Chronic Low Back Pain: How to Get Rid of It

 Do you have low back pain? Do you believe that it was caused by sitting in bad positions for years or decades? Read on, and I’ll explain how to get rid of it.

There are several changes that happen with prolonged postures:

1. Your nervous system shortens some muscles and lengthens others (making them weaker).
2. You fascia (which is like a shrink wrap around your muscles) gets tight.
3. You lose the mind-muscle and mind-joint connections between different areas of your body.
4. If all of the above go on for long enough, you’ll actually get changes in your bone and joint structure.

So addressing low back pain should take a multi-pronged approach.

If you have lost your lower back curve (ie your lower back is flat instead of curved), you need to do exercises that restore that curve. What are those exercises? The superman would be one.

Original source: here.

And you really only need one or two that you’ll do with high frequency. How high? Ideally multiple times throughout the day, until the problem is fixed. It would be ideal to hold these positions for as long as possible 3 or more times throughout the day. This sends a powerful message to your nervous system about what you want it to adapt to. After all, if you spend 23 hours and 50 minutes of your day in a bad position, those other 10 minutes better be extremely memorable to your nervous system.

If your fascia is tight, it’s important to loosen it. There are a few different ways to do it. The best way is to visit a person who is skilled at hands-on soft-tissue therapy. By far, my favorite person for this is Alex Zaslavsky, a Registered Massage Therapist who works out of the Trigenics clinic on Mt. Pleasant and Eglinton. After just a single treatment from Alex, my own right shoulder (which was injured for 10 months) was just fine. Not bad, considering that during this 10-month-old injury, 4 different chiropractors were working on it. If you’d like to get in touch with him, you can call the clinic at 416-481-1936.

If you can’t or won’t visit a skilled soft-tissue practitioner, you can do your own soft tissue release using tennis balls and/or golf balls. Here is a manual that shows you how to do it.

And of course, if you have electronic gadgets like iphones and blackberries that can give you reminders, program them to remind you every hour (or more frequently) to check your posture. After a few weeks of this, your posture will be naturally good, and you won’t have to be so vigilant about it.

Ergonomics also go a long way. A laptop may be one of the most ergonomically poor devices ever invented. A desktop is much better, because the screen can be adjusted so that it’s at eye level, yet your keyboard is at elbow level. You can’t do that with a laptop unless you have an external keyboard and mouse.

Combine these factors, and your low back pain will start to greatly diminish. Although if you feel like some professional one-on-one guidance would be beneficial for you, you can fill out this form to see if you qualify for our help.

Any Questions?

 If you have any questions, leave your questions or comments below, and I’ll be sure to answer them.

Quick Summary

• Loss of the lower back curve is caused by prolonged slouching
• To reverse it, perform the opposite: variations of back bending, but pick just 1-2 exercises and do them with high frequency.
• Perform soft tissue release on the muscles of the front of the body
• Set yourself hourly reminders to correct your posture