What Else Can I Do For Back Pain
Gently moving and strengthening the back will help to prevent it from seizing up and becoming more prone to injury. Devils Claw is an anti-inflammatory herb that helps to maintain the health of muscles and joints and it can be used to help ease pain and discomfort caused by back pain. If your back pain becomes unmanageable, make an appointment with your doctor.
Lower Back Pain In The Morning
Experiencing lower back pain in the morning upon waking is a common issue. This type of pain may develop due to reduced blood flow while sleeping or stiffness after long periods of rest. Once an individual stands up and starts moving around, the symptoms may start to subside.
Some people experience irregular episodes of morning back pain, while for others, morning back pain is a chronic problem. Persistent lower back pain is associated with physical stress, poor posture, and underlying medical conditions. To properly address this issue it is important to identify the exact cause.
Lower Back Pain Causes: 8 Reasons For Sudden & Chronic Pain
Sometimes, you know exactly why your back is hurting. Maybe you lifted something awkwardly and felt the pain right away. Or maybe your doctor has been warning you for years that your bad posture would lead to lower back pain.
But other times, the source of back pain can feel like a mystery.
“Your lumbar spine, located in your lower back, plays a crucial role in supporting the weight of your upper body. It’s also responsible for everyday movements, such as bending, twisting and coordinating the muscles in your hips, pelvis legs and feet,” says Dr. Kenneth Palmer, orthopedic surgeon specializing in spine surgery at Houston Methodist. “Due to heavy use, the bones, muscles, ligaments, disks and nerves found in your lumbar spine are quite susceptible to both injury and wear and tear over time causing pain in the lower back.”
Lower back pain symptoms include:
- Dull ache in your hips and/or pelvis
- Muscle spasms or tightness
- Sharp, tingling pain that starts in your lower back and travels down one leg
- Pain that worsens with sitting and quickly improves while walking
- Pain that is noticeably worse in the morning
“Typically, a person experiences some combination of these symptoms, which can develop suddenly or over time. In some cases, lower back pain can feel like it comes and goes flaring up now and then, but generally getting progressively worse over time,” explains Dr. Palmer.
Speaking of the various causes of lower back pain…
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Your Posture Could Be Causing The Pain
The way you hold your body when walking can play a major role in your comfort level and ease of walking. While good posture can result in little to no pain or stress, bad or inefficient posture can cause lower back pain and postural stress.
What are the Symptoms of Postural Stress?
Beyond lower back pain, if youre suffering from postural stress, you may also experience:
- Aches and pains in other parts of the body, such as the neck, shoulders, and knees
- Slumped or rounded shoulders
- Looking down at a cell phone while walking4
Can Correct Posture While Walking Prevent Lower Back Pain?
Maintaining good posture while walking may help prevent pain in the lumbar spine. Study the way you hold your body when you are walking. Are you following these steps?
Stand up straight, without leaning forward or back.Pull in your stomach and rotate your hips forward with your buttocks in.Keep your eyes forward with your chin parallel to the ground.
It is also a good idea to increase strength in your hamstrings and back muscles to help maintain good posture. Stress management may also help decrease postural stress.5
Other Conditions That Cause Back Pain In Older Adults
We often see a range of less serious but still painful spine conditions in seniors. Most patients with these conditions will not require surgery. Physical therapy, medication, injectable anesthetics, or a combination of treatments usually can control symptoms.
- Degenerative disc disease, which can cause whole spine pain, and lumbar arthritis, which usually causes low-back pain, commonly develop with age and are considered wear-and-tear conditions.
- Sacroiliitis is an inflammation of the joints that connect your spine and pelvis. This condition can cause pain in the low back, glutes, and upper legs.
- Ankylosing spondylitis is an inflammatory arthritis that causes patients spines to become inflexible, resulting in a continual hunched forward position and spine pain.
- We also check for adult degenerative scoliosis and kyphosis, spine-curving conditions that can result in back pain and weakness in the lower extremities.
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Why Is Lower Back Pain Worse In The Morning
Arthritis in just about any jointhips, knees, and ankles includedis usually worse in the morning. Thats because the inflammatory response continues at full force when activity is at a minimum during the night. During those hours, the inflammation builds up, causing stiff, painful joints in the lower back in the morning, and sometimes radiating into the buttocks and proximal thigh.
As you get up and move through the day, the inflammatory response lessens, and less inflammation means less swelling. So the painful joint becomes less painful, and the muscle spasms occur less frequently.
Your Back Is Fine During The Day
There are more issues than merely what happens in the morning. Which time of the day do you measure the quality of you day? Based on how much it hurts? Is it also the afternoon or evening? Is it even during the night?
The answer should be all of them.
If you believe that you are fine for most of the day and you dont put enough concern about the times when it does hurt, then you still are not seeing the bigger picture.
This comes from misunderstanding #1. What happens in the night or morning is affected by your day. Its usually all of the busyness of your day that is causing you to hurt in the night.
Read Also: How To Sleep When Having Lower Back Pain
Poor Posture While Sleeping
If you find theres nothing wrong with the mattress, scrutinize your sleeping posture. These are the ideal positions for sleeping. Are you adopting these when you sleep?
- Sleeping on your back: Tuck a firm pillow under your knees to maintain the natural curve of your lower back and to support the spine. The natural curve of your neck and the alignment of your shoulders, neck, and head should be supported by the pillow under your head.
- Sleeping on your stomach: Keep the spine better aligned by placing a flat pillow under the stomach and the pelvic area. Use a flat pillow to support your head or do not use one at all.
- Sleep on your sides: Tuck a firm pillow between the knees so that your upper leg doesnt move your spine out of alignment. This way, the stress on the spine is reduced, too. Also, pull your bent knees slightly toward the chest.
If you are already suffering from back pain, fill the gaps between your body and the bed while lying down by inserting small pillows in the gaps. When you turn to a different position in bed, move the entire body as one unit and do not turn or twist from the hips.2
Reasons You’re Waking Up With Back Pain
Lower back pain can be difficult to manage whether you have an active job or find yourself sitting at a desk all day, it can be uncomfortable and even debilitating if you cant perform certain actions without trouble. If your lower back pain is bad in the morning but eases throughout the day, it could be your kidneys suffering not your muscles.
Many people are unaware of where their kidneys are. The kidneys sit either side of your spine, just below your ribs. Often, those suffering with kidney pain will put it down to a sore back, when really they should be taking care of their kidneys and making sure they are well hydrated.
Unhappy kidneys can cause a lot of pain. If you dont make sure to stay hydrated then your kidneys will suffer, as their main role is to filter the blood and excrete waste products through urine. Without sufficient water, waste products wont be eliminated as effectively and various healthy issues can arise, such as recurrent urinary tract infections.
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Back Pain At Night And Ankylosing Spondylitis
There are two main categories of back pain: mechanical and inflammatory. Mechanical back pain results from problems with the way the different components of your spine work together. Mechanical back pain, such as from overuse injuries, poor posture, or a herniated disc, is the reason for the vast, vast majority of back pain cases.
On the other hand, inflammatory back pain occurs because theres a problem with your immune system attacking the joints in your spine, sacroiliac joints , and the entheses .
Back pain that wakes you up in the second half of the night is one of a few key signs that your back pain could be inflammatory and due to a disease like ankylosing spondylitis.
Patients often experience stiffness and pain that awakens them in the early morning, a distinctive symptom not generally found in patients with mechanical back pain, reports Medscape.
Its not common to have back pain so bad in the middle of the night that you cant go back to sleep, says Fardina Malik, MD, a rheumatologist at NYU Langone in New York City who frequently treats patients with ankylosing spondylitis.
Mechanical back pain generally feels better when you rest or sleep. You might have discomfort, but you should be able to sleep through the night.
Tips To Lessen Back Pain At Night
About 80 percent of Americans will experience lower back pain at some point in their lives. Depending on the cause which may include injury arthritis and chronic conditions like fibromyalgia symptoms range from dull throbbing aches to sharp shooting pains. If pain becomes too severe it can interfere with quality sleep leaving you feeling exhausted and depressed. Poor sleep can also disrupt the bodys natural healing process which can make pain worse and keep it from getting better.
Some people can sleep in positions that relieve pain. Others with nighttime back pain may feel like they cant find relief no matter what they do. For these folks pain may even worsen or flare up when they lie down. If this sounds like you and pain is getting in the way of sleep its time to try something new. These five tips can help relieve symptoms so you can get the sleep you need.
You may also consider seeing a pain specialist at Reid Pain Management.
Read Also: Why Is My Lower Back And Hip Hurting
Here Are A Few Other Tips That Might Make It Easier For You To Get Through The Day:
- Morning Stretching: Wake up your muscles and joints by gently stretching before you get out of bed. Bring your knees to your chest to get a lower-back stretch. Also, stretch your arms above your head and reach your feet in the opposite direction. Pay attention to the tight areas of your body, then talk to a physical therapist or doctor about the stretches that could help your situation.
- Core Strength: Building the muscles in your core can improve your overall body structure, helping to reduce the back pain you are experiencing. No, were not talking about hundreds of crunches each day because certain ab exercises can exacerbate the problem. A physical therapist can provide personalized recommendations, which might include planks, stretching, gentle cardio, and other tips to support the overall structure of your body.
- Medications: When the pain is intense, then medication can provide immediate relief to dull the discomfort. Talk to your doctor about over-the-counter medications such as NSAIDs or acetaminophen. For severe back pain, prescription medications can sometimes be used. But you need to be careful to avoid dependence on these pain relievers. Medication should be used as a short-term strategy until you can address the root problem.
Technically Ibp Causes Night Back Pain Not Morning Back Pain
The morning pain of IBP is actually a case of leftover nighttime symptoms, which wear off as you wake up and get moving. When the symptoms are milder, you will mostly sleep through them, noticing them only when you wake up. But these symptoms will usually be obvious while you are still in bed, as soon as you are conscious or even waking you up early.
In contrast, pain that you dont notice until you actually get up and start trying to move around is less likely to be inflammatory in nature. But these are rules of thumb only, of course theres always lots of exceptions in biology.
Doctors, do not actually try giving this advice to patients! Joke by 9GAG .
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If Youre Experiencing Back Pain Let Us Help You
At Spine Works Institute, we take pride in helping patients through safe and natural therapies. We have an entire team of physical therapists, chiropractors, massage therapists, and other healthcare professionals who are ready to assist you.
Call us at 616-0700 to schedule an appointment, or learn more about our practice here.
Main Causes Of Morning Back Pain
Why is back pain worst first thing in the morning, and what can you do about it?
I woke up with it is an amazingly common description of how low back pain started.
Why? Is sleeping dangerous? Probably not: waking up with back pain rarely indicates a serious problem. But both mornings and backs are unusually vulnerable to some common minor sources of pain.
This is mostly about chronic back pain thats at its worst in the morning, a common symptom pattern. People who are more or less pain-free during the day may still suffer for a while every day after waking up. But attacks of acute back pain are also much more common in the first few hours of the day see Steffens et al.2 and that phenomenon may be related to why chronic back pain tends to be bad in the morning.
Morning back pain is a tough problem to treat because most of it probably has several subtle chronic causes, but there may be some opportunities for treatment.
Is pain & stiffness your alarm clock? Do you bail out of bed early every morning with low back pain, neck pain & more?
Read Also: What Causes Lower Back Pain That Shoots Down Your Leg
The Most Common Causes Of Lower Back Pain Are A Strain Or Sprain
Whether you notice it or not, your lumbar spine gets put to work throughout the entire day.
Amid all of this work and motion, a lower back sprain or strain can result from an acute injury, such as one experienced while falling, lifting something too heavy or playing sports. A sprain or strain can also develop over time due to repetitive movements or poor posture.
“Straining a muscle or spraining a ligament are the most common causes of lower back pain,” says Dr. Palmer. “While they can be serious, these common causes of lower back pain aren’t long-lasting taking anywhere from a few days to heal or, at most, a few months.”
Your doctor can help you determine the particular course of self-care that can help heal your lower back pain.
“The treatment for a pulled back muscle or strained back ligament is fairly simple and can include pain and anti-inflammatory medications, muscle relaxers, ice to help reduce inflammation, heat to promote healing, and avoiding strenuous activity until the pain recedes,” explains Dr. Palmer. “The best course of care will depend on the severity of your injury as well as your overall core and lower body strength.”
If your lower back pain persists despite treatment, it may be time to consider other causes of lower back pain.
How Should I Sleep With Lower Back Pain
Poor sleep can impact every aspect of daily life. Waking from a fitful night of sleep can lead to grogginess and grouchiness during the day, which can lead to more chronic pain and a lack of sleep at night.
Its a vicious cycle, but there are a few steps to take, including evaluating your sleeping position and cleaning up your sleep routine.
Read Also: How To Heal Sciatica Back Pain
Do Morning Stretches In Bed
Simple stretching exercises can relieve back pain, and there are stretches you can do before you get out of bed.
For example, you can lie on your back and do a full-body stretch when you first wake up. For this exercise, stretch your arms and hands above your head as far as you can, with your legs and feet stretching in the opposite direction. Hold for a few seconds before releasing.
It may also help to stretch out your lower back. To do this, you can bring your knees into your chest and hold, wrapping your arms around them. Then gently rock from side to side.
Tip #: The Right Way To Get Out Of Bed
Lastly, make sure you are getting out bed properly. Unfortunately, the majority of people will sit up, twist their back to prepare to get into a standing position, and use their back to stand. This method is incorrect.
The proper way to exit a bed upon waking is to roll onto your side and use your arm to push up from the side-lying position. From this position, scoot to the very edge of the bed and get up using your legs, not your back.
Sleeping shouldnt be painful. It should be a time to relax. Implementing these aforementioned suggestions is a great way to decrease pain while you sleep and increase your odds of having a great nights rest.
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