Post: #1

How do you guys deal with this? I have never injured any part of my back or hips, but I nonetheless suffer from slight annoying pains throughout my back muscles. I'm only twenty and I'd like to figure out how to end it, it's getting in the way of my general quality of life.

Post: #2

Do you sit a lot? What's your standing posture like? How do you sleep. Back pain for me is due to improper posture in those areas.

Back pain could also be from an anterior pelvic tilt, rounded shoulders, jutting out neck or splayed out feet.

This is a great book for helping to treat it yourself. https://www.amazon.com/Steps-Pain-Free-B...ne+gokhale

Hopefully that will help you.

Post: #3

there are various sports creams that have linament oil in them that treat the pain as a symptom.

longer term, I plan to look into stretching to prevent the pain but can't say I have that figured out yet

Post: #4

A very simple answer, yoga.

If you want other exercises, I can help you out. I had a L5/S1 microdiscetomy and I was a personal trainer for a time. I know quite a bit about back pain and injuries relating to the thoracic and lumbar spine.

If you have no history of major injury, yoga will REALLY help you out. General stretching sometimes will, but a focused stretching/breathing time of 30 minutes to 1 hour a few times a week will do wonders for your body.

For DIY at home care, you can also grab a foam roller.

Post: #5

I had a severe sciatia problem that went on for months. I eventually came across the McKenzie protocol. There's variations all over the net but I specifically used the pdf at the link below.

http://www.alpineorthospine.com/pdf/phys...OTOCOL.pdf

Doing these daily, usually in the evening before bed, helped with pain management and allowed me to sleep. These, in combination with a few chiropractor visits, got things cleared up after a few weeks. They've been a part of my daily routine ever since.

Post: #6

I had severe neck and shoulder blade pain starting at 24 and reaching its height at 26.

I played drums with bad posture, had a long commute, and did a lot of studying at a desk during those days. Also had terrible pains on my right foot toes. I thought I may need surgery on both my back and my foot.

I did different floor stretches, swimming, then finally on to yoga. Even went to a chiropractor for a few sessions, they took an X-ray my lower back vertebrae had a bad curve to the left because of all the drumming and my neck had an arch forward due to my craned neck sitting posture.

Only lately have I really figured it out what I was doing wrong with my posture which was the culprit.

- I was standing with too much weight on my left foot.
- I didn't walk with a wide enough gait
- My right foot, and up to my leg wasn't using my calf, hamstring, glutes, lower back, and core in general to stabilize my weight. Maybe due to doing most things left handed/left footed my entire life, also the drumming (leaning left). I wasn't using my right heel and arch of my foot to root my stance to the ground & balance my torso's weight evenly with my left leg which was solid as a rock in comparison.
- I wasn't bending at the waist enough to pick things up or bend over in general.
- I didn't relax my shoulders nearly enough at anytime whether standing, sitting, or walking. (if you can conciously lower your shoulders even an inch by relaxing your mind it means the rest of the time you are holding them too high and that fucks with your back).


The three things that helped me most to loosen up my back and strengthen my posture:

1) Kickboxing with good posture. This twists and works your back, core, and extends your limbs with more weight and force than things like yoga or swimming that are too repetitive and mechanical. Also ducking, weaving, throwing kicks, high knees, elbows, and punches with force really makes your back, core, limbs, neck, and torso in general more flexible.

2) Standing straight up with your back against a wall and concentrating on having your skull, shoulder blades, ass, and heels all touching the wall while relaxing thinking of yourself as a puppet hung by a string so your feet, up through your legs, ass, and core balance and carry ALL the weight of your entire torso, head, neck. Legs straight and firm. Make sure your neck is also straight up so your head weight rests directly on the base of your neck vertebrae and muscles (this is a very very strange feeling when you aren't used to it - your head feels like the weight of a boulder because your neck is a pussy at the point). Don't crane your neck.

3) Self back adjustments. Being like a self-chiropractor. Feel out where your back is tense. Lay in different positions on different surfaces at different angels until you target to pain points. Stretch and twist to loosen wherever it is tight. Everyone is different. Yoga is a catch all solution and often the poses change much too quick for pain purposes.

Personally I found my best adjustment stretch for my lower right back (twists to the left too much which fucks with my right shoulder blade (pain point because it cannot fully rest) is to force my right hip to splay out and up towards me which puts the weight on the heel and arch of my right foot while also twisting my lower back to a straight position. If I do this same "adjustment stretch" with my left hip and lower back I feel nothing but and great because it has been fine my entire life and no pain point.

The biggest thing I learned is to find and target to pain area and focus on the posture and stretches that fuck it up. The bad posture may often being years of mental undoing in how your mind controls your posture. Posture begins in your feet and moves up your body. My pain as I bettered my postures went from upper neck fatigue, to lower neck fatigue, to upper back, to mid back, to lower back, to core abs, to legs. Now my fatigue is mostly in my hamstrings, glutes and foot muscles still learning how to perfectly hold posture at all times. Having tired muscles training up is much better than a lifetime of nerve pain and discomfort.

Every position you will need to practice once you find the "pain free" pose. Drinking coffee, walking, standing, sitting on different chairs, stools, turning while standing, turning while sitting. Especially looking at your phone which is the absolute worst one. I try to look at my phone as little as possible.

Focusing on this has helped saved me years of bad moods, pains, and maybe even prescription drugs and surgery which are horrible.

During the wall stretches and kickboxing sessions I noticed some crazy nerve sensations shooting through my pain areas and out to the tips of my limbs when things loosened up bit. Parts of my back that hadn't been aligned correctly or loosened up were reacting to new positions and nerve connections for the first time in years. Whenever I felt some of these nerve twitches at first I was worried. Then things even a few minutes later felt much better.

I have cured about 85% of my pain going down this path and it gets better each day I stand, sit, walk, and most importantly kickbox with care.

Swimming and yoga by comparison maybe cured 15-25% permanently, day to day though the effects wore off if I skipped a few days, the pain came right back because I was NOT fixing the root problem. My posture concentration and adjustment exercises have had much more permanent effects.

Now not sitting, laying, or standing without posture feels so strange and foreign because my body is addicted to the fact I am no longer in debilitating pain.

Post: #7

Find a pull up bar or something like it, that would have you about 2 ft from the ground while hanging from it. Relax your body while hanging from it and the weight of your body will stretch your lower back.

Just try it. I was bs'n around one day and did it and it's one of the best feelings Ive ever experienced as far as stretching goes.

Post: #8

The number 1 thing I have done to reduce my chronic back pain was to switch to using a mouse left handed. Took a couple of weeks to get used to, but it has made a huge difference.

Mind you, I'm in IT, so I spend all day long in front of a computer.

Post: #9

The root cause of back pain is often difficult to pinpoint if there is no obvious trauma that has caused it. I've had it for around 2.5 years now and like Travesty I'm only now beginning to figure out my issues through trial and error, by making it my number one priority, and by taking a series of active steps to deal with it.

The good news for you is that it's unlikely to be the result of years of bad posture or bad habits.

Do you play sport or workout? Do you have a manual job? What do you do in your daily life that is impacting this area of your body?

I've seen doctors, chiropractors, physiotherapists, myofascial release specialists and more - all of the advice has been poor, very generic, and quite costly. A sports injury specialist is a better bet. My advice would be to seek out your local MMA or Crossfit gym and find out who the guys go to when injured, they will be used to dealing with similar complaints and diagnosing root cause. Do not seek help from physio's who are used to dealing with geriatrics and people that have never stepped foot in a gym, my experience is that their diagnosis is lazy and vague, likely because their usual clientele blindly accept what they say. Of course this won't be true for every physio but it makes sense to find one who is used to dealing with an active client base who's problems they have a track record of fixing.

Anterior pelvic tilt is when the hip flexors (they connect your pelvis to your femur) are short and tight, and the glutes and hamstrings are weak. The hip flexors overpower your posterior muscles and tilt your pelvis forward, if you have this you will have an exaggerated curve in your lumbar spine.

Posterior pelvic tilt (less common) is the opposite of the above. Your hamstrings and glutes are stronger than your hip flexors and your pelvis ends up tilted in the opposite direction.

A good way to identify if you have any of these conditions is to lie flat on a bench. If you can slip your hand easily under the curve in your back you could have anterior pelvic tilt. If your back is flat against the bench there's a good chance you have posterior pelvic tilt. If your spine is healthy you should have a bit of a gap but not enough that your hand slips easily under.

Identify which muscles are short and tight, and identify which muscles are weak. Strengthen the weak areas, stretch out your tight areas. Pilates is great for strengthening your deep core muscles and, yoga is great for lengthening short muscles and for core strength. I recommend both. Massage also helps a lot but essentially you need to bring up your weak areas, become more flexible and get your body moving in a healthy way.

If you train regularly make sure your training is balanced, make sure you are squatting and deadlifting and not just hitting the muscles that look good in a t-shirt. I can't squat or deadlift at the moment so as well as yoga and pilates I have recently started hillwalking, using the stepper in the gym, and walking on an incline treadmill to strengthen my hamstrings and glutes. I am also doing various exercises to strengthen my hip adductors, lower back and core. I hope to start back on light weights for my lower body soon. Despite this I have managed to keep myself in pretty good shape, however I didn't start making good progress with my injury until I seriously reduced the length and load of my workouts, and made rehab my priority. Time alone does not always heal.

I've heard quite a few people say swimming is a good way to exercise when you have back pain but this is only true if your technique is good. If you do breast stroke with your head out of the water constantly it's bad for your back.

I also recommend you prioritise this and get it fixed before it becomes chronic, it's much easier to deal with at this stage and will prevent secondary issues from developing.

Finally, posture is very important. It would be worth getting yours assessed. I got mine assessed recently, my photo was taken from front, back, left side and right side then uploaded into a programme on an iPad which superimposed my body onto a grid. The centre line showed where my body should be aligned at key points - knee, hip, shoulder, head, and from this I could see where my posture was off. A picture paints a thousand words and this hammered home to me where my problems were coming from, it was as clear as day and I would recommend it to anyone who has postural problems.

Post: #10

These exercises helped me when I was suffering from bouts of back pain earlier this year:

https://breakingmuscle.com/yoga/heal-you...yoga-poses

I've incorporated these into my post-workout stretch, and after a couple of months the pain gradually subsided.

Post: #11

My back is messed up. I need a disc fusion, but the exercises below have kept it healthy at age 40. I played football, skied/snowboarded as a child/teen and landed on my back numerous times from very high in the air, I've wrecked motorcycles, bikes, and hit a rock once. Been hit by a few cars. I shouldn't be walking, but this is what I do and it works.

Here is what I do;

The McKenzie Method; find a physical therapist who practices this. I currently skype with one half way around the world.

Back Bridges - do these every day, as much as possible.

Pull ups - yes, getting good at pull ups strengthens your entire back, and puts your discs in traction by hanging and elongating your spine. Get to where you can do a set of 20.

Post: #12

I once had debilitating sciatica. This book saved me. I've recommended it to others with back issues and those that read it said it helped them too.

Healing Back Pain by Dr John Sarno

Amazon Link

Post: #13

Backpain is linked to kidney yang deficiency.

That means you are low on male essence, so do not jerk off. Definately do not view porn. Eat goji berries. Eat rasberries. Drink beef bone broth. Eat beef. Do light exercise regularly. Do not exercise like most of the guys at this forum recommend with strenuous stuff with weights and being the Hulk. Save your energy.

Kidney yang deficiency is also related to deficiency of marrow also related to deficiency of essence in the brain. Basically your libido is drained which is not too uncommon today.

Many of the guys here get weirded out with non-Westernized concepts so try not to laugh. You should prepare meals with organ meats especially beef kidneys, chicken kidneys, pork kidneys, etc. Other organ meats that improve your essence and marrow are beef brain, beef or pork heart, and beef (bull) testicles.

Also eat kidney beans.

You can see the pattern here of selectively eating foods that ramp up you energy and increase your male energy with a focus on the kidneys. Its your kidneys that are giving you back issues.

Definately exercise regularly but treat your body delicately. Stop trying to be the Hulk. If you go to a gym, stop your regular routine and carefully watch how the finest (non-Hulk, non-gym rat) petite women are exercising. They do very light exercises. They are smart. Yoga is the hardest exercise they do.

Its best to just ditch your gym membership and exercise outside only. If possible spend time each day walking barefoot outside especially on the grass or the dirt.

Also do jumping jacks. You want to move the kidneys and shake them carefully, it resets them.

Be delicate with your body. Eat foods that tonify the kidneys, and eat foods for kidney yang deficiency.

Also the main emotion that is linked to unexplainable bouts of back pain is financial stress.

Post: #14

(10-07-2016 10:43 AM)Agastya Wrote:  How do you guys deal with this? I have never injured any part of my back or hips, but I nonetheless suffer from slight annoying pains throughout my back muscles. I'm only twenty and I'd like to figure out how to end it, it's getting in the way of my general quality of life.

Before trying to self medicate let's dig deeper:

Is it a pain or just some kind of tension (Does it hurt or does is just bother you)

If it's a pain, what kind is it ? Pinching inside or more hurting while turning back to grab something behind you ?

Did you lift something heavy in the last weeks/month (stand up shoulder press)

The only 2 pain that need extreme attention are headache and back pain.
Back pain can go from bad posture due to mental dysfunction to lumbago to even something more serious and you don't treat those the same way.

Because you said it's chronic we might think that's it's because you do something at some interval that is bad for your back.

If it happened in the gym I would recommend you to stay away from any stand up lifting and to strengthen your back first with some static routine

Post: #15

I suggested this in another thread.



My kneeling chair cost me $150 which seemed like a lot for a bit of steel and some padding, but I'd pay twice that for the benefit it's provided since I've had it.

After a serious back sprain not long ago I couldn't sit anywhere without pain. Tried this seat at the store and bam. No pain at all. Highly recommended.

Post: #16

Another thought. I have gone to see Airrosti docs about a couple of problems, one in my foot and the other being my right trapezius. They helped tremendously. Painful as hell at the time, but overall a huge improvement. At the time, my insurance covered the treatments so it was a great deal.

Post: #17

I suffered from back pain until I started deadlifting. I know it sounds odd, but performing exercises that strengthen the lower back can help fix it.