Is Back Pain Caused By A Lack Of Exercise?

Many people seem to want to know if you can just exercise lower back pain away. Is it only about exercise? That is, did you end up with lower back pain due to a lack of exercise? Or could it be something else?

Your back pain is not necessarily caused by a lack of exercise, but it's probably a good place to start looking. When I ask patients if they exercise, most are still saying "no." Those that do exercise tend to stick with the same machine or routine for their entire program. (And almost none of their "routine" exercises focus on improving their back muscles.)

So on one hand, we have those that don't exercise and have lower back pain. It's easy to take a guess and see that their spine is having problems due to a lack of muscular support. While their spine may need more work at this point (check with your healthcare professional), eventually they'll exercise lower back pain away by creating a muscular back support around their spine with regular exercise.

Those that do exercise, but are not performing a variety of movements are causing a different problem; muscular imbalance. They are likely only developing certain muscle groups while largely ignoring others. Worse, they may be performing activities that are alarmingly similar to what they already do all day.

They are strengthening muscles that are already overworked (muscles in the front of the body) and not strengthening muscles that are typically ignored (back muscles). This is a standard recipe for developing lower back pain problems and should be avoided.

Overall, maintaining a variety of activities that includes exercises to enhance cardiovascular health, strengthening and stretching will help exercise lower back pain away for good. The same formula works for almost everyone. First, due some exercise regularly. Next, make sure you take some time to strengthen your back muscles (especially if you already know you need it!).

Your Pain Just Started, But Your Problem Began Long Ago...

There are problems that have just started, lurking beneath the surface where you have not yet felt their pain. You may go years, occasionally feeling some soreness and stiffness, just to have it go away on its own. Maybe you feel a twinge, take a pill, and it all seems like it's going to be okay.

Then one morning you get up, accidentally drop your socks on the floor, bend down to pick them up and you can't get back up. You are having so much pain that you barely manage to make it to your bed and hang on. You start taking pills like crazy until you manage to pull out the yellow pages and find a nearby chiropractor.

On your visit to the chiropractor, he explains that your spine is showing signs of wear and tear, that your problem likely began years ago. "What? I just bent down to pick up my socks. My problem started this morning." The problem with believing that your problem is new is that you will also likely believe that your pain should go away quickly.

You are likely forgetting about all the times you felt warning signals and quickly dismissed them or medicated them away. You don't realize that you haven't been able to touch your toes in years, you don't exercise regularly, and your job entails you sitting for extended periods of time. These were all factors in the building of your spinal problem, long before you ever felt your first symptom... the back pain.

The back pain ended up as the final result of the years of build up on your spine. Now you can either go for stronger drugs to cover things up, or you can begin to undo the years of ignoring the warnings and work to build up a healthy and normally functioning spine. The good news is that it rarely takes nearly as long to put your back together as it took to make it bad in the first place.

There is a point of no return. There is a point when you've ignored and dulled the warning signals for so long that the degeneration in your spine and the bulging of your spinal disc have eliminated some of the more conservative treatments. There is a time when your only choice is a spinal surgery or injections to stop the pain even if they aren't fixing anything.

What can you learn from this? When the back pain hits, take a good look at when your problem began and not just when your symptoms began. Seriously evaluate what its going to take to get your spine back to a good place and pain-free. The longer you wait in taking the proper steps, the more difficult the journey.

Chiropractic As Part Of A "Get Healthy" Program

If you're like many people, you'd love to be a healthy person. If you already feel pretty healthy, that's great. However, I've noticed more and more people are searching the internet for ways to get healthy. They want to be healthy, they just don't necessarily want to have to take any difficult action steps in order to make it happen.

Getting healthy usually means all the normal steps. Eating better, getting some regular exercise, and addressing various ailments and symptoms that have begun to show up. Still, most people are going to take a passive approach to their health. They want to do things and go places where things will be "done to them" rather than them having to "do stuff."

Let's take eating better for example. There's no real mystery any more for you in which foods are good for you. Fast food is usually bad (even the stuff they try to make seem like it's good for you), and vegetables are good. When you are snacking on potato chips, you can't honestly be telling yourself "I sure am eating healthy." Eating healthy things, putting only healthy things in your shopping cart, and worse, planning your meals ahead of time so you don't get caught starving and nothing to eat but fast food requires effort.

Exercise is the same thing. Remember those belts that people used to strap around their waist and get shaken into better health? You don't see them anymore because exercise really is not a passive thing. You've got to get out of your chair and regularly move around to make anything happen. After awhile, just walking around is not really going to get you the results you want either. You'll have to put in more effort to increase the intensity of your exercise to hit the next level.

Here's the good news for those people that want to do something healthy, but don't want to put forth a ton of effort. Get a chiropractic adjustment. You don't have to wait for headaches, neck pain, or back pain to decide to visit a chiropractor (even though that's what a lot of people do). Getting a chiropractic adjustment is one of the easiest things to do, and one of the healthiest.

It's an insidious thing. You don't see that your spine is breaking down. You don't see the degeneration process start to occur in your spine and the spinal discs. You just know that things aren't quite right. I've had patients that never complained of anything more than low back stiffness, before coming in for their first chiropractic visit.

However, their x-rays showed advanced spinal degeneration something that simply could not happen overnight. The best part of all in starting this type of program is that the only "action" you have to take is to show up. The chiropractor will do the rest, and you get to just sit back and feel better about taking a healthy step toward a better you.

What If You Can't Afford Treatment?

With all the debate going on about government-sponsored healthcare and keeping costs down, chiropractic care remains one of the cheapest methods of solving many different health conditions.

For less than the price of a round of steroid injections, you can get weeks to months of chiropractic treatment that will typically have longer lasting and more beneficial effects — without the side effects.

Now, I understand that many people can have difficulty with starting a treatment plan that may include multiple visits in a week. That’s at least a co-pay every time they walk through the door. I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, but I know that people waste so much money on things that are harmful to their health while putting their health issues on the back burner that could easily be solved now.

Is it really that you can’t afford treatment? Or is it that you just don’t see it as a priority? Every situation is different and your situation may be that you truly cannot afford it, but I’ve encountered many patients that just don’t see their health as a priority and that’s unfortunate.

At our office, we bend over backwards to offer discounts and alternate payment options in an effort to help you afford care, so it’s always surprising when people don’t choose to take advantage. Others are thrilled that we offer choices and ways for them to get all the care they need now and then pay for it over time.

I can sleep at night knowing that people that really want the help will always get the help at our office. If you need chiropractic care and wonder how in the world you can afford it, know that there are offices out there that will give you the payment assistance you need to make it happen.

Why Don't More People See Chiropractors?

According to various polls and questions asked of the public, more than 50% (sometimes 60%) of the population indicate they would consider visiting a chiropractor. For the last forty years, the percentage of people that actually do so has remained the same. While more people are seeing chiropractors than ever before, consistently only 10% of the population does so.

Why? If so many people would consider chiropractic as an alternative to other medical choices, why don’t they actually do it when the need arises?

They don’t know what to expect.

Most people have gone to see a medical doctor. They have an overall understanding of what they can expect when they walk in the office. They expect a little window, to be handed some paperwork to fill out, and then eventually get a chance to visit the doctor and tell them where it hurts. They also know that they’ll likely be handed a prescription that will help their symptoms and they can be on their way.

What happens when they go to see a chiropractor? That’s just it. They don’t really know. They assume it’s similar to a visit to an MD, except that instead of a prescription the chiropractor is likely to “pop” something. Do they really need something “popped”? They’re not sure so they go with what they know.

They don’t know if their condition can be helped with chiropractic care.

They think of chiropractors as helping with auto accidents and low back pain (if you just go by the most common advertisements seen), but they don’t have that. They have headaches, or neck pain, or shoulder pain. Can a chiropractor help with that? They look at a couple of yellow page ads or run through some websites. Some say they do, some don’t say anything about it.

Can they get help by seeing the chiropractor? Again, they’re not sure so they just go back to what they know. They want relief and they want it fast. They’ve gotten relief before by getting a prescription so once again they find themselves at their physician’s office.

They don’t know who to see.

All the chiropractic ads say different things. Activator Methods? Gonstead? Palmer Graduate? Do I need that? Is one really better than the other? This guy seems okay, he’s wearing a white coat and advertising “decompression.” Do I need to be decompressed? All of the chiropractors seem to be advertising slightly different things, while the medical doctor offices all seem to be closer to the same.

There can be a lot of confusion about visiting a chiropractor. While many chiropractors offer an initial no-charge consultation, most people just aren’t going to sit through a consultation when what they really want is pain relief as quickly as possible. It’s really up to the chiropractic profession to continue to educate and get a consistent message out there so people will know what to expect, which conditions are regularly treated, and understand some of the terminology that is out there when it comes time to make their choice.

Back Pain: It Isn't Always What It Used To Be

If you ignore a back problem, it will likely not go away on its own. Sometimes you can get through an episode when it’s early in the condition with some over the counter medications and rest. So you’d think. If the underlying problem is never addressed, the back pain problem is there to resurface again at a later date.

Usually when the pain returns, it hurts a little bit more and lasts a little bit longer. Over time, the episodes will start to show up more frequently until the person takes the actions necessary to create a more substantial healing. (Hopefully they go to see a chiropractor and get their spine in its proper alignment instead of relying on stronger and stronger medications.)

More often than not, the person dealing with the back pain follows their doctor’s orders and concern themselves with their back only when the pain shows up. Then they return to doing all the same things that led them to the the problem in the first place. Then the symptoms return and they show back up to their doctor.

“I know what I’ve got, doc. Last time you told me it was my L5 disc.” They then expect you to do what you did last time, give them the relief in the same time frame you gave it to them last time and they can get on with their lives. Sometimes it happens just like that, sometimes the episode takes a couple of extra days to return back to normal.

Eventually, they’ll get the same condition, they’ll show back up to your office, expect the same results… and they won’t happen. The doctor will end up doing more tests and discover that they don’t just have an “L5 disc” problem anymore. They now have L4 and L5 and the sciatic nerve is being compressed. The previously minor disc bulge at L5 has turned into a full blown disc herniation with potentially more invasive treatment needed to alleviate the pain.

How could this have been avoided? Once you’ve been notified that you have a back problem, seek relief from the pain first. Once the pain is gone, you must distinguish that your “pain” and your “problem” are two different things. Celebrate the relief of your pain, but evaluate what may have led to the problem in the first place.

Are you strengthening your back muscles? Are you getting enough exercise? How are your daily activities contributing to the problem and how can they be modified. Don’t accept your back condition and assume it will never change or get worse. Most of them can and do get worse over time.

Just Do One Thing At A Time.

If you’ve started to notice that your health is declining and it’s time to do something about it, you’re probably wondering where to start. You know you don’t feel good, you know you’re not doing enough healthy things for yourself, but it can all be a bit overwhelming. Even if your primary goal is to drop a few pounds and just feel better… which action should you take first?

One school of thought is to take massive action. This is certainly a good thing and has helped many overcome great obstacles. Taking massive action should lead to massive results. However, when it comes to changing your health, which massive action should you take? Go and buy every vitamin in the store? Run laps around your block until your legs won’t move? Schedule appointments with a chiropractor, personal trainer, massage therapist, and psychologist?

My suggestion is to take massive action… on one thing at a time. Pick something. It doesn’t have to be anything other than something that will move you closer to a long term goal of being healthy. To me, that would mean that I’m an appropriate weight, I’m generally free of pain, I have lots of energy, and my moods are pretty consistent in a positive way.

The major categories are going to be eating better and exercise.

Eating right can start with eliminating the things that you know are bad for you that you regularly eat. Too many sodas? Trips to the vending machine? Double frappacinos with whip? Something just popped into your head and you know it’s been slowing leading to a decline in your health. Pick one and let it go.

Bring your lunch to work a couple of days per week or find something healthy that you can eat at least once per day. Start taking a decent multi-vitamin if you’re not doing so already and drink a lot more water. Just do something healthy.

Once you’ve got this habit formed and are starting to feel pretty good about your results, time to reassess and eliminate something bad and add in something good. Keep this up until you get where you want to go.

What about exercise? I have to admit, doing this regularly is not always the easiest thing for me. I say it’s about spending the time and effort, but I think it’s more about not spending the time finding something that I really enjoy doing. You don’t have to start an exercise program by planning to run a marathon (unless that helps you get motivated).

Walking 1 mile and running 1 mile burn about the same amount of calories since it takes longer to walk that same distance. Find ways to walk more, even if it just means parking your car further away from the building at work. You can do it, but you have to start somewhere and that means taking action towards your goal.

You can get healthy, really! It’s possible for those that are willing to make the effort. If your health has declined to such a degree that you need professionals to help you heal and feel better, then by all means do that too. Take massive action… just do it on one thing a time.