Lower back pain is extremely common, with statistics suggesting that most people will have at least one bout of lower back pain in their lifetime. In fact, lower back pain is the leading cause of workplace disability and absenteeism. In the US alone, it is reported that lower back pain costs the healthcare sector more than $50 billion annually.
With such a high financial burden, it’s worth exploring the most common causes of lower back pain.
While back pain can come from more deleterious conditions such as cancer, aortic aneurysm, etc., the vast majority of back pain is from more mechanical origins.
Clinically, time and time again, regardless of the actual diagnosis (disc herniation, muscle strain, etc.), we see that most lower back conditions originate from a handful of underlying causes. These include:
Inadequate hip range of motion: When your ball-in-socket hip joints have inadequate mobility, we often compensate by moving excessively through the lower back. And while the lower back is made to take on some movement, some research suggests that our spines may have a finite number of movement cycles they can go through before becoming painful (though this can vary widely based on genetics and individual anatomy).
Treatment Implication: Focusing on improving hip range of motion can often have a significant positive effect on low back pain. At Whole Life Chiropractic we employ a host of cutting edge methods for improving hip range of motion.
Inadequate thoracic spine range of motion: Similar to the hip, the thoracic spine (upper back) is anatomically better set up to be a source of movement, but due to frequent poor posture and lack of movement, we often lose mobility in our upper back over time. As a result, our lower back again can take on an excessive movement burden and become painful.
Treatment Implication: Adjustments of the upper back and thoracic mobility exercises are a mainstay in most low back injury rehab programs.
Poor hip strength and motor control: Perhaps you have full range of motion in your hips, but you have weak hips that slack off and try to pass off more of the movement burden to the lower back.
Treatment Implication: Strengthening and stabilizing the hips can play a critical role in defeating low back pain by making the body more confident in moving with the hips, thereby sparing the spine from excessive movement burden.
Poor respiratory mechanics: While virtually no healthy baby or young child breathes excessively with their neck and shoulders, adults frequently develop these less-than-ideal breathing mechanics. When we breathe too much into the neck and shoulders we generally develop a habitual over-arching movement through the spine during respiration. This excessive motion makes it hard to properly stabilize the spine.
Treatment Implication: Coaching proper breathing mechanics is critical in properly stabilizing the back and giving a flared up back a chance to calm back down.
Insufficient core stability: While core stability is a topic worthy of numerous blog posts, if not a book, we want a spine that is capable of control in the presence of change. Sometimes this might mean rigidity (as would be the case when lifting something extremely heavy), but more often than not this means can we continue to put the spine in positions it can succeed in even when external forces are attempting to take the spine into less-than-ideal positions.
Treatment Implication: Employing exercises that train our trunk musculature to have better stabilization strategies is crucial when rehabbing low back injuries.
Poor lifestyle factors: A poor diet, lack of exercise, high levels of stress, depression/anxiety, etc. have all been shown to be potent factors that can take what would be an otherwise mild case of low back pain and crank it up into severe and/or chronic pain.
Treatment Implication: Working through these lifestyle factors is often necessary in order to achieve full relief from back pain.
Are you suffering with lower back pain and don’t know what to do about it? Have you tried other treatments only to get short-lived relief from pain? Click here to schedule an appointment with us to learn what else needs addressed for you to see long-term relief!
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