For No Reason, I Hurt My Back, HOW???
16 June 2014
Many patients I see in my clinic do the most simplest things to hurt their backs. I’ve seen people who have sneezed, coughed, turned, stood up, bent over and they have all “pulled” their back.
Why is this?
For a strong healthy back, this will generally not happen. If your back is weak or there is an old hurt there, then it is very easy to hurt your back from the simplest of movements.
The cause of this hurt could be from months of sitting badly at a computer to an old hurt years ago.
Is there a current cause to the problem?
Sleeping on a new mattress? Soft mattress? New pillow? New job? Old injury? Too much hard work? Not enough exercise? Stress?
As you can see there are many possible problems that could be annoying your back. It’s trying to figure out why it happened so that we can prevent it from happening again.
How to sort the problem
Seeing a professional like myself will help treat the soft tissue damage, encourage movement, relieve inflammation and loosen the back.
Doing general leg and back stretches will help ease problems for many people. I highly recommend Yoga and Pilates. It’s important that all stretches/exercises feel pain free!
Once the pain has eased, start to strengthen the back with light exercises such as planks to begin with, and then advance this to side planks and then to leg raises. This is just one example of strengthening your back muscles.
All these exercises can be found on YouTube. Always start slowly on strengthening and once again, this needs to feel PAIN FREE. If any sharp pain is felt while performing any exercise, STOP immediately.
(Image courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net)