Why Some Back Pain Goes Away Quickly — And Some Doesn’t

Why does some back pain go away in a day or two… while other pain lingers for weeks or keeps coming back?

In this episode of Ask the Chiropractor, Dr. Brant Hulsebus breaks down the difference between temporary back pain and underlying spinal problems. Learn why some injuries heal quickly on their own, while others require more attention to resolve.

You’ll also hear why recurring back pain often follows a predictable cycle, how long-term stress and degeneration affect recovery, and why past results don’t always match what you experience today.

If your back pain keeps coming back — or takes longer to improve than you expected — this episode will help you understand what may really be going on.

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Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask The Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs. Let's dive into it. hello and thank you for tuning in. So as I'm out walking about here in Rockford, where I'm a chiropractor, a lot of people will come up to me in the public and say, sometimes the back pain goes away really quickly and sometimes it doesn't. What's the difference? How come things can't go away fast? And some things take longer, and the healing time depends on whether the Becasue was corrected or just the symptom was treated. That's the bottom line. So why does some back pain go away quickly and some doesn't? Let's dive into a little bit. Why did my friend recover in two days? But I've had this for months, right? Is that's what you hear a lot. I've had a lot of people come in and tell me, last time you dusted me, it went away. Right away. I got my adjustment. I feel great this time. It seems to be long, lingering. Are you making the right adjustment? Are you doing this correctly? Or , for me it's Hey, when your dad saw me, this went right away. Now, 25 years later, you're seeing me. Why is it taking so long to get better? Let's talk a little bit about this thing, right? There's two types of back pain, right? There's temporary stress versus a structural, mechanical issue. So let's talk about a temporary issue was I went to the gym today, I worked out, I overdid it. My muscles are a little sore. Last week I talked about how you can have a muscle strain from overdoing something versus actually having a joint misalignment, creating bigger problems. So we have a muscle strain, versus a spinal. Restriction from a misalignment, or we have starting to get, you've heard me talk about the right thing, reflex, like left and right, the righting reflex. Your eyes always stay level. So something, your lower back goes to the left. Something in your upper back will go to the right and balance yourself out. So there's all kinds of different things that Becasues back pain. And so different things take different times to get better. A temporary overload is a real easy way to have low back pain. When I left the gym the other day, my back was tight. It was sore. I was tired. I had gotten up early after only a couple hours of sleep. I worked out really hard. My muscles were fatigued. I got a little bit inflamed. I had a little minor sprain. Gave it some time, let it rest, let it heal, and it went away. So some back, the back pain goes away really quickly beBecasue it's just a small little strain or sprain or overuse. But why is it that some people have this and it keeps coming back? It keeps returning. It keeps happening over and over again beBecasue my back pain happened at one time and didn't have ever happen again beBecasue the next week I was more prepared for the workout. My body was ready for it and I didn't have any of the problems. But some people, it comes back over and over again. I even see them at the gym when they have to alter exercises because they know the pain's gonna come every time. Now we're looking at joint restriction from what we call vertebral subluxation. The spines misaligned creating stress. The stress has called the vertebrae, is a lock up. They're locked up in order for you not to create further damage to irritate the nerve any more you have to and to protect the disc at the same time. So what happens is you have the subluxation, you have one or two bones misaligned. Stress is being released, stress is traveling down the nerves wherever they go. And it's also talking to the surrounding musculature saying, don't let these move anymore. It is already not right. We don't need to be any more wrong. So you need to lock protect us. And if you don't see the chiropractor, you don't get that corrected as the stress reduces what you're currently doing to it. The lockup will ease up as you're not stressing it, but the first time you stress it'll come right back. So if I am carrying bags of salt to my water, softener that spot in my spine's, like, whoa. The load just increased. The stress just increased. We're gonna lock this up so it doesn't come back. So I go to lift those, oh, the pain's right back again. Or if I'm at the gym every time I do this lunge and I get this hip pain right on my hip flexor, the back already knows. This is a weak area. This is an area that's been protecting, and you just reintroduce the stress so it comes right back to protect it. BeBecasue the subluxation, the misalignment, the restriction's still there and it Becasue it to go away. Now as soon as you stop stressing that area, oh, I feel better now. Now it's not talking to me. Now I've had a good day. I load up again, it comes right back. So what happens is we get this flare up. because you stress the stress, you rest a little bit and you say, okay, I'm not gonna do that no more. The subconscious lets this defense down because you're not irritating anymore. You get some relief and then you go do it again. And it repeats. And this becomes this vicious cycle of recurring pain beBecasue if you're not stressing it. It is not locking up. It's not locking up. It's not compressing things. It's not restricting motion. It's not irritating the muscles because it's not locking up. because you're not stressing it. You stress it again, it comes right back. So as long as that occurs, you go to the chiropractor. The chiropractor is one of the few people that's really trained to dive into this and really look to see what's going on. And what we'll do is we'll do a chiropractic exam. We'll go up and down your spine, start feeling for these fixations, and if you feel the fixation, then we know we might have a problem. We'll do some nerve testing, reflexes and things like that. If we have to. We'll do strength testing side to side. If we have to. We'll take some x-rays of your spine. To see what's going on with your spine. If we see the misalignments, we know about compensate areas that this area over here is locked up, this area over here should be doing this. If we see those things, then we know there's probably an issue. Again, you might wanna check with your family doctor on this topic, but your family doctor's not trained to look for the things that chiropractor's trained to look for. And your family doctor's not educated in chiropractic. So they're gonna be a really bad person to ask advice on this because they don't know anything that we do. I'm friends with a lot of medical doctors and dos Dr. Of osteopaths. They really don't know what we do. They have no idea. I don't know how to do those surgeries though. Like I cannot do a spine surgery. When people ask me, what prescription should I take for this? I say, I don't know. That's not what I do. I'm not a medical doctor. You should ask a medical doctor that question. So that's what we're looking for When you come see us, we're looking to see, , only a chiropractor's trained to look for. We call it motion pal patient. We feel up and down your spine looking for the fixations. We compare that to an x-ray findings that we have. We look at to see how if you lift this leg and bend this leg, how do you move biomechanically? And if you lift this leg and don't bend the knee, if you turn your head to the left, turn your head to the right. What's moving, what's not moving, what's fixated and what's not fixated? We palpate, we feel the musculature in your spine. We want to see where this tightness is. If this si joints tighten, I can feel the pair para spinal muscles going from that hip joint all the way up to L one, L two. Then I push the L one, L two and it doesn't want to move. Then I go down and see a short leg and a long leg, and if I ask you to lift one, lift the other one, different things happen. And then if I look at your X-ray, I see the L one's crooked. And I asked you, how has your bowels been? Oh, I've had all kinds of issues with my bowels. That's where those nerves go. And I ask you if you have groin pain. You're like, a matter of fact, I do on one side, that's a screaming L one, L one, L one, L one. I'll go make the L one adjustment. But again, why do some people have this? And it goes away right away. Other people come back., Is it just a sprayer? Strainers actually a misalignment. Then when we look at the misalignments, after we do all those exams, we have to look to see the severity of the misalignment. If I look at your x-rays and you have a really bad SC curve, meaning that the spins are all kicked out to the side, you have a big sideways curve where it should be straight up and down. You've got bad disc, bad joints. Everything's got arthritis degeneration, degenerative disc disease. I love that name. Degenerative disc disease. It's not a disease, it's just a dehydrated disc, but degenerative disc disease and other things like that going, it's gonna be more complicated of a chiropractic case, so that's why some people go to the chiropractor once and they feel better. Other people go several times, and it takes a long time to get better. There's even more factors here than just a sprain and sprain. So if you have bad disc and you have. A bad curves in your spine and you're, you have arthritic growth, osteophytic formation, little bony spurs running your vertebrae. You're not going to heal as quick as somebody who has a good, strong, healthy disc. You're not gonna heal as fast as someone who doesn't have that big twisting curve to their spine. It's just different factors going on here. And I mentioned earlier, somebody came in and said, Hey, I saw your father 30 years ago. I came in here in 1997. Your dad gave me an adjustment. Last time I had this going down my leg, and it went away right away. And now it's 2026. I waited, was it 40, 30 years to come back and now the pain's back. What do you mean you gotta see me more than three times? Your father fixed it 30 years ago on three visits. Guess what's happened in those 30 years that joints degenerated. The disc is gone. osteophyte information has formed, and I don't know about most people, but after 30 years going from the age of 40 to 70, most people don't get a lot stronger. People get weaker. They, have some deterioration., Body undergoes changes of aging. It doesn't regenerate metabolism changes so that just that lower back, it's gonna take longer to get better than somebody who's athlete young and keeps coming. Yeah, maybe my dad did get you better in one or two visits back in 19. I'll just say 96, and now it's 2026 and you're expecting the same results. That's pretty hard for us to repeat, especially because Dad got you relief, right? When my father addressed you 30 years ago, he got the joint to moving and got you relief, but only three or four visits. There wasn't a massive correction, just a loosening the joint up. Usually somebody will come in for a while and do some maintenance and some stabilization exercises and try to literally reform that joint if you only come three or four times. I seriously doubt that joint was remodeled and fully repaired. It just. Got a lot better, got moving better and it slowly crept back in. Just like smoking one cigarette doesn't give you lung cancer, but smoking a lot of 'em do. So if Dad knew a problem 30 years ago, adjusted you, you waited 30 years to really follow up with it. What do you think happened that joint on that 30 years? Would it ever be possible for me to see you one time or two times and make it go away? Sometimes, yeah, sometimes you're just lucky. Sometimes that joint didn't do those things, but if that joints degenerative and there's been changes, it's gonna take a lot longer to get fixed. When somebody asks me how many times do I need to come see you? Those are the things we take into account. How bad is the joint spaces? Look how bad is the misalignment? Are there other commissary misalignments to go with this? Do you have all kinds of neurological deficits telling me it's been there for a long time? Do you have muscular changes? That tells me it's been there for a really long time? Have you altered your gait or your walking pattern beBecasue this problem's been with you such a long time? These are all things that would make us have to see you more have this. Take out a longer time period. So there's the factors, right? The first thing is this a quick fix or a long-term fix?, Is it a misalignment or is it just a sprayed muscle? Just a sprayed muscle? It'll probably go away really fast. If it's a misalignment, it's gonna take more. The next thing is how long has that misalignments been there? How long have you been waiting to see us? BeBecasue someone told you don't go to the chiropractor because it could be bad or you ask your medical doctor, they don't know what chiropractors do. So they told you not to go and now you've allowed it to degenerate to a certain point where now it's gonna take a lot. So why do some people get better quick, some takes longer. There's two different scenarios there. I wanted to go over both of them with you and remember, the only person who qualified to answer these questions are a chiropractor. So you have questions about chiropractic or chiropractic care, ask a chiropractor. If you're looking for a chiropractor, I recommend going to our national association chiropractic.org, chiropractic.org, and now you'll be able to find a chiropractor near you, or if you're in Rockford, Illinois, come on in, talk to me. I'll answer you straight. Thanks for listening.