If you are struggling to find some low back pain relief, determining what your painful triggers are and avoiding them can be really helpful in your recovery. It’s important to stay active doing the things that don’t trigger symptoms while avoiding problem activities. This allows your injured back structures a chance to heal.
For many, bending is a major trigger for low back pain. You may have pain with a small bend like brushing your teeth, a long duration bend like when you are washing dishes, or a loaded bend picking up your laundry.
Replacing your painful bending with hip hinging can allow you to stay functional with less low back pain. And by avoiding the pain of bending by hinging instead, you give your injured structures a chance to heal. Good hinging also helps develop good hip and back strength.
If you are struggling to do a proper, pain free hinge, don’t be surprised. It’s hard to learn a new activity when you are in pain. And if your low back muscles are really tense and guarding from injury, they may not like the new workload that hinging creates.
If you are having trouble learning to hinge for low back pain relief, give me a call at 802-489-7842, I’d love to help!
For more videos on injury prevention and recovery, check out my YouTube channel here!
This video is intended for education and demonstration only and is not meant to take the place of guidance from your Primary Care Provider (PCP). Don’t use this post/video to avoid going to your PCP or to replace the advice they give you. Get clearance from YOUR PCP before using the information in this video. Use at your own risk.
When you stretch for low back pain relief, do you twist from side to side? This is a common stretch recommended when searching for relief for low back pain on the internet. While your muscles really like this stretch, the joints and discs in your back do not!
In the video, you’ll see that there is a bony block at the end range of rotation in your low back. This amazing design acts to protect your spinal cord and discs! Your spine has about 15 degrees of rotation built into this design. But when you stretch into rotation, especially pushing into the end point, you are forcing your anatomy to move outside its designed range. Over time, this forced motion causes excessive compression and stretching in the facet joints contributing to arthritic changes. It also creates lots of shear in the discs which weakens the outer layer!
There are activities that benefit from creating as much rotation in the low back as possible like dance, gymnastics, and golf. But note that these sports are also associated with an increased risk of low back pain. Treating these athletes when they experience low back pain often requires teaching them to get as much rotation as possible from their hips and upper back instead of their painful low back.
So how do you relieve your low back pain caused by muscle tension or spasms if rotation stretching is not recommended? Get to the cause of the tension and treat that! Are you sitting for long periods of time? Maybe you’ll find relief rotating to a standing desk (pun intended). Lifting improperly? Poor lifting technique can be corrected so you can lift pain free. Correcting the source of the problem will allow your muscles to relax instead of guarding, eliminating your need to stretch for low back pain relief!
Need help getting to the cause of your low back pain? Give me a call, I’d love to help!
This video is intended for education and demonstration only and is not meant to take the place of guidance from your Primary Care Provider (PCP). Don’t use this post/video to avoid going to your PCP or to replace the advice they give you. Get clearance from YOUR PCP before using the information in this video. Use at your own risk.
Is it hard to get your arms fully overhead? Is standing without rounding a chore? This stretch addresses many of these and other mobility issues I often see in clients.
First, this stretch works to improve your overhead reach. Overhead reach can be limited by many factors including age related changes, poor gym training habits, or past shoulder injury that’s not been fully rehabilitated. If you can’t fully reach overhead, you’ll compensate by overextending through your low back. This explains why low back pain is often aggravated by working overhead in the gym or at home.
Second, your upper back is getting a great stretch into extension in this position. Gravity is doing all the work as you breathe and sink toward the floor. If you have problems with poor posture due to a rounded upper back (everyone), this stretch can be really helpful to restore mobility for better posture.
Third, by maintaining a good position in your low back as you sit toward your heels, you’ll get a good stretch in your hips. Our hips get tight with age and if we sit for long periods of time. This makes things like putting on your socks and proper squatting or lifting difficult. This position offers a gentle way to restore mobility in your hips.
When performing this stretch, there are a few areas you may struggle with. You don’t want to feel pinching in the top of the shoulders, or painful pinching in the front of the hips. And you don’t want to sit too far back towards your feet so that your low back goes into flexion or rounding. If you have tight knees this stretch might be a bit tricky. If you live in Southern New Hampshire and are interested in the work around for these problems, give me a call! I’d love to work with you!
Experiencing low back pain when reaching overhead is a common problem. Sometimes it can occur while you are reaching overhead and then quickly resolve. Other times it can cause a flare up that you have to manage for several days. This can be easy to relieve if you understand why it is happening.
As you reach overhead, your low back may bend backwards to allow you to reach as far as possible. This forces your lower back into extension, usually through the lower segments of the lumbar spine, L4-5, L5-S1. Unfortunately, these levels tend to be a problem area for many spines. Extension can be irritating to these segments if they are trying to heal from injury or are stiff.
Fortunately, there are 3 easy strategies for alleviating low back pain when reaching overhead. First, you can avoid this pain by avoiding activities that put you in this position. If you have pain reaching overhead then painting a ceiling, hanging drapes, or dusting your ceiling fan may not be a good idea until you master the next two strategies.
Second, roll your pelvis backwards and hold it there as you reach overhead. By holding this position, you prevent your lumbar spine from extending as you reach and therefore prevent pain. You can see a demonstration of this in the video above.
Finally, oftentimes you overextend through your low back when reaching as a compensation for tight shoulders or a stiff upper back. If you spend time stretching those areas so they move better, then the reach will come from these appropriate areas instead of being forced through our low back where it is painful. Here is a video to help you learn how to loosen your upper back for better reaching as referred to in the video above.
It can be challenging to learn how to roll your pelvis backwards while reaching overhead, especially if you are in pain. And applying appropriate stretching to your shoulders and upper back without aggravating your low back can be tricky. If you’d like help with this, please give me a call! I’d love to work with you!
This post is intended for education and demonstration only and is not meant to take the place of guidance from your Primary Care Provider (PCP). Don’t use this post to avoid going to your PCP or to replace the advice they give you. Get clearance from YOUR PCP before using the information in this post. Use at your own risk.
When you are diagnosed with knee arthritis, do you feel like you are doomed to a lifetime of knee pain? Do you start planning for your inevitable knee replacement? Believe me, there is hope! Understanding what happens when you have knee arthritis or degenerative changes can help you learn what may help to relieve your pain.
If you watch the video, you’ll see that knee arthritis can cause a thinning of the cartilage in the knee, breakdown of the meniscus or cushion in the knee, and create laxity in the ligaments of the knee. Amazingly, these changes don’t necessarily result in knee pain. Lots of studies demonstrate these changes to varying intensities in individuals of all ages that complain of no knee pain!
As an example, years ago, I had a much older patient (80+) come to me for shoulder pain as a result of playing tennis. As I was working with her shoulder, I noticed (she was wearing shorts) that she had terribly arthritic knees. They were large, knobby, and deformed. Her feet and knees were both pointing outward due to the deformity at her knees and her knees were stuck slightly bent. I could visibly see the dramatic changes in the structure of both her knee joints. I asked her during one visit if her knees ever bothered her. “No”, she answered. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason.” ?
What causes the pain you feel with arthritis? First, it might be inflammation in your joint. As inflammation is an irritant to the structures in the joint, this irritant can cause pain. Also, inflammation changes the consistency of the fluid in your joint. This fluid acts as the lubricant and primary nourishment to structures inside your knee. Changes in this fluid negatively impacts the health of the structures in your knee which can also cause pain.
Second, knee pain associated with arthritis could be from the friction between surfaces that are no longer protected by an adequate layer of cartilage. Fortunately, cartilage does not have nerve endings but bone does. So when bone is irritated by friction or abnormal pressure, it’s painful.
Third, as you can see from the video, the functioning of ligaments is negatively affected by arthritic changes. Ligaments are loaded with nerve endings. So when ligaments try to control the extra motion occurring in the joint, they can become stretched and strained which will trigger pain.
Understanding the changes occurring in your knee and why it may be leading to pain can help you discover ways to relieve your knee pain. For example, if inflammation is a problem, consider regularly icing your knee, wearing a compression sleeve to squeeze out the inflammation, and elevate your knee for 15-20 minutes above your heart every day.. Also, you can choose activities that help increase the circulation and nourishment in your knee while reducing the pressure on the thinning cartilage, like biking or swimming. And wearing a hinged knee brace can offer your knee some extra stability, taking the strain off the struggling ligaments.
There are many other interventions that can help arthritic knees feel better. If you need help managing your knee pain, give me a call! I’d love to help!
Note: This video refers to a “next” video about disk degeneration. You can find that video here if you are interested!
This post is intended for education and demonstration only and is not meant to take the place of guidance from your Primary Care Provider (PCP). Don’t use this post to avoid going to your PCP or to replace the advice they give you. Get clearance from YOUR PCP before using the information in this post. Use at your own risk.
