Low Back Pain is extremely common but can be tricky to manage. Here are some questions that we get from our patients who suffer from Low Back Pain here in our Uintah community.
- What can you do while your back is still hurting, but you still have to take care of your house or just continue to move through your daily life?
- What actions can you take to still be able to go through your daily life, and still protect your back?
Here are a few strategies.
Protect Your Back!
First, we don’t want to make our back hurt more so we need to protect it. We are going to use some sparing strategies and just overall protective strategies to prevent your back from getting worse and allow you to continue to move and perform your daily tasks in life.
Since oftentimes bending forward tends to be a pain generator, we often want to avoid that motion as much as possible. When we are at home sitting down and standing up a lot, we are doing what we call a hip hinge. This type of movement will put the low back into a position of flexing too far forward if we are not performing the hip hinge properly.
Simple Home Exercises For Low Back Pain
There are some exercises to do while at home and while your back is causing you discomfort. A way to help fix this hip hinge movement, start by finding a broom or any type of longer PVC pipe and putting it behind your back.
One hand will be up high behind the head, while the other hand will be lower towards the mid to low back. The pipe should be touching the back of the head, the mid back, and the low back.
Using this strategy, you are going to sit down on the chair. This will create that hip hinge movement that can become problematic. Using this method will give you a strategy to go through this daily task of sitting and standing and not allowing your back and hips to move into a painful position. The key point to this strategy is to keep the bar or pipe, whatever you are using, constantly in contact with your back as you go to sit down and stand up. This is the overall spine sparing strategy to keep you out of pain from sitting
Another key component with this strategy is to make sure you are pushing your belly out and creating a nice eccentric load through your core. This will allow a nice stable core to be activated and protect the back as you go through the hip hinge motion.
Often what happens, when people go into a standing motion from a seated position, is they bend their back in this lower area. This creates a flexed position which puts the spine into a position that can generate pain.
Avoid Pain While Sitting!
The next strategy is a more static strategy so this will be used when you are just sitting. During this strategy we will use what is called a McKenzie lumbar roll or a rolled-up towel, or even a pillow and this will be placed against the low back and the back of the chair. This is essential to use while sitting so that there is a nice natural lumbar curve created in the lower back. This also helps the spine from being flexed forward and creating pain.
Both of these strategies are great to help diminish low back pain. There are also other passive strategies to use to help with low back pain. Do not sleep on your stomach, if you sleep on your side try to put a pillow between your knees or under your knees can help you spend more time sleeping on your back and possibly help alleviate some pain.