Bad Posture 2: the low back
December 20, 2015
How slumped posture also contributes to low back pain:
I previously had a chiropractic post about how posture can contribute to neck and shoulder pain, but I didn’t mention how much this can also affect the low back. Most people don’t think that the neck can contribute to back pain, but you’ll get a very different answer if you ask a chiropractor. The problem comes with the relationship between the shoulders to the mid back and all the way down to the low back and pelvis. When people spend too much time sitting we inevitably fall into poor posture, which we all know affects the shoulders and neck, but it also affects the low back significantly. The slumped posture that our body becomes accustomed to will begin to pull from the shoulders and mid back into the low back region. Kind of like a tight rubber band, the muscles in the low back get tensioned and this causes pain. This is not only treatment treated by standard chiropractic treatment, but also necessary muscle work which can be done by either a massage therapist or soft tissue work done by a chiropractor.
Experience matters
So really, just because you’re experiencing low back pain it doesn’t mean we aren’t going to address the issues going further up the spine. Ultimately not only the posture needs to change, but also the muscle imbalance that has occurred from said posture. Chiropractic treatment and massage treatment for this low back pain will give some relief, but in the end some re-training of the core and shoulder muscles needs to be addressed as well.
This is an area that gets missed so much in modern medicine that a chiropractor will better address, and is also why we have such chronic low back pain going on in our society. It’s because we aren’t looking at the body as a whole, and just treating the targeted areas where there is pain. When you just target the area that hurts, you are ignoring what caused that area to hurt in the first place. -Dr. J