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How To Cope With Lower Back Pain

Low Back Pain: What You Can Do

Coping with chronic back pain

Listen to your body. If a certain movement or exercise causes pain, stop and pay attention. Discuss with your doctor or other health care professional what movements are safe for you to do. Here are a few reminders about what you can do to protect your back:

Rest, but not too much. In most cases, it’s best to not stay in bed for more than a day or two after an acute injury. If you stay in bed longer than this, your muscles start to lose strength and their ability to support your back. Stay as active as you can, while continuing to listen to your body’s signals.

Sit and stand safely. What are the positions you’re in most of day? Whether at work or home, are you doing everything you can to protect your low back with good posture? You’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating: Good posture is critical. Sit or stand with your back aligned imagine a line from your ears through your hips. Try to catch yourself when you’re slouching.

Here are some other things to remember:

Lift and move safely. Change positions often. If you have a desk job, for example, be sure to get up, move around, and stretch every hour. Gently arch your back. Need a reminder to move? Set an alarm on your phone or computer. When doing activities like cleaning, weeding, or vacuuming, remember to keep the curve in your lower back as much as you can.

Whether you’re lifting your child or a bag of groceries, use these lifting tips as a guide.

Everyday Tips For Chronic Back Pain

Your back pain could get better, and soon. There are many treatments that could help, from physical therapy to small but strategic changes in your daily routine. Even your breathing might make a difference!

First, ask your doctor what might be the cause of your back pain and how to treat it. They might recommend physical therapy or occupational therapy.

Next, add in these nine everyday habits:

1. Use your breath. When the pain kicks in, itâs easy to tense up. Instead, try to breathe deeply. You may want to visualize the breath going to the area that hurts. This will help you relax. You can also try other stress management techniques, including meditation.

2. Rethink your good days. Itâs great to feel better. But you may feel tempted to do a lot of stuff to make up for the times you werenât able to. So ask yourself, “Are my goals realistic?” Pace yourself. Itâs one of the keys to getting things done without a pain backlash.

3. Challenge yourself physically. Are you taking it too easy? If you think that you canât be active because of your back pain, thatâs understandable but misguided. Activity helps — as long as itâs not too hard, too long, or too much. Exercises that strengthen your back and abdominal muscles can help prevent injury. Ask your doctor or physical therapist whatâs best for you.

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Acute Low Back Pain Often Resolves With Self

Low back pain is one of the most common disorders in the United States. Approximately 80 percent of people will experience at least one episode of low back pain in their lifetime.

Most low back pain is mechanical in nature, meaning the pain is triggered by movement of the spine and the source of pain may involve the intervertebral discs, vertebrae, facet joints, nerves, or soft tissues. Less frequently, it may be due to an underlying medical condition.

According to the National Institute of Health, most low back pain is acute, or short-term, lasting a few days to a few weeks. With self-care, which includes a short period of rest, heat and cold therapy, exercise, stress relief, and over-the-counter pain medication, this pain tends to resolve without loss of function.

Acute pain lasts less than 4 weeks, whereas subacute pain lasts between 4 and 12 weeks. Approximately 20 percent of people with low back pain develop chronic low back pain .

Those with chronic low back pain experience persistent symptoms, even after an initial injury or underlying cause of pain has been treated.

Lack Of Physical Activity

Keeping active the best way to deal with low back pain

Not getting enough exercise is another major factor that makes people with COPD more prone to back pain. This is a risk for patients with advanced COPD, in particular, who often find it difficult to stay active because of their severe physical and respiratory symptoms.

Not getting enough physical activity causes your muscles to break down and can even weaken your bones and joints. It also hurts the flexibility of your back, which can cause stiffness and pain when you move.

Unfortunately, many people avoid exercise when they have back pain, which can end up making it even worse. This can start a vicious cycle where lack of physical activity causes back pain, and untreated back pain can causes patients to avoid physical acitivity even more.

Patients that live too sedentary a lifestyle can also develop disuse syndrome, a disorder that stems from not using your body enough. It can lead to back pain, other chronic pains, cardiovascular disease, and mental disorders like anxiety and depression.

One of the most direct ways that COPD can cause back pain is through chronic inflammation. This happens when your immune system’s inflammatory response stays active all the time, which is a very common symptom of COPD.

Inflammatory back pain gets worse when you don’t move around for long periods of time and improves with movement and exercise. It doesn’t get better with rest and tends to be more severe in the morning after you’ve been lying in bed all night.

Recommended Reading: How To Relieve Bulging Disc Pain In Back

Enhance The Kinetic Chain

The jaw dropping bioengineering of the human body provides many answers to why we get injured. This is most apparent in the Joint By Joint Theory, popularized by Grey Cook and Michael Boyle. This theory states that joints alternate between mobility and stability as their primary function. The lumbar spine is no exception. It primarily serves as a set of stability joints, and is surrounded by the thoracic spine and hips, which are primary mobile joints.

To get our bodies back to equilibrium, a strong prehab-rehab emphasis must be placed on stabilization of the lumbar spine, which we will cover later, and mobility work for the thoracic spine and hips.

Putting a focused effort on increasing hip mobility and range of motion can be manipulated by the positioning of the spine in movement. While your primary goal of training is protecting the spine, keeping it in a vertical position decreases the likelihood of buckling and reinjuring yourself.

As your spine stays vertical, as it was designed to do in foundational single leg movements, more range of motion of the hips into flexion and extension will be needed to get the job done. Shakira says it best, the hips dont lie they are the true intermediate joints of the body, so improve their function first.

Why Chronic Back Pain Is Connected To Your Head

When your physical movement is limited, this can cause psychological distress, and the psychological distress can, in return, worsen the pain. Your personal health beliefs and coping strategies can influence both your level of distress and course of the pain. For instance, if you are anxiety-prone, expect the worst, and have catastrophic thinking, this can make the pain far worse. Thats because those psychological vulnerabilities can change your brain and intensify the pain.

Often, if you have these pre-existing psychological attitudes, you also have abnormalities in the regulation of your brains chemistry , and the usual brain functions in emotional control, anxiety, and attention are also disrupted. As a result, you cant control your distress your become anxious you expect the worst and you cant focus on anything else. The pain becomes all-consuming.

But its not just pre-existing attitudes that worsen back pain. The pain itself can rewire your brain. When pain first occurs, it impacts your pain-sensitivity brain circuits. But when pain lasts, the related brain activity switches away from the pain circuits to circuits that process emotions. Thats why emotions like anxiety often take center stage in chronic back pain. And its why emotional control becomes that much more difficult.

Read Also: How To Get Relief From Bulging Disc In Lower Back

Injections And Other Procedures

If you have severe sciatica, your doctor may suggest an epidural injection. Epidural injections contain a local anaesthetic and steroid to relieve pain and reduce inflammation. Theyre only recommended for sciatica and not non-specific lower back pain.

If your back pain is chronic and other treatments havent helped, your doctor may suggest a procedure called radiofrequency denervation. Its only suitable for certain types of back pain. Your doctor will refer you to a specialist to assess whether it would help you.

Daily Habits To Stop Back Pain

How to Fix Your Lower Back Pain for Good

10 daily habits to stop back pain

Although determining the cause of back pain can be complicated, there are many different actions you can take to help alleviate your back pain or prevent it from getting worse. Its all about relieving pressure, reducing strain, protecting your spine, and strengthening your muscles. Changing a few daily habits can help you maintain a healthy, pain-free back for a long time.

Also Check: Can Corsets Help With Back Pain

/ Positions For Sex With A Bad Back

Is back pain messing with your sex life? Do you find that the prospect of intimacy causes anxiety and when attempted it causes pain, this will have an obvious consequence to any form of romance or intimacy. Your partner may also be concerned that he or she may be causing pain and this too may have a negative impact. You may also find that in the event you are taking strong pain relief medication this too has an impact on libido and will feature low on the priority list of things to be overcome.

However, there is a lot of good advice for couples, both online and agencies offering support for those who wish to continue with sexual relations. For couples who are nervous about exploring what is possible and what may be agony will also have a lot of information at their fingertips.

Healthline offer visuals and guides with explanations. I found this website to be most informative and offer considered and well researched views and articles. I have included the Healthline.com link which takes you directly to the relevant pages where you can find useful suggestions and animated images,

They suggested several positions which will be less strain for both parties without additional weight on the back. Whichever position you try, just keep it gentle and slow. You can add pillows or other types of support and trying a new position maybe all that it takes to make lovemaking something to look forward to and not dread.

Possible Positions You Could Try:

  • Doggy Position
  • Missionary

Please Fill In The Form Below And Talk To Your Doctor About It

  • Pain

    On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being no pain at all and 10 being the worst pain, my goal for pain is _____ out of 10.

    My current pain on average is ______ out of 10.

  • Function

    My goal for activity is :

    ______________________________________

  • My quality of life would be improved by:

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    Other Therapies For Chronic Pain

    So far, we’ve looked at a lot of different methods that you can use to specifically target back pain caused by COPD. However, there are also a variety of effective techniques for treating chronic pain in general that can be useful for treating chronic back pain.

    These techniques can help relieve physical pain, muscle tension, and help you manage the psychological aspects of living with chronic pain. You can use them as an alternative or in combination with other pain medications and treatments.

    Too much stress can do devastating things to your body and mind. It can cause physical pains, chronic inflammation , and cause serious mental disorders like depression.

    As a result of these effects, chronic stress can both cause chronic back pain and make your back pain more severe. Over time, it can even rewire your brain to make it more sensitive to pain, amplifying any chronic pains you experience.

    That’s why, if you suffer from COPD, it’s so important to look after your mental well-being and find healthy ways to manage stress. There are many ways to do this, including therapy, healthy lifestyle changes, and seeking support from family and friends.

    To learn some helpful techniques for keeping stress under control, visit our guide on reducing stress and anxiety from COPD here. You’ll find a plethora of practical methods you can use to relax, cope, minimize stress, and get rid of the major stressors in your life.

    Range Of Motion Is Dictated By Spinal Position

    How to deal with back pain while running (1)

    To successfully train through lower back pain, you must accept the fact that pain changes everything. From an activation, mechanics and motor control perspective, your body is compensating to stay out of pain. Even without direct stresses placed on your Achilles Heel, your neurological system is on overdrive.

    The way we train through pain is to simplify and perfect foundational movement patterns while stabilizing the shit out of the core, hips and shoulders. Core activation, thoracic spine stiffness, and efficient dynamic hip stability will protect your spine allowing continued recruitment of large amounts of lower body motor units necessary for growth and strength gains.

    Protect your back by keeping your ribs down and in a neutral position. Owning your rib posture will position the core muscles for optimal activation, thus further stabilizing the spine.

    Another technique to stabilize the lumbar spine is to tap into Mother Natures weightlifting belt. By tensioning the broadest fascial layer in the body the thoracolumbar fascia , the spine is placed in a more neutral alignment. Fire off prime movers that connect to the TLF, including the glutes and the lats, to generate more tension around your mid section. With enough tension, you will live to lift another day.

    Also Check: What Can Cause Extreme Lower Back Pain

    Ways To Manage Low Back Pain At Home

    Back pain is one of the most common physical ailments. Studies show that eight in 10 Americans have back pain at some point in their lives, usually in the lower back.

    Your might have sprained it while working in the yard or cleaning house. Or your back might hurt from an old sports injury or a chronic condition such as arthritis or ankylosing spondylitis.

    Sudden or severe back pain should be checked by a doctor or a physical therapist. That also goes for pain that wonât go away.

    But sometimes you can treat nagging pain and discomfort on your own.

    Wilson Ray, MD, chief of spine surgery for the Department of Neurological Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, says home remedies â tend to be better when they’re combined than alone.â

    Preventing Back Pain Tips For A Healthy Back

    What we do day to day is very important to help keep us healthy and prevent back pain.

    • Keep active regular exercise improves health and reduces recurrent back pain. Try to get at least 150 minutes of moderate or intense physical activity a week.
    • Sleep well.
    • Manage your stress and anxiety levels.
    • Dont smoke because nicotine decreases blood flow to your back. Back pain is more common and recovery is slower in smokers.
    • If you have recurring back pain, the following may help:
    • exercise regularly people who do regular exercise have less back pain than those who are inactive
    • aim for a weight within your healthy range
    • manage stress and mood
    • ask your physiotherapist or health provider to explore with you the types of movements and activities that are best for you.

    Recommended Reading: What To Do If I Have Lower Back Pain

    Understanding Back Pain And Copd

    Back pain is a very general symptom that can have a variety of different causes. But if you have COPD, your back pain could be directly or indirectly caused by your disease.

    COPD-related back pain tends to be chronic and also tends to affect the lower back. In fact, research shows that more than forty percent of people with COPD experience chronic lower back pain.

    COPD patients can suffer from any type of back pain or a combination of multiple kinds at once. Here is a quick overview of the main types of back pain and how to recognize them.

    Acute back pain is usually defined as short-term back pain lasting for less than six weeks. It is usually caused by injury or trauma and resolves relatively quickly.

    Many people feel acute back pain as a sharp pain or dull ache. The pain can be minor or it can be severe enough to affect your daily life, making it difficult to move, work, and sleep.

    Pelvic Clock Exercise Device

    How to Deal With Back Pain After Delivery

    This is a portable stretching aid, mainly for the hips and lower back. It is easy to travel with and can be used before or after a flight for stretching, as well as while youre on the plane. Inventor Yana Blinova, MS, recommends using it as support under the coccyx and says the round bottom is great for self-massaging your upper back.

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