Your Gut Could Be Fuelling Your Back Pain And a Little-Known Compound Called Butyrate May Be a Key
Your back hurts — so why are researchers looking at your gut? Because the trillions of microbes living in your digestive system may be quietly driving the inflammation behind your back pain.
WHAT IS THE GUT MICROBIOME?
Your gut is home to more microorganisms than there are stars in the Milky Way. This busy community of bacteria, fungi, and viruses — your gut microbiota — carries a huge collection of genetic information called the microbiome that quietly governs much of your health. Picture it as your body's own inner garden, constantly growing, responding, and adapting to what you feed it. When it's thrown off — a state scientists call dysbiosis — problems can flow throughout the body. According to Hernández-Valles et al. (2026), this microbial ecosystem acts as an integrated metabolic system, altering what you eat into active compounds that regulate your immune system, intestinal barrier, and inflammation levels throughout the body. (1) Chiropractic care at Hollstrom & Associates Inc is all about balance and reducing inflammatory activity and pain.
HOW DIET DRIVES INFLAMMATION — AND PAIN
Your fork is one of the most potent tools you have for shaping the microbial community living inside you. Research by Toydemir and Merey (2026) shows that diets high in fat and sugar drive a process called metabolic endotoxemia — where harmful bacterial byproducts leak into the bloodstream and trigger low-grade, body-wide inflammation. (2) That inflammation doesn't stay in your gut. It impacts your muscles, joints, and spinal tissues, making pain harder to resolve. On the flip side, fibre-rich, plant-based diets nourish beneficial bacteria that make compounds called short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) — including butyrate — which act as powerful anti-inflammatory signals in the body. (1,2) We can talk more at your next visit to Hollstrom & Associates Inc about butyrate.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR RECOVERY
Spinal car with chiorpractic addresses one side of your pain. But if your diet is quietly fuelling inflammation from within, recovery takes longer than it should. Prioritizing vegetables, legumes, wholegrains, and fermented foods as part of supporting a healthy microbiome isn't just good overall health advice — it's directly reinforcing the biological environment your spine heals in.
CONTACT Hollstrom & Associates Inc
Your gut and your back are more connected than you think. Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. James Cox on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he discusses the link between the immune system and chiropractic care with some emphasis on The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management.
