I am very excited to write this blog as it has been a year since I started my podcast, Your Health Matters. I appreciate each and every one of you who take the time to listen to my podcast and read my blogs, and send me messages to let me know how the podcast and the blogs have impacted you. My goal is always to help you have a better understanding of your body so that you can live your healthiest life and feel really good in your body.
One of the most popular episodes and blogs that I made was on herniated disks. So, I thought today I would write about what to do if you have back pain, what happens if you have an acute onset of pain, and what you can do to manage the pain on your own if you can’t get in to see your MD or your local PT. However, if the pain is lingering, I would recommend that you go in and see someone. For now, though, I will discuss the things you can start to do by yourself so that the pain isn’t so intense.
When you have a bout of back pain, it can be really intense when it first sets in. Here are the things you can do to help with it and take the edge off that pain.
Walking
The first thing I recommend that you can do on your own is walking. It should not be a long walk as it has to be limited to a 10- to 15-minute walk on a fairly level surface. You can do two or three bouts of 10- to 15-minute walks in a day.
This does a couple of things for your back. First, when we walk, it gently moves your spine back and forth. When we sometimes have pain, the spine and the muscles around it can stiffen up so the walking helps increase the blood flow to the area, which improves the movement and space in that area and can eventually help to decrease the pain.
You do not want to go in an intense walk because you want to go on a low-key walk just to help get the blood moving and make the spine move a little bit. Again, if we find ourselves in pain, we can opt to sit and not move so things can stiffen up. That is why walking can definitely help.
Gentle Spine Mobility
The next thing I will recommend to help handle your back pain is very gentle spine mobility. This will vary person to person depending on which position of your low back seems to bring on the pain that is why I have a couple of things you can do for gentle spine mobility.
First is when you are lying in bed and before you get up in the morning. Here. You will hug one of your knees into your chest and focus on taking nice, deep breaths. Focus on that exhale being longer than your inhale because essentially, what that does is it stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system. All that means is it stimulates your rest and digest part of your body. When you stimulate that part, it relaxes you more. When we are in pain, it’s very difficult to relax because the pain can be pretty intense. So, if we are more relaxed, it actually brings the pain down. When we are more on high alert, the pain is going to be higher, too.
So, taking those breaths while holding one knee into your chest is really helpful in calming your nervous system down and taking the edge of the pain. Further, having your knee into your chest is gently moving your spine again so we are trying to gently create movement here so that you can tolerate more movements a little bit later when the pain is not so intense.
Another gentle mobility thing I suggest you do when you have back pain is having your knees bent when you are lying in bed and just gently drop your knees to one side. If you’ve done yoga before, it’s not like the full twist that we do in that practice. It’s more of slightly moving your knees back and forth, side to side, and not in the full range. You don’t want to make the pain worse when you do this so you want to be very gentle. This allows the spine to move, and when we have movement pain can begin to decrease.
The next one you can do, which can be a little bit more intense and might not be something you want to do right away when you have back pain and would rather do when you are feeling a little bit better, is cat cow. Essentially, you will be on your hand and on your knees and you arch your spine and round your spine. You want to follow your breath with for this movement to allow your nervous system to calm down and the spine to move.
Ice Or Heat
It’s going to depend on your situation regarding your back pain. If it is a true muscle spasm, I will recommend heat on the muscles because increasing the blood flow in that area is going to be really helpful. If it is more due to inflammation, then I recommend ice for that area.
Again, it depends person to person so you have to test out to see what works best for you. Some people’s bodies respond to ice better, and some respond to heat better. Know that you are not doing any damage if the pain gets worse if you choose heat or ice. It just means that your body doesn’t respond very well to that so you just choose something else.
Good Rest
Whenever people are having pretty intense pain, the next thing I recommend is making sure you get good rest. I do not mean just sitting throughout the day, but also getting a good night’s sleep. When you sleep better in the evening, it really helps your nervous system to calm down, shut down, and really relax, which can take the pain off.
The biggest thing that I find is people having a difficult time getting comfortable at night. So, there is no best way to sleep as it depends on what you’re comfortable with. If you are a side sleeper and you are having back pains, I recommend having a pillow between your knees to help keep your spine get into a more neutral alignment. When the spine is in its neutral alignment, there are less red flags for the brain to decide that pain is going to happen.
If you are sleeping on your back, having a pillow underneath your knees can be helpful. If you sleep on your stomach, having a pillow underneath your shins will help create that neutral spine.
Know that the way that you start sleeping is not how you’re going to end, probably, because you move in the night and that’s totally okay. It’s just a way to set yourself up so you can actually fall asleep at night.
Also, it’s best to aim to get seven to nine hours of sleep as it is important in recovering from pain and injury.
Getting Back Into The Exercises That You Do
When you have a cute onset of back pain, it can last for quite a while. So, when the pain goes down a little bit, I do recommend getting back into the exercises that you do, but at a modified level. If you practice strength training, I recommend going back at 50 percent with your weights and lowering the amount of sets and reps that you are doing. The idea her is just to continue moving when you are in pain.
If you practice yoga, I recommend just taking a lot of child’s poses throughout the class and skipping a couple of Vinyasas, Chaturanggas, upward dogs, and downward dogs. Skip those and come to a level that feels very modified. It might feel very slow when you modify and there is nothing wrong with that. you just want to keep moving because if you take off time too long from any of the activities that you normally do, you start to lose that strength and flexibility you have gained and that doesn’t end up supporting your spine. So you want to continue to try to maintain the strength and flexibility that your back pain doesn’t persist longer than it needs to.
Waiting A Week Before Getting Back Into Your Sport
If you do play any sport like tennis and you experience some back pain, I recommend if you’ve had a bout of back pain after a tennis match, you wait a week to get back on the tennis court. When you get back on the tennis court, you go hit for 30 to 40 minutes at a low-key level to start to regain your stamina for getting back to the court. In about three weeks or so, you can get back into matches. This is recommended if you had a really intense episode of back pain and it is difficult for you to move in general.
If it is something light and most of the pain is gone, you can probably get yourself back to your sport or activity fairly quickly.
If you don’t regularly have a strength training or movement program that you do for yourself and you experience an acute and intense pain, I recommend looking at some core strengthening activities and glute strengthening activities as these will support your spine health in general. It will take some load off the spine so the brain is less art of that area and then pain will start to get less.
Conclusion
If you have any specific questions about the back pain you are having and it’s taking a long time to get better, you can reach out to me as a physical therapist or to your local physical therapist and schedule an appointment. We are really equipped at helping with this. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, 80 percent of Americans experience back pain at some point in their life and as physical therapists, this is probably one of the most common diagnoses that we see in the office.
I hope today gave you a good overview as to what to do to start managing your back pain on your own or if it’s difficult to go in and see a health care provider and make you feel more in charge of your body.
Thanks again for tuning in to my podcast and reading my blogs this past year. I am excited to share more of my knowledge with you so that you can feel really strong in your own body.