If you’re a teen with back pain, chiropractic care for teens might be the answer to your problem. Chiropractors use spinal adjustments and manipulations to treat musculoskeletal problems.
Chiropractic care is perfect for teens who are looking for an alternative treatment without drugs or surgery. Chiropractors specialize in restoring proper alignment of the spine so that nerve impulses can flow freely from the brain through the body.
How Common is Back Pain for Teens?
Back pain is a common complaint among teens; it occurs anywhere in their back, from the neck to the tailbone. An estimate of about 50% of kids and teens suffer from back pain. In addition, about 10% of them experience acute back pain, which hinders them from going to school or playing sports.
Chiropractic care for teens can help relieve back pain with various exceptional techniques that focus on the spine and joints to reduce pressure. Chiropractors often use a combination of these methods to improve health through reducing stress, improving flexibility, and providing relief from injury-related problems such as injuries or anxiety, etcetera.
Causes of Back Pain to Teens
Chiropractors have found that the many causes of these pains are due to misaligned bones in the spine. Chiropractic care for teens helps fix this problem and alleviate back pain for good!
Anxiety
Anxiety is a leading cause of back pain in teens and many other illnesses. Chiropractic care for teens can help with this by relieving the stress on their spine and joints, which will allow them to heal faster.
Injuries
Injuries are also common causes of back pain among teenagers, mainly high contact sports like football or lacrosse that require physical activity. Chiropractors say if your teen has had any injuries within the past 12 months, they should be evaluated immediately. It may have caused damage to joints in their lower back region that is causing some discomfort.
Chiropractic care for teens can alleviate these types of injury-related problems through manual manipulation techniques such as spinal adjustments, massage therapy, traction, exercises, and more. Chiropractors often use a combination of these techniques to reduce pain, increase flexibility, and improve overall health.
Lack of Sleep
A lack of sleep is also one common cause of back pain among teenagers. The hormones released during sleep are known to make you feel better if you’re experiencing some sort of discomfort or injury while asleep, such as backaches, cramps, nausea, etcetera. Chiropractic care for teens focuses on correcting spinal alignment, which will help your teen get a good night’s rest!
Poor Posture
Another leading reason for chronic back problems among teens is poor posture due to sitting at desks all day long with no breaks or exercise despite being required by their school schedules. Chiropractic care for teens can increase their flexibility, so they’re ready for all of those rigorous exercises required in gym class! Spinal adjustments from chiropractors can relieve pressure on the spine and joints, which will allow your teen to get into a better position.
Alignment Abnormalities
Abnormal alignment of the spine, which causes deformity, is another factor for back pain for teens. There are two types of deformities among teens, which are:
- Scoliosis: a deformity that causes an S-shaped curve to the spine when seen from the back.
- Scheuermann’s kyphosis causes a sharp bend in the spine when viewed from the side.
Symptoms
Understanding the signs and symptoms of severe back pain is crucial to know when to see a health professional and if the child needs a specialized imaging test. When children complain about their back pain, parents worry that their kids might suffer from acute conditions. Parents should look for these warning signs when their kids whine about the pain from their back.
- Night pain (especially pain that awakens your child from sleep)
- Constant symptoms of pain
- Symptoms of generalized illness (fever, chills, malaise, weight loss)
- The symptoms persisting beyond several weeks
- Present symptoms in very young children
- Leg pain, numbness, or weakness
The warning signs may not indicate a severe problem; however, they are good reasons for more evaluation, mainly if the symptoms have been going on for many weeks.
Benefits of Chiropractic Care for Teens
Chiropractors assist in alleviating back pain for teens through manual adjustment. Arranging regular visits with chiropractors help prevent back pain from developing among teenagers who have had no injuries or illnesses.
This way, there’s less chance of them having any type of injury or illness-related problems where medical attention is needed, such as surgery, etcetera.
Chiropractic care for teens should integrate within a routine health regime because it helps improve overall wellness, including mental health, through reducing stress levels and anxiety caused by accidents and other life events which may lead to chronic back pain.
# 1: Better Posture
Poor posture is one of the causes of teens’ back pain. Teenagers nowadays love sitting for extended hours while playing video games with their phones or in front of the computer. Sitting for a prolonged period leads to poor posture. Chiropractic care for teens is an excellent way to improve your teen’s posture.
# 2: Boost the Growth and Development
Chiropractic care for teens helps reduce back pain and boost the growth and development of kids. The growth of teenage life is at its peak, and chiropractic care helps them grow taller and broader. However, it doesn’t apply to everyone, but a regular visit to a chiropractor helps improve the wellness of the teens.
# 3: Strengthen the Back Muscle
While kids are growing and developing, it’s vital to make their backs strong, primarily when carrying heavy loads in their backpacks. With all the books and school supplies in their bags, it’s common for kids to complain of having back pain due to the heavy loads. Chiropractic care for teens teaches them how to carry their heavy backpacks properly to avoid injury to their spine.
# 4: Lifetime Wellness
Chiropractic care for teens is not a temporary solution to back pain but a lifetime holistic care. Chiropractors educate the kids and make them understand that chiropractic care should be a healthy habit. Since kids have regular chiropractic treatment, they will incorporate this into their daily lives, such as eating, exercising, maintaining proper posture, and preventing injuries.
# 5: Prevent or Heal From Injury
Teenagers are very active at this period of their lives. They join sports, and accidents or injuries are inevitable. Chiropractic care for teens helps prevent these injuries from getting severe because the manual adjustment aligns their misalignments and makes their muscles flexible to avoid acute harm.
# 6: Better Sports Performance
Chiropractic care for teens helps enhance athleticism. Kids who love partaking in sports should have strong and stable muscles to perform well in any sports they are joining. After playing sports, your kids’ tensed muscles and stiff joints will be relaxed and ready to play again through spinal manipulations.
# 7: Helps in Mental Wellbeing
Many factors cause teenagers to feel stress at home, in school, or even in society. In school, some kids feel pressure to achieve high grades. Furthermore, there is also peer pressure that they encounter. These factors lead to depression among teenagers. Chiropractic care for teens assists them in relieving stress and pressure and makes them calm mentally. In addition, since they are relaxed from spinal manipulations, they experience a better mood.
# 8: Overall Pain Management
Back pain is not a joke when it attacks, and parents worry a lot when kids whine about their back pains. Chiropractic care for teens is overall pain management because it targets back pain and all kinds of body pains, like headache, neck pain, pain in the hip, or knee ache.
The good news about chiropractic care for teens is that it’s non-invasive, so the kids have nothing to worry about unfavorable reactions typically happening with pain medications.
Spinal manipulation alleviates pain and prevents it, therefore making chiropractic care for teens a part of your kid’s holistic care to avoid severe harm or injury while performing in school or their daily activities.
Final Thoughts
If your teen suffers from chronic back discomfort due to the aforementioned reasons, they should consult a chiropractor ASAP! Chiropractors are experts in getting rid of all sorts of back problems, and there is no risk involved. Chiropractic care for teens is a safe alternative to surgery that’s been around for over 100 years.