Does your lower back pain keep coming back everytime you try to do something? Be it lawn mowing or shopping or playing with your kids! It’s human nature to leave things until they get really bad to seek help. But if you nip things in the bud, then it’s less likely that they’ll become unbearable to deal with. Sometimes it’s hard to think for yourself. You see it when someone else points it out. I’m hoping this article will do the same for you and help you recover from lower back pain. So here ar 5 common reasons why you may not be recovering from lower back pain.
1. As soon as your lower back pain feels a little better you start doing things
Don’t get back to doing painful activities the moment your lower back pain settles down. Seek help first. What I mean by this is that I notice patients start doing activities like they were doing prior to getting the pain, as soon as the pain start settling. They don’t give it sometime to recover even more. Once your pain settles after an aggravating activity like lawn mowing or shopping, at least wait for 3-4 weeks before you attempt another one of those. If you’re getting physio, then work with your therapist to work out which particular acitvities are aggravating the pain and stay away from those until your pain is 0/10 at rest.
2.You don’t space your activities through the day
Are you the kind of person who wants to do everything one after another? This could be holding you back. Usually people suffering from lower back pain can tolerate one activity for no longer than 20-30 minutes at a stretch. So it’s important to space things out during the day. If you’ve got to do laundry and cleaning and computer work, make sure you keep changing what you’re doing every 20-30 minutes. This allows your body time to recover.
3. You’re sitting a lot during the day
You may think that you’re not really doing much during the day but did you know that sitting and bending are the worst things you can do for the back? Sitting especially in a poor posture puts tremendous pressure on the structures of the lower back causing lower back pain. This is exactly why office workers are as prone to lower back pain as heavy physical workers. I cannot stress the importance of getting up every 30 minutes…. religiously. And the excuse of being busy won’t work. Set up an alarm or a reminder on your computer to get up every 30 minutes and you’ll feel the difference yourself.
4. You wait for the lower back pain to get worse before you’ll seek help
The longer you’re in pain, the longer your body takes to recover from it. If you’ve waited for 3 weeks to see a physio, then you’ve already been in pain for 3 weeks! Let me tell you that if your body was to heal itself , it would have done so within a week. So if you’re still in pain after 3 weeks , it means that you need some external help in getting fixed. So please see a physio as soon as you start feeling lower back pain, whether it’s severe or not. This way you’re not going to need too many sessions to recover a 100%.
5. You left your physiotherapy treatment midway before full recovery
If you haven’t had full recovery from lower back pain meaning 0/10 pain with activity, then there are more chances of the pain coming back in the near future. This happens when you try to attempt the same activities that were causing you pain again like exercising or prolonged sitting. If you hadn’t recovered fully the first time you had physio treatment , then there’s already a weakness in your lower back. So everytime you go back to the activity that was causing pain in the first place, your lower back pain will come back. It’s absolutely important to go through the whole rehabilitation process of doing hands on treatment followed by core strengthening exercises to get rid of lower back pain for sure!