A commonly asked question is does stress cause lower back pain. The simple answer is yes. Obviously the most common type of stress resulting in lower back pain is physical stress due to occupation, sports, hobbies and lifestyle factors which cause increases in loading on muscles, ligaments, joints and other soft-tissues resulting in mechanical dysfunction and eventually pain. But this article will focus more on psychological and emotional stress, how this can lead you to suffer from lower back pain and what you can do about it.
Are you stressed?
It is strongly believed that emotional or psychological stress can cause lower back pain in a number of ways. Most commonly there is an increase in muscular tension throughout the body but particularly in your lower back which leads to pain gradually progressing over a period of time. Stress can also cause you to alter your posture and movements and combined with increases in muscle tension, this can result in mechanical changes in your spine, causing you pain. Stress can also cause you to be less active and a lack of physical exercise (which has been shown to have major benefits for a healthy spine), again can result in increased lower back pain. You begin to get in a vicious circle.
Slowing down may be making things worse
As your lower back pain increases you may find you become even less active for fear that exercise will cause more pain. And if you’ve been suffering from this form of stress for a long time, you may even experience increases in hypersensitivity where mild pain will feel much worse. This in turn, causes you to be even less active again and can also cause you to adopt more unnatural postures, which in turn increases mechanical insufficiencies and ultimately increases your pain levels to a point when they have a profound effect on your daily life. The circle perpetuates.
How can you reduce stress and improve pain levels?
- Firstly to recognise that emotional or psychological stress is the cause of your lower back pain. Once this has happened then you can address the factors that are causing the stress in the first place. Counselling maybe useful to address the issues involved and provide coping mechanisms to aid in the control of stress levels. This in turn will also allow other treatment options and lifestyle changes to be more effective over the short and long-term.
- Treatment options such as massage, stretching, osteopathic/chiropractic or physiotherapy and postural advice and exercises can provide the initial stimulus to improving the function of the spine and body and to provide a long-term healthy functional spine and body.
- Lifestyle changes such as improvements in your diet, being more active and exercising can help to improve health as well as reduce stress levels therefore leading to a healthier individual with little or no lower back pain.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help
All these treatments and lifestyle changes will hopefully improve your levels of lower back pain caused by stress but can also be used as a prevention tool to reduce the risk of further lower back pain in the future caused by emotional and psychological stress.
But if you’ve got any doubt about what’s causing your lower back pain or how to deal with it, call us today on 01444 616797 and arrange a consultation. It is possible to break the circle and what better way to start 2016 than by being pain free!
