscles which are crucial to pelvic stability. I call this exercise the Jane Fonda due to fond memories of seeing Jane doing this exercise on TV as a child.
The second exercise is strengthening the adductor or groin muscles which are the functional opposites of your glute medius or (Jane Fonda muscle) we just strengthened. While this exercise looks incredibly hysterical looking, it makes up for it with massive successfulness.
While there can be a few other ancillary muscles that need to be strengthened. These 4 exercises remain the core pillars of SI joint strengthening and stability. For detailed examples of how the exercises shoulder be performed as well as tips and tricks and amounts to do, please watch my YouTube video:
