Lifestyle Hacks To Reduce Low Back Pain || WBWL Ep 67

Here’s a recent video training I recorded to help reduce low back pain through simple lifestyle hacks.

These are not necessarily a golden ticket to be fully out of pain.

That requires a little extra grit and effort via strength and mobility exercises that we’ve created for our clients.

But it can help to change how much back pain you feel on a daily basis.

Transcript

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Hello, everybody. Dr. Jay here. And just very excited to always present to you guys the either the latest research or things to help you mitigate back pain and help you live a pain free life. So today I want to talk to you specifically about lifestyle hacks to eliminate low back pain. Now, many of you guys know that low back pain is actually the most common ailments that we see in physical therapy. Nine out of 10 people are In the world, actually deal with some low back pain in their life. So you're talking about one person out of 10, never experienced low back pain. However, majority of us, including myself have experienced some sort of low back pain. And the reason why is because low back pain has manifest itself in many different forms. And there's many different root causes. Sometimes the root cause may be the fact that you have strained an area. We have, many of us have been there where we pick up something very heavy. And therefore, we strain our back. The other things that may hurt us is not something physical, but actually psychosocial. So a lot of times, if you're noticing that you're getting very stressed at work or financially, you're not doing well, or let's say you get into a fight with your spouse, for example, or fight with your kids. A lot of Anger, anxiety, emotions, worry can actually cause low back pain in itself. And so research actually shows that we all have a different proponent for curing stress in different areas. So some of us that feel stress or overwhelmed will feel that more in our neck. Or some of us that feel stressed and overwhelmed end up as headaches or migraines and some of us actually feel pain in our hips or sometimes in our lower back. Nonetheless, though, I wanted to go with you. Go through this. You at least 5 different lifestyle hacks. That you can incorporate into your life today. And so if you find any of this information interesting, or if you have any specific questions, definitely send me an email, Jason at flexor Dr. J. com. If you have any specific questions around low back pain, but also we actually have a business line. So feel free to text me as well. 415 965 8255. 6580 again, 415 965 6580. Feel free to either give us a call. Although some of sometimes we're a little busy. Sometimes I'm dealing with clients and kids, so sometimes me or my team were not always there to pick up. But if you do leave us an email, Or feel free to text us any questions, remarks, concerns around some of the information that we're giving you. Or if you're interested in getting one to one coaching in order to help mitigate your low back pain, definitely give us a call or text us 415 965. 6580. All right, so let's go ahead and get into our five lifestyle hacks in order to for you to reduce low back pain today. Now, the first one may seem actually pretty simple, yet I do find that I find that so many people, including my own clients, actually make this really critical mistake. And it's very easy to actually change this. And the first thing you want to do is keep things close to you. Okay. What does that mean? That doesn't mean we're not talking about keeping friends or family close to you, although that's very important as well for our own mental health. But what you're thinking about is actually keeping objects close to you. So sometimes when I have people just say Hey, go ahead and pick up this. Pen or this box off the floor often find that they step in front of the box and the box or whatever the object is usually sometimes 12 to 24 inches or 1 to 2 feet away from their body. And what that ends up doing, though, is that. It ends up having us to round our back or sometimes hinge from our hips. Sometimes we're having to pick up an object that's much further from what we call our center of gravity. And our center of gravity is actually, believe it or not, it's our lower back around L4, L5 to S1, which is the lowest aspect of our spine, is actually what we consider our center of gravity, right? So basically, we've seen a lot of people, if you, Basically, you see somebody hang from a pole, for example, they essentially they hang and they hinge from the hip area and usually they can stay pretty balanced. Now, why is that? It's because it is our center of gravity. We're then basically it's distributing the forces between our lower as well as our upper body. Okay, so because that's our center of gravity, we want to make sure that our center of gravity, it's closest to that object. So when we're picking up a pen box, anything, whether it's light or heavy, are we keeping those objects close enough to us so that we're reducing strain, shear and compression forces directly at the lower back. And you'll be surprised that if you pick up something right now, you're like, yeah. I've been picking up these objects that are quite far away from me, and although you may not feel a pop in your back, you may not feel like, let's say, a big strain, I think a lot of us have been there before where we strain our lower back. And is it because the object was too heavy, or is it because it's a repeated amounts of lifting or improper lifting that eventually leads to a more catastrophic injury, or some people don't even go through catastrophic injury. They end up just having this constant or this. constant stiffness or back pain that doesn't go away. And oftentimes that deals or that is directly related to our body mechanics and how we lift objects off the floor. So we've heard this before. Yes, of course, that when it is a larger object lift with your knees, not with your back. We've all heard that before, but realistically, the more important thing besides just Squatting things up is actually learning how to hinge. If you ever seen a deadlift versus a squat is a more knee dominant pattern where we're seeing the knees do majority of the movements and the body stays more upright versus a deadlift or a hinge mechanic is more so the knees actually don't do a whole lot of bending. We're actually bending a lot from our hip joints. And our back stays relatively straight. So nonetheless, the most important thing is to keep objects close to you. And when we're thinking about keeping object close to you, that means that if it is a box, try to straddle the box, actually try to get it directly underneath your private parts. So when you can do that, that essentially lines you up with your center of gravity and enables you to lift more efficiently with less effort and with less strain in your back. Okay. Other things to think about are, for example a lot of times I see a lot of my, a lot of my mom or even my dad clients who are either taking they're either taking clothes out of the laundry hamper or they're getting clothes out of the washer or dryer. Another common one that I see a lot of low back pain is people that are usually washing your dishes. So if you're washing your dishes those plates, forks, the heavy pots. I don't know why I mentioned forks actually, but some of the heavier objects in your sink. You can see that it's pretty far away from your center of gravity. So how can we get those objects closer? We can't just simply just put our chest like directly over the sink. But what we can do, though, is a couple things. One is I generally like to lean my abdominals or my rib cage. against the counter. And that gets me a little bit closer. It doesn't do the entire trick. But here's the thing though, is that we know that our center of gravity is around our hips, but what we can do is we can give ourselves a little bit more of a wider base of support. So sometimes we can't change necessarily the center of gravity, but if we change The base of support, or if we change the amount of support that we give, then essentially that decreases the stress off her body as well. So I'll give you two examples. Again, one is when we're washing dishes, what you can do is open up the cabinet. And then when you open up the cabinet, put your foot inside the sink. So what that does, it, it widens your base of support. And when you widen your base of support, which essentially think about a tripod, for example when you have like a camera tripod, if the camera tripod is really tall and the tripod feet, basically the three feet that hold up the tripod, if that, those feet are really close together, I can just fling it over just flick it over and it'll fall down. However, when you see those like larger tripods, where one leg is like. One leg is essentially like 12 to 16 inches away, and it's a really it's harder to push down. And the same thing goes that we're harder to push down and we decrease stress from our lower back when we put our foot inside the counter. Okay. And we also talked about increasing our basis support. So what that means is increasing our basis support essentially is let's say you're picking up an object. That's near the coffee table. Very common, right? You're picking up like your kid's toys. I pick up my kid's toys nearly every day because he doesn't even, he doesn't help. He doesn't help with picking up toys right now. Or it's very hard to have him do so how do I do that without increasing the stress in my back? For example, if I'm simply just rounding out and just picking up all his toys, eventually my back can start to bother me, for example. However, if I think about, for example, if I put my hand on the coffee table and I have my two feet. Now, essentially, I'm not just using my two feet, which are two bases of support. I now have three bases of support. So the three bases of support, which is my hand on the coffee table, along with my feet on the ground, Gives me three bases of support, which again, that allows me to feel much less stress in my lower back. You can even take that one step further. Some people that half kneel, right? It's called half kneeling where my hand is on the coffee table. My, my feet are on the ground. Essentially if I'm half kneeling, it's my feet, my knee, my toes on the same foot as the knee, right? Along with my hands. So that essentially that's four bases of support. And again, if you think about that, when you're lunging down like that allows you to have much better mechanics throughout. Throughout. And again, it enables you to have much less stress in your lower back. So we all hear the saying of, it's the straw that broke the camel's back. And I think there, there is some truth to that because it may not be the first time that you pick up something improperly. That leads to an injury or leads to pain, but repeated habits of poor lifting mechanics can definitely cause strain over time. Okay. Hopefully that makes sense. Let me talk to you about number 2. Okay. Number 2 is also very important. I argue number 1 is probably the most important, but number 2 is to brace relative to the intensity or the weight that you're picking up. Okay, so what does that mean? So we know how to essentially brace our tummy. Okay. How we brace our tummy is if you lie down on the ground and you lift your head or you lift like your shoulders off the ground, you'll feel your abdominals contract. And that's essentially what we consider bracing. Bracing is not the same thing as crunching because crunching is you're actually rounding your lower back, but simply, even if we just say. Study here or you're watching this, you're listening to this right now is to simply just think about tightening your abdominals, right? Try to think about drawing your rib cage to your to your pant line, or think about drawing your rib cage to your pubic bone. Try to make them closer together. Okay, what we call that as well is called rib cage stacking, right? Rib cage stacking is essentially, it's the actual look, it's the structural. change where we're decreasing the distance between the ribs as well as the pubic bone, and we call that ribcage stacking. It's a very common it's a very common cue that I give to people that are weight training, especially my clients. You can also think about, again, it's just the queue again is to tighten up the abdominals. Now you tighten up the abdominals relative to how heavy or how demanding the task is. So if I have a pen, for example, like then with a pen, I'm really not going to give a lot of thought. I can simply just pick it up and I don't have to brace a lot. However, if I am doing my weight training in my home gym and I'm lifting 100, 200, 300 off the floor, then Definitely. I want to brace a little bit harder in order to protect my organs in order to create basically a piston or like a balloon like system that's in my belly. Essentially that lines my ribs and my pubic bone, which I call like Which is essentially I call that the core, right? The core is the rib cage. The rib cage, the ceiling, the pelvic floor is your floor. Then you have your front abdominals, your side abdominals, and then you have your lower back muscles in the back. Okay. So that essentially creates a pressure system. And that pressure system is as you brace harder, you have much lesser chance of injury because essentially you're trying to stiffen up the muscles around your spine to, to prevent sheer compression and torque. About the lower back because sheer compression torque, different types of forces are the things that affect or negatively affect and stress out the lower back, leading to low back pain. Okay, so that's just to say that again, when you're picking up a, a 40 pound box, but a 40 pound box for you is considered very heavy. Definitely brace a little bit harder. Okay. Make sure to sometimes even hold your breath. And then once you're done actually lifting the box, let's say from the ground to. It's a hip level, then you can actually, then you can exhale out. Okay, so hopefully it makes sense. And this is something I actually teach a lot of, a lot to my clients is how to maintain good intra abdominal pressure and understanding that abdominal pressure should be increased relative to the intensity or the weight of the specific object that you're lifting. Okay. All right, now let's go into number three. Okay, number three is move your lumbar spine in a triplanar fashion, move your lumbar spine in a triplanar fashion. So triplanar essentially means that we are three dimensional structures, right? We're not some written thing inside a book, okay? We are three dimensional structures. And we can move essentially in three different planes. These three different planes are called your X, Y, and Z plane. Or you can also consider them what we call in PT terms, like the sagittal, the coronal, as well as the rotation or the transverse plane. Okay, so sagittal plane is just forward and back. Okay, so what can I, what can our lower back do? Okay we appreciate motion. We know that our body usually feels better with some sort of motion. Okay. Motion is lotion. Motion causes different emotion as well. Okay. So when we move more, we're generally happier or we're increasing our serotonin levels, where it actually increases and decreases any negative mood. So there's a lot of, obviously there's a lot of benefits to just move in a general, but we're talking specifically about. Triplanar movement. Triplanar is again, sagittal plane is basically forward and back. So that means that when you bend forward, that's considered flexion. Bend backwards, that's considered extension. Now, sometimes as many of us have lower back pain or you have lower back pain right now, you may notice that your body has a specific preference. Like it feels better to go into extension, right? I reduced my pain reduces with extension and actually research actually shows that. A lot of individuals, majority of individuals benefit more from extension. And that's like a McKenzie based type principle, where basically a lot of people, if they have nerve pain or disc related issues is very common to go into more extension in order to reduce symptoms. And I think that also makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint as well, is that evolution. Is that many of us became bipedal animals, right? We walk on our own two feet. We're not dogs. And so we don't walk on four feet. We've evolved from that. So if we've evolved from that, and we're generally more on our own two feet when we're on our feet and walking around, we are in extension. Okay. When we walk around, we're in extension. So with majority of the tasks that we do, like picking up objects off the floor or running, it's all extension based. So think about extension as one of your main keys to reduce symptoms right away. Now, obviously, like I said, triplanar movement means you shouldn't just do extension, even though you may have a bias towards that, you also need to promote some sort of flexion as well. This is different. All low back pain patients that I've seen, right? Because some people have like really strong directional preferences. So I'm just saying that over time, let's say your symptoms aren't as bad or severe, that you should incorporate more triplanar movement. So we have flexion forward extension backwards. We also have rotation around our hips, our lower back, and that is called rotation, right? Rotation left. We also can reach to the side of our leg or imagine essentially imagine that your pockets. Are not just pocket. They go infinitely towards the right and left. So think about reaching down your pockets as far as you can to the right and as far as you can to the left. So if you let's say promoted all 6 of these motions. three to five times a day for even 10 to 20 repetitions. And that's being actually pretty conservative, right? I actually move probably 15 to 20 times a day, just because I feel like my habits are the most sound of almost anybody that I know. I don't know many people with better habits around movement and exercise than me, but that's being conservative in terms of saying, doing this for 10 to 20 reps, three to five times a day, just promoting these six motions can drastically reduce symptoms. Okay. Now, if you're fearful of movement that's another kind of aspect of of rehabilitation where it's not just physical, but it's a manifestation of everything that we are, our beliefs, our values, our experiences, fear, anxiety, all these other kind of Psychological variables place into the pain experience. So if you have fear of going of bending forward or fear of going into any of these six directions it just gradually expose yourself to more. I'm not saying that you have to forward fold like contortionist, for example, and try to get your chin to touch your knee. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying here is that. Promoting even gentle motions. You can just bend forward a little bit. Go into extension a little bit. Rotate and side bend just a little bit. So if you promote these motions more often, your brain will eventually perceive less threat to the motion. Okay? And perceiving less threat is one of the key things to reducing the threat of moving and therefore regaining your motion over time. Because if you never regain that motion, you're as fearful emotions. Yeah, that will speed up arthritis. That will increase low back pain because you simply just don't want to move for spine and with lack of movement of spine leads to lack of oxygenation to the spine, less hydration to the tissues. The discs don't get enough movement that it needs, right? Because our discs are essentially. There's somewhat shock absorbers, but the disc also promotes some micro movement, right? So we want movement throughout these discs in order to keep these discs between our vertebrae healthy Okay, so hopefully that makes sense Now, let's talk about number four as far as lifestyle hacks. Okay, so lifestyle hack number four is to start making motion and start making movements a habit. Okay. Now this lifestyle hack that I'm going to tell you is called habit triggers. What that essentially means. And I actually teach my clients this in my program where I teach them the phases and the science of habits, how to actually indoctrinate better good habits around movement while also D or like almost like on reinforcing negative habits. Okay. So where do we start the fundamentals of essentially my program around habits? There's three phases. One is called trigger. Number two is called action. Number three is called reward. Okay, now these three phases is what essentially Formulates a habit now habits take around 66 days to form So just because you're following triggers action and reward does not mean that you've officially formed a habit You simply just done at one time, but you need to reinforce that almost every single day For six, at least 66 days straight in order to formulate that habit. So for some of us, a habit that we commonly have is brushing our teeth, right? Because we've been doing that since we were little children. At least most of us, some of us do it even twice a day. So what habits are. Or essentially the habit trigger is trigger. Trigger could be that, let's say you brush your teeth, okay? Pair that up with action, and action would be that, let's say you move your lower back in six different directions, like I just said. The reward is, usually, you feel better, you feel either more energized, your lower back feels a little bit looser, and therefore that's a reward. So the reward feeds into the action. The trigger, right? There, it almost reinforces a feedback loop that eventually goes back to the trigger. So you have to actually think about almost writing these down, writing down a few different scenarios with which you can essentially, this is my trigger. This is my action. This is a reward. Okay. Trigger could be, I'm at the top of the stairs. Every time at the top of the stairs, I'm going to stretch my calves, stretch my hamstrings, stretch my hips in order for my lower back to feel better. Trigger calls to be. I put something while the coffee is brewing we have an automatic timer at our house. I'd encourage an automatic timer so that you don't have to do it all manually. But automatic timer goes off, coffee is brewing, okay? While the coffee is brewing and you're hearing the coffee and where you're smelling the coffee, simply stretch out your lower back, okay? Stretch your lower back, promote the six motions. And essentially, if you build enough of these, you'll eventually get to a point where you're moving your lower back more than three to five times a day, right? If anything, you get to the point where what I'm doing, which is I move my entire body. Probably 15 to 20 times a day because I have all these little triggers. I have all these little hacks, okay? I have different things, different objects, different rooms. associated with an action. And that action is always some form of exercise. And then the reward is that I feel much better as a result of that exercise. Okay. All right. So that is number four right there. Okay. Number five, lifestyle hack. Okay. Number five, lifestyle hack. Is to give gratitude. Okay. Giving gratitude. I've said this a lot on my podcast. If you don't know what the podcast is called, the one body, one life W O N one body, one life. I talked a lot about habits as well as that in my podcast, but I also talk a lot about giving gratitude. Now, what does gratitude have to do with lower back pain? What's the connection? Okay. Research shows that gratitude secretes a specific neuromodulator called oxytocin. Oxytocin is very common in women that are pregnant in order to actually relax the pelvic floor in order to allow the baby to go through. But oxytocin for us, General Joe's is actually A result of gratitude and giving, giving service and actually doing something for others. Okay. So when we give gratitude, when we're thankful, or when we contribute to the needs of other people, what that ends up doing is this secretes oxytocin. And oxytocin actually reduces blood pressure, it decreases stress, so it works directly against cortisol secretion, which is your stress hormone. And also it keeps your DNA healthier, okay? So when our DNA is being stressed out or it goes through cell death, that actually causes more symptoms down the road. Okay, that's where essentially the root of all disease, which is let's say cancer and other issues is a result of oftentimes our DNA. Okay. So if we can keep our DNA healthier while decreasing our blood pressure and decreasing our stress. Okay. Then essentially we're carrying less overall mental stress in our body. leading to less low back pain as well. Okay. Everybody's low back. Everybody that has hurt their lower back or is dealing with low back pain, even if you're listening to us right now, low back pain is never just physical. It's never just a weak core. It's never just weak. Glutes, for example. Okay. It's never the fact that your hips are tight and that's why your low back hurts. Okay. The reason why lower back pain is so common is because it's always a manifestation of physical and mental or mental, physical, as well as psychosocial. That means that we can't separate the two. When you injure your lower back, it's rarely the fact that you just injure your lower back, and you just get through it, right? Usually when you injure your lower back, it's associated with an emotion. That emotion is usually ah, insert, insert a cuss word, right? It's usually frustration is usually angry. It's usually, ah, I hurt my lower back. How am I going to get through the day now? How am I going to feed my kids? How am I going to pick up my child? How am I going to do my chores? Do I have to skip days off work? So you're looking at all these other variables and scenarios that are associated with the low back injury, and that whole entire experience, negative or positive, Results in an increase or a change or basically it adds to the experience associated with low back pain. That's why I'm really big on saying whether it's just decreasing your stress, giving gratitude, or let's say it's a matter of just giving yourself the me time. A lot of people are very overwhelmed. They have a lot of to do lists. A lot of my parents and moms and dads have tons of to do's and that overwhelm in itself creates tightening of musculature. It creates stress. Stress creates de oxygenation, which is lack of oxygen to all these different tissues in our face, our neck, our hands everywhere, right? And so Like I said, many of us carry the stress in different places and many of us carry stress and our lower back and our hips. So when we can mitigate stresses, that's going to be the biggest difference maker when it comes to reducing your symptoms. Okay. So hopefully that makes sense. And like I said, if you do have any specific questions for me this is being streamed across many different platforms, so feel free to leave a comment, let me know if you have any questions also, if you want to leave questions after this. After this, feel free to either email me, jason@flexwithdoctorjay.com Or you, again, you can text or call me for we have a wealth of resources across many different platforms. Also, again, if you're interested in any one to one coaching, again, feel free to email or text us the word pain free. Okay, text us the word pain free and let's get you the help that you need. All right, so that's it for this live training. I really hope that these five lifestyle hacks to mitigate, reduce, and even eliminate low back pain was extremely helpful to you. And any questions, we have the many different platforms I just talked about. Take care and have a beautiful rest of your day.