If you’ve been suffering with back pain for a number of weeks, months or years, you may be wondering why you’re continuing to suffer and why your body isn’t healing. If your back pain continues to reoccur and isn’t constant during the time, we’d also consider this a long-standing injury, since it’s likely to be the same problem cropping up time and time again. So why exactly do you get back pain, and how can you shift it for good?
What Causes Back Pain?
The human body is very adaptive to stresses and strains we subject it to. If you’re reading this sat in a slouched position but you feel comfortable, that’s a sign that your body has adapted to the stress you’ve subjected it to. However, just like a rock, it may be strong but months or years of gentle rainfall can be enough to wear away at its structure and integrity. It’s very rare that a one-off trauma or incident is going to be the cause of back pain, more often than not, the cases of back pain we see are mostly down to bad habits that have culminated into one mild trigger event – the straw that broke the camel’s back. If you’re suddenly doubled over in pain after having put your sock on in the morning, it’s likely that it wasn’t that particular occurrence that was the causation, but the last straw after a long line of problems. If your back pain started after having been in an accident or a fall, unless it was very severe it’s quite likely that you’ll go on to recover relatively quickly because you don’t have bad habits to unlearn here.
Why A Thorough Back Pain Diagnosis Makes A Difference
This is also the point at which a proper diagnosis on the problem that you have, might play a part in whether you recover well or not. If you’re receiving advice that’s not specific enough to your case, or you’re taking advice based on an incorrect assumption of the problem, it likely isn’t going to get much better. Let’s deep dive into this topic. Very often we see cases of back pain where the patient has been told it’s simply a muscle spasm or it’s a disc problem, but no explanation as to why this has occurred. Debatably the reason this happens is likely due to the fact that back pain in the majority of cases is not a life-threatening condition, but rather is something that affects your quality of life. If you know the types of behaviours day-to-day that are going to contribute towards continually experiencing muscle spasms, you’d probably try your best to stop them. Likewise, if you’re told exactly what things can help to relieve pain from a disc injury, or that correcting your posture might help you to make a better recovery, this would probably be very helpful for you. If this is something you’ve experienced, we have a step-by-step rehabilitation guide on our website, to understand exactly what things you shouldn’t be doing, as well as the right way to rehabilitate. You can find this by signing up for free on our membership area at www.backinshapeapp.com.
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A full protocol to support you get out of back pain in the short term and then rehab safely and effectively to deal with the issue for the long term.
Why Did Your Back Pain Relapse?
Often a lack of knowledge in your body’s healing processes can be the reason why you relapse. We’re not talking knowing at a deeply biological level how your specific problem heals, but knowing a timescale for these issues might be helpful and this is also where a good diagnosis comes into play. If your injury is truly muscular, you might have some bruising around the area but overall it’ll probably heal very quickly. Your muscles have good circulation so can recover fast. For a disc injury, you may be looking at a few months before it’s starting to heal, you might not even feel pain for that long a period of time. If you think you have a muscle problem because it’s been diagnosed as a muscle spasm, you might end up looking for advice specific to muscle injuries. However, when a muscle spasms, this is usually due to an injury in an underlying structure and not down to the muscle. The advice you’ll be given in both cases will be slightly different and therefore might be the reason why you keep relapsing time and time again. Equally, let’s say you’ve been rehabilitating a problem and your pain has gone away, so you stop doing the exercises because usually motivation to do the exercises might fade as soon as the pain goes. This kind of person is more likely to suffer a relapse because they’re not strengthening their body, and they’re more likely to fall into bad habits again. If you continue with your rehabilitation but you’re not progressing your exercises to make them harder, you’re also likely to suffer a relapse as you’re not continually adapting your body.
Why Is Back Pain Persisting Even With Home Exercise?
With us all being cooped up indoors lately and gyms closed, it may be likely you’re taking up home exercise. There are so many exercises out there demonstrated on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, but not many that are specific for dealing with back pain. Knowing that if you have back pain you might need to avoid flexion or forward bending exercises, such as knee hugs, leg raises, russian twists or press-ups, is important if you want to see results that don’t irritate your back problem. Exercises that are pointlessly difficult would also be worthwhile avoiding if you’re getting back pain. These include jumping squats and lunges, as the explosive power benefits from doing them don’t outweigh the results of a regular squat and lunge. Handstand press-ups are another that certainly serves no benefit beyond a regular press-up, so don’t be caught into fads or excessive loading exercises if you’re struggling with your back.
We hope you found this article helpful! If you are struggling with knowing how you can rehabilitate your back problem, please do sign up for free at our membership area www.backinshapeapp.com, for guidance on what you can avoid doing in your daily life that’s aggravating your back pain and how to get started with the right rehabilitation. We also offer a premium section that continues your rehabilitation into the strengthening phase and includes direct access to our practitioners through messaging and our Back In Shape Facebook Group. If you did have any questions at all about today’s article, please do feel free to get in touch. We run live videos on Facebook and YouTube every weekday, so you can ask our practitioner about any topic related or unrelated.
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