Why Live with Back Pain

Many times massage therapists hear people say that they have had back pain for several years. You have visited your GP and have been prescribed pain killers and anti-inflammatory drugs, but these simply mask the problem. Many people seek other health care professional’s assistance, such as chiropractors, but few seek help from a massage therapist.

Back pain can be muscular in nature and deep tissue massage can alleviate these problems. A massage therapist’s job is to work with soft tissue problems, which is muscle pain.

The bad news about back pain is that you may take it home with you from work!

Back pain can come from all the sitting, standing and lifting that you do all day, but it is more likely to come from the adaptations the body has to make whilst you are sitting, standing or lifting.

The body of an office worker who sits at a desk all day has to adapt to the sitting position, and this happens in a number of ways. The first thing it must adapt to is how the weight goes through your hip and pelvis; then there is the way you sit – upright, slouched or something in between. But, most importantly, it is what happens to your muscles while you are sitting. Your hip flexor muscles will become tight from being in a shortened position and your gluteal muscles (your bottom) will get weak and flabby from being in a relaxed state.

This simple combination of tight hip flexors and weak gluteal muscles is called a “muscle imbalance”. These imbalances result in postural dysfunctions of the pelvis and the spine; and send both pelvis and spine into abnormal positions. This can be very bad if you have a healthy back and devastating if you have back pain.

There are several other groups of muscles that can cause you direct pain in the lower back (quadratus lumborum, latissimus dorsi, erector spinae) and buttocks (gluteus maximus, minimus and medius; piriformis). These muscles need to be looked at in relation to your own posture and the other muscles of the back and legs. For instance some tightness across your buttocks and a foot that is turned out can indicate that you have tension in your calf muscles which could be caused by the tension in your buttocks.

Deep tissue massage is a great way of alleviating your back pain, however, the longer you have had the condition the longer it may take to alleviate it.

There are things that you can do to help yourself:

1.When you sit at your desk sit with you legs in different positions – sometimes bent, sometimes behind, stretched out in front or to the side, keep your legs moving. Every 10 minutes or so work your body in some way, make it a habit to stand to answer the phone or when you have to read something.

2.If you have to stand all day make sure you have quality footwear and if necessary have an insert that corrects your posture. One negative pattern that many people use is to continually shift from one foot to the other. Eventually you start to favour one leg and this leg gets most of your weight most of the time which causes havoc with the pelvis and spine. Learn to correct yourself when you catch yourself shifting weight.

3.A third obstacle at work can be the situation where you have to lift anything over 5 kilos repeatedly. It’s not the activity that is the problem; it’s your body’s inability to tolerate the stress of the weight. In other words, you should be able to lift anything you want to and not have any difficulty doing it. The problem occurs when your body is suffering from muscle imbalances and postural dysfunctions – and you do not even know it! If you get injured lifting think of it as the final straw, your body was already in a compromised state and it just needed that last bit of stress to send you into a painful condition.

4.Stress is an unavoidable fact of life at work, and it can also cause your muscles to tense up, which makes you more prone to injury. Stress also lowers your tolerance for pain. See last months article on stress.

Even though the workplace can be a hazard to your health, if you are having back pain, learn as much as you can about your condition because this will influence your beliefs about your situation and will have a direct impact on your ability to recover. Take action and take control of the situation.