Tips for Managing Lower Back Pain
Back pain is one of the most common things we treat here at Sunny Side (and would be the same for many physiotherapists). Whilst every case of lower back pain is different, there are some common self-management tips you can do at home to try and reduce your pain and keep moving. Continue reading to find out what we recommend!
Common Causes
The most common types of lower back pain we see in the clinic include:
Facet joint strains (the joints either side of your spine)
Lumbar disc irritation or compression
Muscle spasms (most commonly coming from QL - quadratus lumborum)
Arthritis
You may be thinking, how do I know which one I have? Well the answer isn’t usually that simple. A physiotherapist is trained at taking a thorough history, assessment and providing you with a working diagnosis for your back pain.
Types of Lower Back Pain
Back pain can also be separated into three different types, depending how long you’ve had it.
Acute: meaning your pain has only occurred recently for the first time
Chronic: meaning you’ve had it for longer than ~3 months
Acute on Chronic: this is when you’ve had underlying back pain for a long time, but you get an acute flare up every few months (or weeks).
Top Tips for Managing At Home
Being in pain is debilitating. It makes you withdraw from social settings, avoid movements, exercise and going out in general and puts an overall dampener on your quality of life. Luckily we are going to share with you our top tips that we recommend for most people with lower back pain.
Photo: Pelvic Exercises
Heat:
Usually with lower back pain, the muscles are tight and/or spasm.
Using a heat pack (or patches that stick on your clothes) are an underrated tool to help give you short term relief.
Gentle rotational movements:
A classic knee rocking stretch (whilst lying down with your knees bent and feet on the floor - see photo) is one of our favourite exercise to start off with. The rotational movement helps to reduce the tightness, guarding and spasms in your lower back muscles.
Try this for 1 minute 2-3x daily. Note: you don’t have to go right to the end of your range (and get your knees to the ground), moving in the middle 50% of your range is often enough to get some gentle movement and help the muscles release.
Avoid a boom-bust pattern:
Often with lower back pain, you rest until the pain settles. Then once you’re feeling good, you go back to all your previous levels of activity or movement. This causes you to go ‘bust’ and aggravates your pain again.
As a result, you need to rest until the pain eases (once again). This pattern is easy to fall into, without even noticing. What you want to do instead, is ease into activity/movement/exercise bit by bit and gradually increase as tolerated.
This might look like a 10 minute walk, where you’re not in too much pain afterwards. Then the next time you go, you may do 12 or 15 minutes. If you end up in pain, don’t stress! It might just mean you’ve done a little too much too soon.
Photo: Pinterest
Do you still have more questions? Or are you still in pain?
This is where we can help! Book an appointment with us online and we can do a thorough assessment and provide you with a greater understanding of what is the cause of your pain. You will be equipped with specific tips and exercises and a plan going forwards to manage you pain.
We can also do hands-on treatment to help reduce your pain quickly. This may involve massage, ultrasound therapy, trigger point therapy, myofascial release, dry needling, cupping and taping.
We can also get to the underlying cause of your pain and ensure it doesn’t come back 6 or 12 months later! We love a long-term fix.
Thanks for reading!
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If you need some help and guidance, feel free to book online to come and see us! We look forward to helping you improve your lower back pain here at Sunny Side Physio!