Lower Back Pain: You Can Do Something About It.

One of the biggest worries I hear from patients is…

“I’m afraid that if this keeps getting worse I’ll be unable to keep doing the things I enjoy.”

With lower back pain being the leading cause of work-days lost that most likely means it’s the leading cause of enjoyable days with friends, family and loved ones lost as well.

While there are many cause of lower back pain one of the leading causes is that the muscles of our lower back are weaker than they should be.

Why?

Little muscles in our back called multifidi are constantly working to stabilize our spine and keep it in a healthy position (healthy meaning all of the little sensors that exist in the muscle are properly functioning and letting the brain know how they’re functioning).

These muscles are constantly active when we are walking, running, lifting doing something active and even as we stand they are active and contracting, but at a level we don’t notice.

However, when we sit with our backs supported the multifidi muscles don’t have to be as active and since the body is amazing at adapting it decides we don’t need these muscles to be as strong so these muscles start to get weaker.

Then what happens?

Any active movements start to fatigue these little muscles that exist to keep our spine healthy and stable because after years of sitting they got weak.

When a muscle is fatigued it’s more likely to get injured.

So we work in the yard, carry something up the stairs, lift a box “a weird way” and then suddenly we have pain and it came “from nowhere”.

When in reality years and years of muscles weakening led to the low back not being strong enough and being prone to fatigue and injury.

So what can you do?

Below is a video of 5 movements that have been shown to help strengthen and stabilize these little multifidi muscles. Doing these movements everyday can help to strengthen these muscles making them less prone to injury and often times resulting in a decrease of lower back pain and in some cases a complete resolution of pain.

If you or someone you know suffers with lower back pain share this blog with them and it might just make their life a little easier and more pain free.