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6 weeks is a long time to be in pain, and is definitely reason for worry. My first suggestion is to see a physician, you need to rule out any spinal injuries. Ounce that is ruled out, your physician may prescribe you an anti-inflammatory or a muscle relaxer to ease your pain. If serious enough you may need to see a physical therapist. There are a number of reasons that may cause low back pain, from spinal injury as I said before, inflammation of tissues surrounding the spine, muscle tightness, or imbalances in posture putting undo stress on the spine. Post a visit to your physician there are a couple of things you can do to relive some of the stress on your spine:
Sit up straight, and stand with your shoulders back:
Performing movements with better posture increases your body’s efficiency, and allows muscles to act at optimum length and tension. This also helps relieve some of the load on the on your lumbar spine. Practicing better posture through out your day will help strengthen those muscles that may have become weak from slouching, hunching over your desk, and sinking into your couch. Hint: Post-its on the your computer screen make great reminders.
The Drawing-In Maneuver:
This movement can be very effective in reprogramming your “core” to fire effectively, and hopefully this will help relieve some of your low back pain. This movement has been shown to be effective for activating the transverses abdominus, which is a primary muscle of your core. To perform the drawing in maneuver simply pull your belly-button to your spine or “draw-in” your lower abs. You should be able to perform this movement with out much movement in your ribcage or spine, and breathing should still be able to be performed comfortably
Do Crunches:
By strengthening and increasing tone in your abdominal wall we take advantage of reciprocal inhibition. Reciprocal inhibition is a neuro-muscular reflex that relieves tension in a muscle group(such as your low back muscles) in the opposite muscles contract (your abs)
Stretch:
Stretching over tight muscle may help to decrease low back pain.
Some common tight muscle in desk worker are:
Calves
Hip-flexors
Hamstrings
Low back
Heat:
Heat may increase blood flow in the affected musculature and help to increase elasticity (“stretch ability”); therefore, relieving stress in over tight muscles.
Brent Brookbush NASM CPT/IFS/SFS, NSCA CPT, ACSM HFI
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