These questions no doubt come to mind every time you have that burning, sharp or even dull achy pain that annoys you all day long. Sometimes after getting out of your car you find it difficult to stand up straight until you’ve taken a few steps to warm your muscles up. You’ve no doubt tried stretching, foam rolling and even yoga classes and yet still, your lower back is constantly nagging.
POSSIBLE CAUSES
In my years of treating people I’ve come to two conclusions that have helped me in my therapy sessions.
First, if you have suffered a fall, car accident, or any other type of acute pain inducing situation, then your lower back pain originated in your back. This occurs when sudden impact forces the muscles to quickly move or stretch and the disks in your back are then compromised. That impact from a rear end car accident can easily blow out a disk or cause a serious herniation. A slip or a fall can also cause a vertebra to twist and move out of place thus putting tremendous pressure on the adjacent or corresponding nerve. In these scenarios it’s easy to detect how or when the problem occurred. One thing I will add; If you suffered an accident when you were a child then there is a very good chance the pain you feel in your back is due to the scar tissue that developed over time.
Second, there is an expression in the therapeutic community called “repetitive stress injury”. This differs from the first in that these pains literally creep up on you. You may slowly start to notice that you’ve developed pain in different areas of your back and cannot think of the time when you may have injured yourself. These injuries are the most common and sadly the most misdiagnosed. Quite a few medical professionals will blame back pain on the symptom you feel. For example if you have suffered from lower back pain for years only to wake up one day unable to move, a doctor may take an x-ray or an MRI and clearly see that you have a herniation in one of your lumbar vertebra. Seems easy enough right? But what caused that herniation to occur? What caused the back pain you have that you’ve slowly started to realize? How did this start to happen in the first place?
TIGHT LEGS ARE A PAIN
“How is this possible”? you may ask. The answer is pretty simple. The muscles in your legs are pulling to the point where your lower back literally starts to collapse on itself. Let’s start with our hamstring muscles. These powerful muscles are notorious for tightening up and because they’re connected to the hips which are tightly connected to the muscles in the lower back. So when the muscles in the hamstrings tighten up, it causes a tremendous pulling on the hips and over time, years even, your lower back will eventually get sore and irritated and then muscles in the lower back start to tighten and malfunction. Once muscles become so tight that they malfunction, other muscles are now coming to the rescue and working twice as hard just to keep you pain-free and standing up straight. The reason this is so overlooked is because we can somehow deal with tight legs. But the second we cant bend over or the minute we have tightness in the lower back, we instantly think the problem MUST HAVE originated in the back.
DEEP TISSUE LEG MASSAGE
I use myself as an example. One day I was doing one-legged squats when the left side of my lower back suddenly cramped to the point I couldn’t get up, I couldn’t walk without a serious limp and I absolutely could not bend over to pick anything up. I was desperate. I was hurting. I needed relief immediately. I decided to dedicate a couple hours of my day to sitting in a chair and placing a small plastic massage tool under the back of my left leg. The pain was INTENSE to say the least. But I pressed and held very painful spots deep within the muscle and actually felt the muscles twitch and tremble. After doing this in different areas of the back of my leg I actually started to feel tremendous relief almost to the point of total felling pain free.
What I’m trying to say is that deep tissue massage directly on the muscles in the back of the legs that lead up and into the hips will alleviate a significant amount of pain in YOUR lower back.
I hope this article helps you understand your lower back pain and as always if you need any further advice then please email me at MikeSantana2010@gmail.com or contact my office directly at 917-455-0559.