Take charge of your low back pain and focus on recovery. These seven quick and practical steps can help end chronic low back pain holistically, helping decrease pain and increase mobility.
Chronic low back pain occurs across many lifestyles, professions, and ages. Eighty percent of people in the US will experience low back pain during their life, including pain that does not diminish on its own. The good news is that there is help. If you suffer from low back pain or sciatica, keep reading because these seven methods reduce low back pain quickly and without surgery, injections, or invasive treatments.
- Keep Moving – Do as much of your normal daily activities as you can. Rather than lie around, keep moving. Doing so can reduce or end low back pain in as little as three months. Stop if you experience sharp pain in your back, experience bowel, and bladder issues, or if the area around and including your genitals become numb or tingly. If you experience these pains, see your physician immediately.
- Help Your Muscles Relax – Pain postures can increase back pain by causing trigger points to develop. Help your body to relax by lying on your back on the floor. Place a tennis ball under you and on muscles that hurt. The softness of the ball and the weight of your body will cause achy muscles to relax. If you cannot lie on the floor, lean against a wall.
- Limit Sitting to less than 35-minutes – Sitting for long periods causes the muscles in our back to decrease the ways they support our spine. If you have a sitting job or sit a lot, mix that up with standing for 30-minutes and add walking for at least ten minutes to that mini-workout. Doing so several times per day keeps your back muscles primed while supporting your spine.
- Dynamic Warm-ups – Never hit the gym cold. Plan on doing warm-up exercises that mimic the type of workout you plan to do. For resistance exercise, warm-up by doing those exercises without the resistance. Even if you do not have low back pain, warming up before working out is prime.
- Focus on Form – For gym and workout routines, focus on form rather than time or repetition. Correctly completing an exercise has more gains and fewer risks than just banging out set after set. When you focus on form, you improve the muscle reaction to the training.
- Walk – When you cannot hit the gym due to chronic back pain, try to walk instead. Walking for 10-15 minutes at a time is low impact but helps your back muscles to stay limber. Exercise also causes the body to release natural endorphins, which work to lower your pain levels. A good goal is to walk for 30-minutes at a time, but work up to that goal.
See a Physical Therapist – PT is one of the best treatment options for chronic low back pain. The therapeutic sessions are low-cost, improve your muscle form, and decrease your pain levels, all while being one of the most effective ways to treat low back pain. Physical therapy is one of the most conservative treatment forms for low back pain but has excellent benefits.
Pro+Kinetix Physical Therapy & Performance specializes in helping active individuals in Oakland, Alameda, Berkeley, Walnut Creek, and San Francisco get back to exercising and working out pain free without having to take time off or relying on injections/pain medication. Pro+Kinetix offers rehabilitation and performance services to all populations, with specialties in Sports Rehabilitation, Active Release Techniques, and Manual Therapy Techniques plus Personal and Small Group Training, Sport Clinics and Wellness Services.
