3 Easy Steps to Fixing Lower Back Pain You’ll Wish You Knew Earlier

Whether your back aches after a long day on the go, from helping your neighbor move their couch, or sitting at your desk 8 hours a day, back pain is very likely to affect you at some point.  Lower back pain is one of the most common complaints a doctor hears and can be a result of arthritis, a slipped disc, or simply chronic overuse.  Whatever the reason for your pain, there are some things you can do to start yourself on the road to recovery.

1.    Work Smarter, Not Harder

Everyone has real life commitments and there are bound to be tasks that need to get done you know are going to aggravate your pain.  It might be cooking, cleaning, childcare, or sitting doing work at the computer – you are not alone, these are all things that commonly flare up people’s symptoms.

Take short, frequent rests.

What’s easier, running 5 miles in 1 hour or running 5 miles in 5 hours?  The answer is obvious.  Apply the same logic to things you find tough on your back.   By spreading it out over the course of the day you’re making it easier on your body and lessening the likelihood of a flare up.  Take more breaks and change postures frequently.

2.    Create an Environment for Your Body to Heal

 

Your body is remarkably resilient and can make extraordinary recoveries from even very serious injuries.  All you need to do is give it a chance to heal.

A little discomfort is acceptable, excruciating pain will slow your recovery.

Now there are a lot of factors that play a role in your pain, but ultimately it is one the best tools we have to steer us in the right direction.  If your pain functions as it should, you put your hand it fire, the pain tells you NO.  That’s the basic principle.

Pretend you’re going to your doctor complaining of a sore foot.  You really want it to heal but every day you choose to go home and kick the wall until you’re in agony.  Do you think anyone can fix it if you’re intent on kicking that wall every night?  Of course not!

There’s no amount of magic anyone can perform to undo the aggravation that would cause.  We’d simply have to wait for natural healing to occur.

What we advise is temporary activity modification.  All that means is you need to do 2 things:

1.       Identify what activities and postures aggravate your symptoms.

2.       Stop those activities and change postures soon as you feel more than discomfort.

By keeping your pain consistently low, you are increasing the odds that healing is occurring and you will slowly begin to enjoy the activities you so miss doing.

3.    Prepare Your Body for the Demands of Life

As your body heals you must slowly help it become accustomed to movement and loading.  This means gradually reintroducing the activities that once gave you pain. Start from the easiest and work up towards the hardest. Regular stretching and walking are a great way to start.  The movement helps lubricate the joints and prevents things from seizing up.  Stretching can help ease the tension off your back and get your joints accustomed to a greater range of motion.

How do you get your body ready to handle these strenuous activities? 

Through progressive loading of course!

Pretend you want to run a half marathon (21km).  How would you go about it?  Would you just wake up that morning and do it having never run before?  Of course not, that’s just asking for an injury!

You need to train for it.  The “training”, or rehab, starts off lightly and at what is appropriate for your level of ability.  This training acts as a stimulus and helps your body adapt to the demands you intend to put on it.  You gradually build your way up from 3km run to 20km runs, giving your body time to rest and recover in between.

When it comes to lower back injury, your physiotherapist should design a program for you to specifically target your deficits (read: weaknesses).  This program should become progressively more difficult (this is key!). 

If it never gets harder, how can you expect to be able to handle more?  It’s like thinking you’d be able to handle that half marathon after just running 3km all the time.

The more difficult it gets, the more strenuous activities you should be able to handle day to day.  The program continues progressing until you feel you can handle all life has to throw at you, pain free!