We’ve all heard people talk about how “their back went out”. Something like, “I bent down to pick up a sock and my back went out.”
Or maybe there was an event, such as an automobile accident or athletic event.
We can think of these examples as the triggering event rather than an injury, meaning this event isn’t causing the current pain; but rather when the pain began.
In most cases of chronic back pain, it was not the event that let to prolonged pain, but factors that were in play before the initial onset.
The three main factors that set the stage for the triggering event and subsequent chronic pain are discussed below.
1 – Imbalanced Posture and Mechanics
When your musculoskeletal system (bones, joints, muscles, and connective tissues) is properly balanced and aligned, the bones and joints are oriented for optimal function.
Postural muscles can then be used for support while skeletal muscles (the ones that move the body) are relaxed, healthy, and available for movement.
The human body is naturally relaxed when aligned properly.
When your posture is out of balance, paired muscles can become inelastic and either elongated or shortened, resulting in tight muscles and pain.
When your bones are not properly aligned, it puts undue stress and shear on your joints, and skeletal muscles must then be used to perform the function of postural muscles.
An imbalanced posture is inefficient and may lead to musculoskeletal pain, discomfort or injury.
2 – Insufficient Physical Activity
Our bodies are designed to move, and sedentary lives come at a cost. Our muscles are healthiest when they are used regularly, with a balanced posture.
When we exercise regularly, we also enjoy many benefits.
- Our muscles are available for both movement and postural support
- Exercise uses up the byproducts of the stress response, relieving the stress, bringing our bodies back to baseline and reducing muscular tension
- Exercise affects our brain chemistry, increasing (among other things) beta endorphin and serotonin, which helps us improve our outlook, feel better about ourselves, and acts as a natural pain-killer
- When we exercise, we have increased energy to become and remain healthy and active and perform our daily activities
3 – Stress
When presented with a stressor, the human body is remarkable in its response. Many, many physiological processes either are slowed down or heightened.
The body prepares to do something physical (i.e., fight or flee) and responds with a heightened muscular response.
However, since most of today’s stressors do not require physical action and are often chronic stressors, we end up with back muscles that are regularly tightened in preparation for an action that doesn’t happen.
So, when we hear that someone bent over to pick up a sock and their “back went out”, what actually happened is that their back muscles have been chronically tightened, plus are imbalanced and inelastic due to an imbalanced posture, so when they bent over their back muscles respond much as a twisted rubber band does under slack.
This causes pain that can lead us to think that some damage has occurred.
The important thing to know about stress is that if we don’t deal with both the underlying stressors and our physiological response to stress, it will be very difficult to achieve complete, long-lasting relief from back pain.
In Conclusion…
While there are other factors that can contribute to back pain, above are the main ones.
To both prevent and recover from chronic back pain you can:
- move often,
- with good mechanics, and
- address the chronic stressors in our life, and your response to stress.
Copyright © 2022 Mary A Williams, MSEd, BACKCoach, LLC. All rights reserved.
