Lower back pain can be debilitating, affecting your daily life and overall well-being. At Healthy Movements Physiotherapy, we’re committed to helping you understand and treat low back pain effectively. Let’s explore the common causes, affected tissues, and how we can help your back injury rehabilitation.
What are some risk factors for developing a low back injury?
What Are Some Risk Factors for Developing a Low Back Injury?
- Prolonged Seated Postures: Sitting for long periods can strain your lower back.
- Repetitive Lifting, Pushing, and Pulling: These activities can lead to muscle fatigue and injury.
- Repetitive Spinal Bending: Even without heavy loads, frequent bending can stress the spine.
- Prolonged Trunk Flexion and Twisting: These postures can contribute to back pain.
- Trips and Falls: Sudden impacts can injure the lower back.
- Frequent Upper Body Motion: Excessive rotational movements of the spine can cause damage.
What are the tissues that are affected with a low back injury?
- Muscles – such as Erector Spinae Muscles of the back, Multifidus, Quadratus lumborum
- Discs – The disc is made up a jelly like substance in the centre- and surrounded by a fibrous connective tissue called the annulus fibrosis. The discs help to absorb the pressure the spine is submitted to. Although disc bulges appear in the pain free population, they are sometimes painful. If they are large enough, the bulging disc or herniation can irritate or compress the spinal nerve root which appear at each level of the spine. Also if the disc is significantly damaged, it can cause a spinal instability, where there is excessive motion between each level of the vertebra. This Excessive motion can be very tiny, but can actually cause intermittent pain in the lower back.
- Joints – The lower back has a joint between the each vertebra- separated by an intervertebral disc.
- Bone –– even the bone in the lumbar vertebrae can be fractured with extreme loads, or after a trauma.
How do you move once you have a lower back injury ?
Once your lower back is injured, your body tissues will become sensitised (when pain is easily increased) during which time the body will attempt to repair the damage.
Simple everyday movements, such as moving around in bed, putting on socks and shoes, doing shoelaces, standing up from a chair, walking and lifting can increase the pain from your lower back. Every day movements or activities can keep this damage tissue sensitised.
These movements all involve bending, and twisting motions which can aggravate a low back injury. Continuing to move in the incorrect way will keep your tissues sensitised, which means that your tissue will be feel pain more quickly with less load. Keeping your tissues sensitised will basically not allow the pain to rehabilitate.
How we can help?
If you have injured your back, please come and see us. We can help you by teaching you how to move with less pain and also start your lower back injury rehab program that is evidence based. We can provide advice about sleeping postures as well as aids to help you achieve a posture that is closest to neutral spine as well as help you understand and manage a disc bulge or herniation.
We can give you daily exercises for lumbar disc herniation in the acute phase. our focus is on gentle movements that promote circulation, reduce muscle tension, and activate core muscles without worsening symptoms.
- We teach you how to move with less pain and manage everyday activities more comfortably.
- Our evidence-based rehabilitation programs are designed to strengthen your lower back and improve flexibility.
- We provide guidance on proper sleeping postures and recommend aids to maintain a neutral spine posture.
- We educate you about your condition, helping you understand how to avoid movements that exacerbate pain.
- Dry needling to target muscle trigger points Dry needling, the healps to stimulate tight, painful areas in the muscles to to relax the muscles
Adriana
Start Your Recovery Today
Don’t let low back pain control your life. At Healthy Movements Physiotherapy, we are dedicated to helping you regain your strength and mobility. Contact us today to schedule an appointment and begin your journey to recovery. Let us help you move better and live pain-free!