Strengthen Your Way Out of Lower Back Pain

While it might seem obvious, exercise is the best way to alleviate your back pain. With nearly 80 percent of the population dealing with lower back pain at some point, taking the steps to ease your pain is important. And the pain can be much worse than a dull ache. The pain can radiate throughout the body, cause intense muscle spasms, and leave you debilitated with pain.

So many things can happen to your back that can cause pain. You can hurt yourself from overexertion or simply turn your back in a way that causes it to stretch in a weird way. Even a simple sneeze can cause sudden fits of sporadic pain. And because of this, we know the cause is mechanical and something you can recover from. Your back problem may even heal on its own, without needing to visit your doctor.

Common Causes of Lower Back Pain

Since we know that back pain is mechanical in nature, healing the pain comes down to activity. Either a certain activity you did that led to a problem that caused the pain or a lack of activity where your back was not able to hold up to daily demands. Those activity-related problems result in:

• Strains and sprains: This is where most acute lower back pain falls. You either overstretched or strained a muscle or tore a tendon, which resulted in a sprain. This can also happen from twisting or not lifting something correctly, picking up a heavy object, or exceeding the limit of your reach.
• Herniated or ruptured discs: The impact from an accident, fall or sports-related injury can cause damage to your spine. When this happens, your back will immediately start to occur and can cause tingling or numbness in your legs.
• Sciatica: If you’ve been experiencing sharp lower back pain that radiates down through your butt and legs, this could be caused by compression on the sciatic nerve. Sciatica commonly occurs after you experience a herniated or ruptured disc.
• Pregnancy: Lower back pain is a common complaint for pregnant women. As your belly and baby grow, your muscles and ligaments are being stretched out. Back pain is also caused from the added weight and bump up front.

First, you must find the cause of the pain. Like if you had an accident, fall or injury, you should schedule an appointment with your provider to get checked. When you pull something or just generally have a sore lower back, you might think that resting will make your pain go away. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

Moving your body is the best medicine. When you aren’t active, it can cause the muscles to tighten up and cause even more pain. So, the best thing you can do it stay active and stick to your normal routine, or as much as your pain allows you to do. There are also a few exercises your can do to help. These exercises target the affected areas and help to further relieve your lower back pain:

• Low back stretches
• Hip stretches
• Wall Sits
• Core strengthening exercises
• Knee to chest
• Bridges