Is Your Back Pain Stemming From Your SI Joint?

Did you ever know that you had a sacroiliac joint in your body? If no, then it would be quite hard for you to find out how much you use it move around and perform your daily activities.

 

Basics of Sacroiliac Joint Physical Therapy

 

Coming to the fact, you have two sacroiliac joints. Basically, they connect your pelvis with the lower part of your spine. Unlike most knee and hip joints, the sacroiliac rotates and tilts only slightly and that allows it to do its primary job: stabilizes and supports your pelvis, helps to transmit the weight of your upper body to your legs, and also acts as a shock absorber when you walk or run.

 

If your sacroiliac joint becomes unstable, it leads to lower back pain. However, if it becomes too rigid, it can become a source of lower back pain. In addition to lower back pain, sacroiliac joint problems might also cause pain in the hips or groin, as well as pain that radiates into the buttock and possibly goes down along the path of the sciatic nerve called sciatica.

 

How Your Physical Therapist Can Determine If Your SI Joint Is Causing Your Pain?

 

Your physical therapist can use different methods to determine whether your back pain is originating from your lumbar spine or from your sacroiliac joint. So if you have low back pain, you might benefit from working with a physical therapist to determine the cause of your problem and to relieve your pain. Following can be the sources of low back pain:

 

• Lumbar discs
• Facet joints
• Low back muscles
• Vertebral bodies
• Sacroiliac joint

 

So with various different structures that account for back pain, it becomes a daunting task to determine the exact cause of pain.
If Sacroiliac Joint is causing pain?

 

When seeing your physical therapist for back pain treatment, your therapist might doubt your sacroiliac joint as a cause of your symptoms. And if your sacroiliac joint is causing pain, there are a few symptoms that will help your physical therapist make a precise diagnosis:

 

• Generally the symptoms arise as a result of trauma like a fall or accident
• You will feel the pain on one side of the back
• You will not feel the pain above the lumbar 5 level
• There will be no midline back pain and pain does not crosses over to the other side.

 

If you experience these symptoms, your physical therapist might suspect sacroiliac joint dysfunction as the cause of your back pain. But this suspicion is confirmed by performing SI joint provocation tests. Such provocation tests are designed to stress your sacroiliac joint, and they show if your sacroiliac joint is causing your back pain.

 

In all there are about seven sacroiliac joint provocation tests, and when at least three of them account for pain, the sacroiliac joint is considered as a cause of your back pain.

 

SI Joint Treatment And SI Joint Physical Therapy

 

If your physical therapist finds out that your sacroiliac joint is the cause of your back pain, you must immediately get started on your SI Joint Treatment procedures. These include:

 

• Using sacroiliac joint belt in order to control excessive motive around your joint.
• With the help of exercises, you can stabilize your sacroiliac joint.
• Applying the kinesiology tape to the sacroiliac joint
• Use of ice or heat for pain relief
• Using PT modalities in order to reduce inflammation and pain.

 

The major goals of a physical therapist for SI Joint Treatment is to restore the normal position of the joint and to make the joint stable in order to prevent future problems with it. Howver, be sure to see a physical therapist that specializes in SI Joint Physical Therapy…. not all physical therapists can treat SI Joint Pain Equally.

 

Click here to inquire about cost and appointment availability for SI Joint Pain.

 

 

 

 

Did you ever know that you had a sacroiliac joint in your body? If no, then it would be quite hard for you to find out how much you use it to move around and perform your daily activities.

 

Basics of Sacroiliac Joint Physical Therapy

 

Coming to the fact, you have two sacroiliac joints. Basically, they connect your pelvis with the lower part of your spine. Unlike most knee and hip joints, the sacroiliac rotates and tilts only slightly, and that allows it to do its primary job: stabilizes and supports your pelvis, helps to transmit the weight of your upper body to your legs, and also acts as a shock absorber when you walk or run.

 

If your sacroiliac joint becomes unstable, it leads to lower back pain. However, if it becomes too rigid, it can become a source of lower back pain. In addition to lower back pain, sacroiliac joint problems might also cause pain in the hips or groin, as well as pain that radiates into the buttock and possibly goes down along the path of the sciatic nerve called sciatica.

 

How Your Physical Therapist Can Determine If Your SI Joint Is Causing Your Pain?

 

Your physical therapist can use different methods to determine whether your back pain is originating from your lumbar spine or from your sacroiliac joint. So if you have low back pain, you might benefit from working with a physical therapist to determine the cause of your problem and to relieve your pain. The following can be the sources of low back pain:

 

• Lumbar discs
• Facet joints
• Low back muscles
• Vertebral bodies
• Sacroiliac joint

 

So with various different structures that account for back pain, it becomes a daunting task to determine the exact cause of pain.
If Sacroiliac Joint is causing pain?

 

When seeing your physical therapist for back pain treatment, your therapist might doubt your sacroiliac joint as a cause of your symptoms. And if your sacroiliac joint is causing pain, there are a few symptoms that will help your physical therapist make a precise diagnosis:

 

• Generally, the symptoms arise as a result of trauma like a fall or accident
• You will feel the pain on one side of the back
• You will not feel the pain above the lumbar 5 level
• There will be no midline back pain and pain does not cross over to the other side.

 

If you experience these symptoms, your physical therapist might suspect sacroiliac joint dysfunction as the cause of your back pain. But this suspicion is confirmed by performing SI joint provocation tests. Such provocation tests are designed to stress your sacroiliac joint, and they show if your sacroiliac joint is causing your back pain.

 

In all, there are about seven sacroiliac joint provocation tests, and when at least three of them account for pain, the sacroiliac joint is considered as a cause of your back pain.

 

SI Joint Treatment And SI Joint Physical Therapy

 

If your physical therapist finds out that your sacroiliac joint is the cause of your back pain, you must immediately get started on your SI Joint Treatment procedures. These include:

 

• Using a sacroiliac joint belt in order to control excessive motive around your joint.
• With the help of exercises, you can stabilize your sacroiliac joint.
• Applying the kinesiology tape to the sacroiliac joint
• Use of ice or heat for pain relief
• Using PT modalities in order to reduce inflammation and pain.

 

The major goals of a physical therapist for SI Joint Treatment is to restore the normal position of the joint and to make the joint stable in order to prevent future problems with it. However, be sure to see a physical therapist that specializes in SI Joint Physical Therapy…. not all physical therapists can treat SI Joint Pain Equally.

 

To learn more about how we can help you at Back in Motion Physical Therapy & Performance click here.

 

Click here to inquire about cost and appointment availability for SI Joint Pain.

 

 

 

 

About Author: Dr. Scott Gray

 

Dr. Scott Gray is an internationally recognized and expert physical therapist specializing in sport, athletic, and back and neck injuries. He is the inventor of a revolutionary form of treatment called the GRAY METHOD. This type of treatment unlike others, addresses the CAUSE rather than just your SYMPTOMS with a full body approach. For more information on how to ease or overcome your injury, go to