Lower Back Ache

[No_Know]

Keep your buttocks in or push your hips forward. Take shorter steps. Keep your shoulders behind the front of your waist.

Sleep on your back with something to elevate your buttocks if laying flat surfaced. Or sleep in a way tthat your rolled forward hips hold that position.

My thought is that your spine is shifted--your belly is in front of your waist. And therefore your buttocks are pushed back. Your upper body weight presses on the shifted weaker area and stomping bumping, transitioned vibrations stop at the break in fluidity of the spinal shift. Massaging just above this areaand pressing downmight begin to unlock it. A liscenced chiropractor might be in order or a bone-setter type.

I No_Know

[rogue]

For back spasms a TENS Unit is a God send.

[masherdong]

Went to the chiro today. He gave me some PT with the electrodes for 10 min and that felt gooood! Afterwards, he adjusted me. I dont think I ever heard my back pop like a machine gun! He was telling me that 90% of the time the pain I have is "mechanical" and just needs adjustment. He was telling me that if the pain has not subsided, he then said that an MRI will be needed. He also told me to get a message, so I have an appt tomorrow for that.

[rogue]

I get messages daily on my voice mail.

[kwaichang]

While i agree with PT I have to say that the fascia has a memory as well and can definately re instate the SI anomoly. I have just overcame such an injury. The sooner you have it corrected the sooner you can get better look for muscle imbalances as well. Mine got reallllll bad and was very painful. Hey PT remember when I e-mailed you about my hips well the SI was the stert of it PM me I will tell you more I think you will find it interestin, I think I am going to do a paper on it. KC

[rogue]

TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation), while helpful when on, does, unfortunately, little to nothing in terms of actually solving the problem (beyond possibly giving you relief to get you out of pain, in order for you to do something more long term), because TENS is the equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and singing "la la la" when you don't want to listen to something else; the mechanism involves sending more "noise" into the pain fibers, effectively taking up all the space so that the pain signals are shoved out; but it doesn't do anything to the muscles per se (hence the name); NMES (neuromuscular electircal stimulation) is what actually causes muscles to contract in various ways, and can have various therapeutic benefits (such ass resetting the reflex contraction threshold, turning off on-going spasm, clearing inflammation and bringing in more oxygenated blood) depending on how it's used and what you do during and after

Right. The TENS unit is what I use in place of the pain killers I was on which left my a very unhappy Rogue. With the pain cycle reduced I'm usually able to do the things that stop the spasm (stretch, some acupressure and get to my PT). Next time I have a bad attack I'll check with my PT about the NMES.

[rogue]

BTW, what's the prob? more importantly, have you tried to figure out what your body does the day or three before you have a spasm? that's what I typically tried to get my patients to figure out, even to the point of doing a sort of "self-diagnostic" routine (different for each person, of course) that would give them a heads up that trouble was potentially on the way - that way, they could either self-manage more aggressively, or come see me before it got really out of hand; the ones who took the time to be consistent with this ended up much happier and seeing me much less frequently...

Hi Chris, The problem seems to be with the quadratus lumborum and I've had the problem for over 25 years. It used to be very sporadic but now seems more frequent. The good news is that I can generally catch it real early and stop it with a some specific stretches followed by a light workout. Don't know if that really helps but so far, so good. For times when it sinks in more I'll add in a couple of Alleves, heat/ice and the TENS. Every once in a blue moon the muscle will spasm around one of the big nerves whose name I can't remember right now, resulting in a real fun time similar to hot skewers in my back, someone screaming and a white out. Really scares the hell out of the kids and the dog.

These days I have it mostly under control. Things I've changed is no more high round house kicks, dropped doing most TMA style stretches, I don't sit for hours at a time (got out of jury duty because of it), only sleep in certain positions and I make sure I exercise on a regular basis. Bunch of other stuff too but those are the main ones.

[rogue]

the take-home message: while starting locally is fine, IME chronic QL is often associated w/compensation for something else, or several different things; in your case, as you have aggressively treated it locally with inconsistent success, I'd look at ll those other things

Good call!

What kind of treatments are you suggesting?