Back Pain

Back pain is the most common reason people visit a chiropractor — and one of the most commonly mismanaged conditions in medicine. Most cases don't need imaging, surgery, or long-term medication. They need someone to find what's actually driving the pain and fix it.

Why Your Back Hurts

Back pain has dozens of possible causes: muscle strain, joint dysfunction, disc herniation, nerve compression, sacroiliac joint problems, poor movement patterns that load the spine wrong. In most cases, the painful spot isn't the only problem — it's where the breakdown is expressing itself. The actual source is somewhere else in the movement chain.

That's why treating the symptom alone — whether with medication, heat, or even generic chiropractic — rarely produces lasting results. You need an assessment that maps the whole movement system, not just the hurting part.

How We Approach Back Pain at Twin Tiers

Dr. Britt uses the Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA) to identify exactly where your movement is breaking down. The assessment is systematic — it looks at how you bend, rotate, squat, and load your spine in controlled patterns that reveal which joints aren't moving, which muscles aren't firing, and which compensation patterns have built up over time.

Treatment then targets those root causes: chiropractic adjustments to restore joint motion, FAKTR soft-tissue work to release fascial restrictions, cupping to decompress chronically loaded tissue, and movement guidance to keep you from recreating the problem between visits.

Common Back Conditions We Treat

• Lumbar disc herniation — often producing leg pain, numbness, or weakness in addition to back pain
• Sacroiliac joint dysfunction — frequently mistaken for hip or lower back muscle pain
• Facet joint syndrome — sharp, localized pain that worsens with extension
• Muscle strain and spasm — acute injury or chronic overload
• Postural back pain — from sitting, driving, or repetitive work positions
• Post-surgical back pain — conservative management after fusion or discectomy

A Note on Chronic Back Pain

If you've had back pain for months or years, we won't promise a quick fix — because that would be dishonest. Chronic pain involves tissue changes, movement adaptations, and sometimes nervous system sensitization that take consistent work to resolve. What we will promise is an honest assessment, a clear plan, and care that's actually aimed at the source of the problem rather than temporary relief.

When to Come In

Most back pain is not an emergency. But you should be evaluated promptly if you're experiencing numbness or weakness in the legs, loss of bladder or bowel control, or back pain following trauma. For everything else, sooner is better — the longer movement dysfunction sits, the more compensation patterns build up around it.