Ok, so I’m quite tall and I’ve reached an age where I’m beginning to get (mild) back pain and fatigue from time to time.
Chronic back pain is something I would go to a lot of effort to avoid but what advice is there about looking after one’s back?
I think my posture is OK, although I would find standing with chest out shoulders back all the time tiring.
My bed’s pretty basic, recommendations would be good.
And are there any massage-type therapies that aren’t scams? (I probably sound quite ignorant on that last point, but that’s what SD’s for, right?)
Depends on the cause. I would see a chiropractor to make sure it’s not something to do with alignment. Most people I know with straight spines have back pain because of congenital defects, and in most cases, surgery isn’t helpful.
Other than that, I would recommend the temperpedic foam bed. I’ve had one for years and I still consider it the best purchase of my life. My wife will sleep on it when she has back pain.
Exercise. The best treatment and prevention for chronic back pain is strong (and evenly strong) back and abdominal muscles. Pilates and yoga excel at developing this “core” strength and flexibility.
Massage is great (says the former massage therapist), especially in combination with chiropractic, but it won’t solve anything long term if you don’t stay strong.
When I started to get recurring back pain a few years ago, I went to a physiotherapist and got some good back-strengthening exercises from her. It was good - I would recommend that approach.
I won’t go into the specifics of the exercises, because no doubt you don’t have exactly the same pattern of stresses that I do (for one thing, one of my major problems was toddler hanging off my hip half the day), but one of the key things for me was strengthening the pelvic girdle. Some of the exercises touched muscles I didn’t even know I had!
Exercise. Go to a physical therapist. They’ll run you through a series of exercises you can do to strengthen your back and tailor it to you specifically by watching your posture and looking for weakness. But if you don’t want to go to a PT, yoga would be the next choice, and perhaps some work with weights.
The nice thing about a PT is that they will tailor it to you. Because as WhyNot says “evenly strong” is the key. If you have a strong and flexible lower back, but are weak around the shoulder blades, then you need to build the strength in the shoulder blades. If you have strong shoulder blades, then you probably don’t need to do very many push ups and shoulder squeezes.
I’ll 3rd seeing a physical (physio)therapist. They know how to target specific issues you are having so you can see short term results as well as long term results.
I will also mention that finding a good ergonomic chair to sit it is also a good idea. Sitting in general is bad for your back as it causes your shoulders to hunch over and makes your pelvis tilt back. Finding a good chair that makes your spine stay in proper posture will go a long way towards reducing the day to day pain.
The idea that there are “subluxations” in the back visible only to chiropractors and which are responsible for back pain has no medical validity. Pursuing that angle will lead to spending lots of money unnecessarily for “spine maintenance” plus potentially hazardous radiation exposure from useless x-rays.
I’ll add to the chorus with a recommendation for exercise. I changed my routine to avoid weight training that compresses the spine. I do a lot of lat pull-downs to stretch the spine.
I’ve also found that keeping my abs in shape helps a lot. It helps me to sit and stand straighter. It also helps me to be able to tilt my pelvis forward and pop that spot that presses on my sciatic nerve.
Also, I found a wonderful massage therapist. I figure as long as I can afford it, I’ll keep seeing her on a regular basis. When the pain was at its worst, she was able to relax the periformis muscle that was irritating the sciatic nerve, that was tensing the periformis muscle, that was irritating the sciatic nerve all the way down to my toes.
Can I chime in with another vote for exercise? I used to have mild issues, but since I started weight training and an abs workout, it’s been a different world for me.
And I’m a 40-year-old man, so I’m on track for trouble. But I had all kinds of problems in my 20s and 30s that are (poof!) gone!
And nothing specific for a back either: Typical chest, shoulders, arms workout, plus abs work.
Thanks everyone for the advice. It sounds like exercises are the way to go, and I’ll start googling around for some.
Joe Kerrman’s post has got me thinking about how my weightlifting could be part of the problem.
I’m pretty sure my lifting technique is completely fine but maybe I should get a trainer to watch me after pointing out my concerns about my back (before I get a :smack:, yes I have had training sessions already, just not recently and not specifically about these concerns).
Also, I tend to use machines because free weights seem too risky to me (I don’t have a spotter). But free weights (apparently) utilize more stabilisation muscles, so maybe I should try sometime – but with low enough weights / reps to minimise the danger.
I deliberately used the awkward term “spine maintenance” to help the thread get noticed. And I could have got twice the hits if I’d spelled it maintainance
In addition to the above look into inversion tables. You don’t have to spend much on them. I use this one because it folds easy. 5 minutes a day makes a difference.
I have chronic lower back pain due to an unfortunate disk-slipping incident on a jetski in 1994. I started regular yoga and abdominal exercise about 6 or 7 weeks ago, and haven’t had a single problem since.
Amazing that nobody’s thought to mention exercise yet. I’d like to suggest swimming in particular - as a quite tall person myself, I used to have back and knee pain. Once I started swimming, it all melted away. And now I have a whole stretching routine, do a lot of yoga, etc etc - it’s made a tremendous difference in quality of life.
In fact, I sort of tend to think of swimming as ‘applied yoga’ - water’s almost 800 times denser than air, so it’s all about applying force through technique - which means flexibility, flexibility, and yeah some strength and conditioning too of course.
I swear by my chiropractor. I have two herniated disks in my neck from whiplash and lower back problems and I go about 4 times a year and it works for me. They only take x-rays once and for me that was 15 years ago on my first visit. It is important to have initial x-rays because that is how I found out about my neck and uneven hips. Also it can rule out cancer and something else that may be the problem. Bone cancer makes the spine look like swiss cheese.
I can feel when I need to go and usually it is resolved in two sessions. It costs me 6 dollars for a copay and then I’m fine until I go out of alignment or over do it.
A good chiro can look at your back and see the problem. Also by the legs and hips and how your feet hang. They just loosen up the tight area so everything can fall back into place. It isn’t rocket science that due to weight, overuse or injury our spines get contorted trying to adjust itself. Then the muscles get involved around the spine and before you know it you have pain.
I have a dresser from 1902 that is like a giant spine. It is all dovetailed and fits together without one screw. It doesn’t travel well though and once during a move it fell apart. I was dating an engineer at the time and he put it back together. He said it was perfectly made but couldn’t take the bumps and jostling of the move. He just placed the pieces back together and the dresser is fine. That is what a good chiro does.
There is so much wrong with what Perciful states regarding chiro and X-rays that I won’t bother to spell it all out. In over two decades of being (registered) X-ray Tech, I have rarely seen any Chiro-produced films that are worthy of diagnostic quality. An X-ray will not show herniations whatsoever, most Chiro’s have no idea of how ‘disease’ appears on film, and usually there is no attempt to keep the radiation As-Low-As-Reasonably-Achievable (ALARA concept). Of course, there are notable exceptions but most Chiro’s do not use ‘sound judgment’ for X-ray usage (imho) as they do not get enough training as such (and most employees do not either).
I can, with little effort, think of THREE chiro’s in three different States that have sent me patients with non-noticed/diagnosed fractured necks (C-1 or C-2) that had been manipulated several times since the films taken. I could see the fractures on the original films, and I usually took more appropriate films to better show the bony structures. It is kinda laughable that all the chiro’s involved in these cases had drawn lines/angles all over the films, even marking over pathology that should’ve given the chiro all kinds of warning signs as to the true nature of the injury - one old lady even had two HUGE black eyes from her basilar skull fracture when she fell forward over her walker and hit chin on it as she fell - snap went her neck, and Chiro thought that tugging her head around for two weeks+ would fix things. That lady is lucky to have walked into the hospital that day (against the chiro’s advice, I should add).
Be VERY wary of chiro and the promises made regarding ‘manipulations’. And its always best to make sure that the X-ray worker is properly trained (ARRT is the national standard, fwiw).
Exercise of proper type, and staying in good overall health/fitness is the best way to keep the spine good, strong, and flexible through range of motion. If its weak, problems develop with near-certainty as life moves along Using a trainer-person/therapist is not ill-advised either, but using a chiro exclusively is dicey overall, in my opinion anyways.
In addition to posture and exercise don’t forget that you need adequate calcium intake to maintain strong bones. This is probably the most important thing to remember.
I have a chronic lumbar disc problem that results in episodes of back stiffness and pain once or twice a year. The symptoms resolve within a week on their own. They likely would resolve within 7 days if I consulted a chiropractor.
That’s my testimonial. Not seeing a chiropractor works for me.
Plain x-ray films are a relatively poor means of diagnosing soft tissue problems like herniated disks, and/or correlating them with painful symptoms. Often other types of imaging (i.e. MRI) are used to confirm such problems. Forceful manipulation can worsen the problems caused by a genuine herniated disk (and forceful neck manipulation has been linked with devastating strokes due to arterial tears in a small number of cases).
Bony abnormalities that show up on spine films may have nothing to do with a patient’s symptoms, but can be used by a chiropractor to justify a long series of unnecessary treatments. And as noted, the “subluxations” chiros claim to identify have never been reliably shown to exist on spinal x-rays.
Bone cancer can show up in a number of different ways on x-rays; if a chiro told you that it looks like “swiss cheese” he is apparently ignorant of other appearances (i.e. thickened bone as commonly seen in metastatic prostate cancer).
It’s not any kind of science.
Maybe you’d benefit more by seeing a good carpenter?
Using a trainer-person/therapist is not ill-advised either, but using a chiro exclusively is dicey overall, in my opinion anyways.