What Happened to My Back?

April 10, 2020 2:33 PM

So I had a tense teleconference sitting in an uncomfortable chair a week ago, and ever since then I've had varying degrees of lower back pain. YANMD, but what, biologically, could be going on in my back? I can understand throwing my back out lifting something heavy, but how could sitting tensely on a bad chair cause a week's worth of back pain?
posted by musofire to Health & Fitness (12 answers total)

I had to get 6 weeks of physical therapy because I turned weird while sitting in a chair one time. In conclusion, backs are dumb. I pulled something. No idea what's going on with you but yes, sitting in a bad chair can definitely fuck you up.
posted by phunniemee at 2:45 PM on April 10, 2020 [5 favorites]

I agree, it's very easy to screw up your back sitting. 3 hours in the back seat of a small car put me in physical therapy for 8 weeks. It may have been sciatica, they were never really sure, but the stretches recommended for sciatica helped me. I still do them pretty diligently
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 3:20 PM on April 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

Sitting a lot in general can mess up your back. I'm not an orthopedist, but I've had a lot of experience with family members having back issues, and low back pain of my own (that I learned how to get rid of). From my anecdotal experience there seems to be 3 main causes for back pain (in an otherwise healthy back): lack of strength in the muscles along the spine, bad movement patterns and habits, and if your pain persists more than a few months there's central sensitization or learned pain, where you brain produces pain signals even though you've healed, often in response to stress. (Since this just happened the last isn't your issue, but if it persists read up on it, it's fascinating.)

There are a few different types of back pain, but the one I had was caused by hingeing in my low back when bending over the sink to wash a dish or the kitchen counter while cooking, etc. Learning to stick my butt out and keep my back flatter, along with learning not to round my back to relieve the pain when running but instead try to push backwards with my thighs as my impetus to move forward, both helped a lot. Doing deadlifts to strengthen my back did the rest, and I don't get low back pain anymore.

The other pattern I see with myself and all of my family members who sit at desks a lot is that we don't extend our upper backs very well, instead bending at the lumbar and neck regions. (Apparently this is very common.) Unchecked I've seen it turn into serious low back pain and degenerative discs in the neck. I've been teaching myself to extend my upper back and that's been helping with .. uhm, handstands, because that's what I've set as my fitness goal while social distancing. If you don't extend your upper back in a handstand you get gnarly shoulder pain. And from videos on Alexander Technique I've learned to lengthen my neck and relax my shoulders more, and that stops the chin-jutting neck hinge thing.

But anyway, there's a general set of fairly simple PT exercises that cover most types of low back pain (deadbugs and the like) that you can find online to try, with the caveat that of course an actual physical therapists is the best resource. Meanwhile, it's helpful to try to notice when your pain gets worse so that if you do end up talking to a physical therapist you can tell them exactly what provokes it. And it may help you find the problem, as it did with my back hingeing issue.
posted by antinomia at 3:33 PM on April 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

So I can't possibly really know what's going on in your back. But there are a lot of individual muscles that make up your back and they all support each other in complex ways. If some are weak then they'll get supported by other muscles under normal circumstances. But then if something goes wrong... the weak muscle might just outright. give up and get inflamed. Or, ironically, the muscle that took over is now so stressed that additional stress pulls it and it becomes inflamed. Basically you back cam be a ticking time bomb that gets set off by seemingly tiny things.

I struggled with back pain off and on for many years due to a car accident - all of my 30s really. And after a move I. started seeing a new PT and it's gone. I did the exercises and my back is now pain-free. I feel dumb for not seeing a new PT earlier.
posted by GuyZero at 4:02 PM on April 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

With a general tendency to back problems and a job that sees me hunched over a laptop with unergonomic setups I have absolutely caused myself days and weeks of pain by things like tensely squeezing my plus sized person into economy plane seats trying to use as little space as possible for an hr or three twice a week, by sleeping in unsupportive hotel beds and by driving for hrs at a time. My point is that it doesn’t take much to push an already strained back over the edge. This is now such a reliable consequence that I can detect the early signs that my back is unhappy and address them and if I don’t I invariably end up in a position where I can barely stand. How do I address this? By trying to ensure I move during the day including standing meetings and such, by getting regular massages from skilled therapists (not a wellness massage, one that hurts as they find and work out all the knots), by investing in a heating pad and using it, as well as pain killers (because tensing in anticipation of more pain is the last thing you want to do), if I feel muscles getting extra tense and by avoiding known triggers as much as possible.
posted by koahiatamadl at 4:05 PM on April 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Once, I threw my back out for weeks by slicing cheese. What I learned from the doctor and physical therapist I had to see from this incident (no joke), was that my core was very weak. The muscles around my spine were not strong enough to withstand all of the wonky positions I'd been putting myself in. Eventually those muscles got tired and confused and started seizing and spasming. I had to take muscle relaxers and lie flat for a long time before they calmed down. That was the part that caused all that pain. Once I recovered, I started working with a physical therapist to strengthen my core. Lots of planks, squats, and other core stabilizing exercises. Now my core is strong and I can cut all the cheese I want! :)
posted by pazazygeek at 4:25 PM on April 10, 2020 [6 favorites]

Yeah, spasms can start basically on their own over normal movements, especially for sedentary people. I now do half an hour of stretches and exercise every morning because I know from experience that if I don’t, I’m fucked. That said, even with a stronger core you can’t be stupid. I bent over too much loading firewood and put myself out of commission for four weeks. Getting older sucks.
posted by rikschell at 4:35 PM on April 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Oh yeah, welcome to being old.

For me this happens when my monitor is at the wrong height. Putting some thick textbooks under it so the top of the monitor is at eye level works for me. Also I do better with a separate keyboard/mouse instead of using the laptop keyboard because the laptop ones are often at the wrong level.

One super helpful thing I learned from my doctor is to use ice! I iced my back for about 15 min, then stretched for a few minutes, then iced again. When your muscles are in spasm they need a lot of bloodflow to get those muscles back to normal. When you ice, your body naturally increases bloodflow to the area to warm it up. I found that icing it right away dramatically shortens the recovery time. Nobody likes using ice but it is worth it.
posted by selfmedicating at 4:44 PM on April 10, 2020 [3 favorites]

I'm good for this once a year or so. Slipping a disc.

Core strength doesn't seem to matter, I work out a lot (or did before all this COVID).

I'll deadlift 455 at the gym several times no problem.

I'll bend over to shampoo my son's hair in the bathtub and OOOF, back goes out.

Other examples are reaching over the table to get another slice of pizza. Or just getting up from a chair to grab my backpack. Or I just wake up in the middle of the night and try to shuffle my body over. It just happens.

It's one of those things that just happens when you get older I guess.
posted by sanka at 6:22 PM on April 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Seconding "backs are dumb". I threw my back out in my 30s, but when I was being treated for it we discovered that I had had mild scoliosis in my lower back, so it had become a weak spot; so it wasn't so much that I'd lifted one single thing that was too heavy, more like it was just a little more prone to giving out. I had been doing some slightly-heavier-than-usual lifting, and ignoring the twinges it was giving me beforehand. Second time my back went out, I also ignored the twinges it was giving me and then I also sat weird in a chair and it went out again.

These days I pay attention to the twinges, and stop and stretch out if it's feeling a little stiff. I haven't thrown my back out since.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:13 AM on April 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

I’ve been doing a lot of reading / learning about the mind body connection around back pain- mainly through the Curable app which I learned about here, along with some supplementary study. It’s helped me a lot with back pain.

Here’s an article from Harvard Health Publishing that you might find helpful.
posted by hilaryjade at 5:23 AM on April 11, 2020

I'm just going to nth seeing a PT therapist for this, and if the first one you see doesn't help you, find another one. Not all PT places are the same. I struggled with back pain for 2 years before finally finding a PT therapist who actually helped me. After that all my pain cleared up in 2 months and has not troubled me since (1 year later).
posted by WalkerWestridge at 1:13 PM on April 11, 2020 [1 favorite]