Joseph Combs, D.C.

With any health condition, most doctors agree an accurate diagnosis is important. But with low back pain, it seems that many sufferers postpone a visit to the doctor in hopes that it will go away on its own. It's no wonder many patients take this approach, since advertisements continually tell us that relief comes in [..]

Our sense of balance comes from a few different areas of the body. The inner ear gives us input on the position of our head and whether we are moving. This is combined with input from the eyes, which gives similar information. Most people think this is where it ends, but the spine is also [..]

One important concept in spine care is making the patient an active participant in their rehabilitation. It's important to change our sedentary lifestyles so that we not only get well, but also do things that prevent problems from occurring in the first place. But first, it is important to understand how back injuries occur. When [..]

If you watch much television or have paid a visit recently to a family medical doctor for low back pain, the information you're getting may be a flawed. For example, you've probably been told that back problems are not very serious and that the problem is quickly cured with simple treatments, such as going back [..]

This article discusses how anger and emotional expression may affect your back pain. For years, many medical doctors thought back pain was more of an issue in the brain than the spine. Research has shown this to be the case in many who are disabled from work. But mechanical sprain injuries of the spine are [..]

Back surgery is quite common in the United States with hundreds of thousands of operations performed each year. Sometimes these are laminectomies and diskectomies, and other times the spine is fused together so certain joints no longer move—a critical spinal function. The conservative medical approach/thinking to back pain is rest, medications, exercise, and physical therapy. [..]

Getting your health back after a spinal injury can be problematic if you do not approach it holistically. What is meant by the term holistic? In general, it is caring for the person as a whole vs. individual parts, and using techniques that assist different bodily systems. When dealing with a mechanical spinal problem, the [..]

For most of us, when we hurt the low back while lifting, the pain starts at the lower spine. It’s usually not a difficult connection to make—that if it’s the low back that is strained, it is the low back that is injured. But in some cases, back pain seems to creep up or come [..]

We want to do the things that promote and speed healing and not do the kinds of things that cause more harm or are destructive. A lot of us know that a little rest when we injure the back is okay, but staying in bed for a week might not be a good idea. Studies [..]

Scientists who have studied the architecture of the spine have concluded that it is meant for walking. This may come as a surprise since we humans do very little walking these days. Over the millennia,  our lives have moved from days filled with walking and searching for food to a largely sedentary existence. A good [..]