Back pain can crop up any time of day, any day of the week, without any regard for plans you might have had, or tasks you needed to complete. It can be a nuisance, really putting a damper on your day.
But thankfully, there are some exercise programs and home remedies you can try to help relieve that pain. Those include:
Stretching
There’s a whole range of different stretches that you can do for pain relief – from something like the child’s yoga pose, through to even just simple toe-touches. This kind of low-impact movement is a great way to stretch and strengthen your intervertebral discs, giving the space between them a chance to flood with nutrient-rich fluid to promote pain relief. This is why stretching is such a popular exercise for physical therapists to recommend to patients with ailments like degenerative disc disease.
When stretching, it’s important to take your time and pay close attention to how it feels – overstretching and straining your body can cause your pain to worsen.
Walking
The basic movements that your body makes when walking is one of the best things we can do for chronic lower back pain. We recommend starting out small with 10 to 20 minutes of gentle walking each day, sticking to flat or relatively even ground with few inclines.
In fact, walking can be especially good for patients with conditions that focus on narrowing of the spinal column, like spinal stenosis. This is because the act of walking can help open the column – limiting the pressure placed on the nerves, and helping to relieve the pain.
Swimming
As much as low-impact exercise is good for back pain, swimming provides a no-impact alternative – essentially allowing you to float and be weightless while helping to strengthen your core.
With that said though, the way you swim will matter. Ideally, you do not want to be twisting your body often or thrashing around so we would recommend straying away from breast stroke. Alongside that, we would recommend goggles and a snorkel to prevent you from having to arch your back to lift your head out of the water.
How to know if your back pain needs to be seen by a doctor
Exercises and at-home treatment is great for relieving your pain temporarily, but it’s still important for the root cause to be diagnosed by a medical professional. If you’ve been experiencing chronic pain for more than 6 months, or it has worsened dramatically, then it’s necessary that you seek medical advice for a full treatment plan to be developed.
