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Are you tired of battling low back pain that keeps coming back? Low back pain affects millions of people, causing discomfort and limiting their daily activities. Being an experienced chiropractor, I have witnessed many patients become frustrated and exhausted with flare-ups with their low back. The good news is that you can prevent low back pain. In this blog post, I will give you ten tips you can use to help prevent low back pain. Let’s dive into these essential strategies and bid farewell to low back pain once and for all!
Engage in regular exercise to prevent low back pain
Getting regular exercise helps prevent low back pain. (1) Exercise stimulates your nervous system so you get stronger, more flexible and develop better balance and coordination. As a result, regular exercise helps keep your spine more stable to help prevent you from injuring your low back. My years of experience have shown me that patients that partake in regular exercise they enjoy experience less recurrent low back pain. In fact, research has found that doing regular exercise can reduce the frequency of recurring back pain attacks by almost half! (2)
What exercise should you do?
Choose an exercise that you enjoy so you will be more likely to stick with it. In saying that, there are specific exercises like yoga, tai chi, and pilates that have been proven to prevent low back pain. (2) As well, there are specific core exercises that have been proven to prevent low back as well (see below). The main point is to move and exercise regularly.
How often should you exercise?
If you sit a lot at work and don’t exercise, my recommendation would be to start with light exercise. This means you could start standing more at work, take the stairs versus the elevator, start biking, walk more, do some gardening and housework.
Start off doing 20 minutes of light exercise three times per week. Over time extend the times, number of days, and increase the intensity. Work up to the following:
- 50 minutes of moderate-intensity activity per week (like jogging, yoga, or dancing); or,
- 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity per week (like running, Zumba, or playing sports); or,
- 30 minutes of highest-intensity exercise per week (like sprinting, jumping rope, or resistance training)
In fact, doing a combination of strengthening with either stretching or aerobic exercise two-three times per week can help prevent low back pain in the general population. (1)
Maintain a strong core to support your back
As I have noted, there are specific core exercises that have been proven to prevent low back pain. Here are some resources to help you progress with some strengthening your core.
- Level 2 strengthening and motor control exercises
- Level 3 strengthening and motor control exercises
- Yoga exercises for low back pain
As well, if you search the internet for ‘primal blueprint workout ebook’ you can download Mark Sisson’s workout ebook. It’s an excellent progression of functional human movement exercises.
Move more at work and practice good posture
One of the most common causes of low back pain would be being sitting at a desk all day. Let me explain. Sitting for long periods of time on a daily basis creates tension in your nerves, muscles, and joints. As a result, this tension keeps getting worse to the point where you will start to develop low back pain.
Here are some strategies to move more at work and practice good posture:
- Try standing at your desk more
- Have meetings where you walk together
- If you drive or take the bus to work, park or get off the bus further from work and walk the rest of the way
- Bike, walk, or run to work if possible
- Take the stairs versus the elevator
- Get an ergonomic assessment done at work to change your work station if needed
- Take breaks and do some posture exercises and light stretching
Maintain a healthy weight for reduced spinal stress
Being overweight or obese puts extra stress on your spine and is a major risk factor for getting low back pain. (3) Furthermore, being overweight or obese means you carry more systemic inflammation throughout your body which can irritate your nerves and cause pain.
On the other hand, maintaining a healthy body weight can help prevent recurrent low back pain.
I’m not a weight loss expert, but I know enough to provide some tips on how to lose weight. For more expert advice on strategies to lose weight, I would recommend you consult with a functional medicine practitioner or a doctor of naturopath whom has a special interest in weight loss.
Eat a healthy diet to prevent low back pain
What is a healthy diet? Most food experts will agree that eating real whole foods (plants and animals) and staying away from refined foods (mostly packaged) is a healthy diet. One reason for this, by and large, is that eating whole foods help control inflammation and eating packaged refined foods create extra inflammation. Without a doubt too much inflammation in your body can lead to pain in your joints and muscles. As well, eating whole foods will provide you with more nutrients to make your body stronger and function better. In turn, this can lead to less recurrent low back pain. (4)
Read my ‘Treating Chronic Pain with a Healthy Diet’ post to dive deeper into this subject matter.
Wear good footwear and custom foot orthotics to prevent low back pain
Your feet form the foundation of your entire skeleton and support you during standing, walking, and running. If one or both or your arches flatten it can cause your pelvis to tilt. As result of this tilting, your spine, nerve, and muscles will be under more stress leading eventually to low back pain. Flat feet are a common cause of recurrent low back pain.
First and foremost make sure you wear good footwear to support the arches in your feet. Secondly, ask your chiropractor if you would benefit from custom foot orthotics. Custom foot orthotics are the ideal way to correct flat feet and help support proper alignment of your lower extremities and spine. In short, custom foot orthotics help prevent low back pain. (5, 6)
Managing stress helps chronic low back pain
An often overlooked cause of low back pain is chronic mental stress. Prolonged mental stress causes nerve and muscle tension and increases inflammation. This, in turn, can lead to physical pain including low back pain. (7, 8) So one the solutions to help prevent low back pain would be to learn how to manage stress. (9, 10)
There are many strategies on how to manage stress. Explore and learn what strategies work for you and start implementing them. Or seek out a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist to help you.
Improve your sleep to prevent low back pain
Getting good quality sleep is so important for your overall mental and physical health. As well, getting good quality sleep is vital for your body to repair and heal itself. In contrast, sleep deprivation leads to poor healing and repair translating into poor mental and physical health. And ultimately, poor quality sleep can cause chronic pain including low back pain. (11)
Start making sleep a priority if you have trouble with sleep. Making sleep a priority is something I have had to start doing many years ago. My sleep isn’t perfect yet, but by focussing on how to get better sleeps, my sleep has definitely improved over the last ten years.
Here’s a post I wrote on sleep tips.
Prevent low back pain with regular chiropractic care
Getting regular chiropractic care can help prevent low back pain. (12) Let me explain. In the modern industrial world humans are exposed to a lot of stress. That is to say many of us sit all day, don’t move and exercise enough, eat poorly, have too much mental stress, and don’t get enough sleep. So these stressors accumulate and create tension in our nervous system, muscles, and spine. Getting regular chiropractic care helps release that tension so it doesn’t build up to the point that you experience low back pain.
To understand the benefits of getting regular spinal check-ups and chiropractic care read my blog post ‘Prevent Low Back Pain with Regular Chiropractic Care’.
What to do if you have tried all of the above?
If you feel like you have tried all of the above strategies, I would recommend you seek out a doctor of naturopath or a functional medicine practitioner to get a detailed health audit done. These two types of health practitioners will tend to to investigate your health problems deeper than a conventional medicine doctor.
As well, maybe you need some expert advice to strengthen your low back and core muscles. In this case, maybe you need to see a physiotherapist.
Conclusion
By incorporating these ten tips into your daily routine, you can significantly reduce the risk of low back pain and enjoy a pain-free life. Remember to move and exercise more, practice good posture, maintain a healthy weight, eat healthy, wear good footwear and custom foot orthotics, manage stress, get good sleeps, and get regular chiropractic care. If you’re experiencing persistent or severe low back pain, don’t hesitate to seek professional help from a chiropractor. Take charge of your back health today and experience the freedom of living pain free.
For a healthy spine and nervous system, contact Edmonton chiropractor Dr. Dean Collins. Or book a consult and exam with him today.
To learn more about how chiropractor care can help you and your family, read Dr. Collins’ comprehensive guide to chiropractic care: Chiropractic Care for Everyone.
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