Featuring Dr. Oliver Sanchez, DM
Pregnancy Lower and Upper Back Pain
Duration: 2 minutes, 2 seconds

So most women usually develop some low back pain during pregnancy.

The reason why they develop the low back pain is due to the structural changes that occur in the spine during pregnancy. So the main segments or areas that are being affected are the sacroiliac joints or SI joints, which are here between the sacrum and the iliam.

The other structures that are being affected are the facet joints of the low back, which are these here. So what happens is as the baby grows and develops the curvatures of the low back begins to increase, so these joints start to come back and kind of jam onto each other.

It also puts added stress on the sacroiliac joints here and they start to kind of move in this align. The reason why you have more movement in them as well is due to the hormones that get released. Usually when you get misalignments in the low back you start to get some deep, dull, achy pain.

Sometimes it can run down into the glues and posterior thigh and from time to time they can get shooting pain going all the way down to the ankle. Upper back, it usually also takes some stress as well so you are going to take some pain through the mid back, neck and shoulders,

So with chiropractic treatment we usually apply chiropractic adjustment. When we implement the chiropractic adjustments what it does is it corrects any misalignment in the joints due to the added stress from pregnancy.

Well the nice thing about chiropractic is it's safe and efficient for low back conditions or any back condition during pregnancy. It's a drug-free treatment so you know, not a lot of contraindications with it, especially in the low back during pregnancy.

The key thing to address it is if you get all the misalignments corrected then you're going to have decreased pain through that pregnancy, which is going to make it more comfortable for you. The other thing it's going to do is it's basically preparing the pelvis for delivery.

That's going to make everything easier on the day that you actually are going to deliver and it's going to decrease the pain.

You can go directly to your chiropractor. They'll be doing a full history and evaluation of your low back to ensure that you are a good candidate for chiropractic care.

Presenter: Dr. Oliver Sanchez, Chiropractor, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Chiropractor