When Backs Attack! — Back Attack 1

Hey, it’s me, Laura, again.  Today’s topic is on how to fix Lower Back Pain: the dreaded “BACK-ATTACK.”

We have ALL experienced a “back-attack”–and if you haven’t yet, it’s a matter of time!

You reach into the back of the car and, “AAACHHH!”.

You bend down to pick up something you dropped and, “F*&^*&^#$”!

Right??

To fix any problem you first need to understand it.  So, I’m going to tell you what’s happening when you feel back pain, why you are in so much pain, and what you can do about it starting… NOW.

Your spine is shaped like an “S” for a reason.  It acts as a spring that protects the spinal cord and nerve roots that control your arms and legs.  The spring only works when it is kept vertical and supported with its natural curves in place.

As soon as you bend the spring forward, you are pulling and stressing the rear part of the spring. This motion sets you up for a back-attack.  Increasing pressure in the front of the disc squishes it out toward the back where the spinal chord lies.  If the disc bulges out, it is at risk of pressing into the nerve root.  This is also known as a herniated disc, but you can fix this yourself before it causes any real damage.

When we feel a twinge, shooting pain or, worse, a lightning bolt of pain that drops us to our knees, it’s simply the nerve yelling at us to “GET THE HELL OFF ME!”

Here is how you fix it:All you have to do is the opposite of what you just did to piss it off.  Get flat on your stomach and do the ‘nerve-forgiveness-prayer maneuver,” also known as prone up-downs.  Pretend you are going to do a push-up, but keep your legs and hips touching the ground at all times during the exercise.  Use your arms to arch upward like a seal, but keep your hips and lower body touching the floor.

You can even chant with each press up repetition, “I’m sorry, I didn’t’ mean to hurt you, I’ll never do it again…”

The sooner you do this exercise, the faster you will feel relief.  The back is very forgiving if you do the right thing – restore the curves, undo the damage, pump out the pain, and soon you’ll be right as rain!

Do this for the first day to fix the physics and treat the source of your symptoms.  Managing the symptoms with pain-relief tools (ice, heat, medications) is OK, but they have nothing to do with curing the source of your pain.

The next day, you will be stiff and sore, but just turn on your stomach and do some prone up-downs before you get out of bed and you’ll feel better, even faster.

On the third day, you’ll be ready to progress in your home treatment.

When your pain-scale rating is 5/10, meaning you are about 50% better, come back and I’ll show you what to do to prevent this from recurring.

If you would like to read a more in depth explanation of spinal kinematics follow this link: emedicine.medscape.com.