The statistics don’t lie: With more than 25 percent of Americans reportedly suffering from lower back pain, it’s turning into an epidemic.
Worse yet, spending thousands of dollars of medications, injections, and surgery often make the pain worse.
“A broken leg, and the acute pain it causes, can often be treated relatively quickly,” says Perry Fine, M.D., a University of Utah pain specialist. “But chronic pain is more akin to bigger problems like diabetes or advanced cancer, which can’t be so quickly or easily “fixed.”
And while theories in the past have assumed lower back pain was often the result of the mechanics of the spine itself, such as a bulging disc, one researcher now believes there’s a different reason for it–your nervous system.
“It’s a change in the way the sensory system is processing information,” says Dr. James Rainville, who works for the New England Baptist Hospital in Boston, MA. “Normal sensations of touch, sensations produced by movements, are translated by the nervous system into a pain message. That process is what drives people completely crazy who have back pain, because so many things produce discomfort.”
In some scenarios, says Rainville, the nervous system may give off false signals that you’re in danger of hurting yourself–in the form of agonizing pain shooting down the end of your back. But the pain itself isn’t located in the spine bone matter; the super-sensitive nerves located near it are the one responsible.
So how do you fix it? Turns out the cure may lie in a simple exercise program.
How A Simple Boot Camp Could Help
For most people, it’s the last thing on their mind: Exercising while dealing with back pain.
But it turns out doing so could actually help people overcome chronic pain in the middle and lower back, according to recent research.
“Boot camps are a great strategy to strengthen your body in a controlled environment,” writes the Applied Physical Medicine Association. “Back Pain Boot Camp is dedicated to correcting the natural imbalances that occur in chronic back pain.”
While it may seem counter-intuitive, back pain boot camp exercises work on exercising the various muscles connected to the back, such as the quadratus lumorum, iliopsoas, and the piriformis. And a recent study presented at the North American Spine Society annual meeting found that overweight adults who exercised just 20 minutes a day reduced back pain by 32 percent–definitely a big improvement. For those considered morbidly obese, there were even bigger improvements: Exercising for just one minute more per day resulted in a 38 percent decreased in lower back pain.
For the Applied Physical Medicine Association, this is all the proof needed to demonstrate exercise works–no matter how much in shape you are.
“This boot camp focuses on correcting these common abnormalities, as well as strengthening your posterior chain (gluteal musculature) and your core as a whole,” the association says.
Readers: Have you tried a boot camp before to get in shape?
Sources:
Back Pain Boot Camp – AppliedPhysicalMedicine.com
When Pain Medications Don’t Work – WebMD.com
Exercise May Erradicate Back Pain – NPR.org
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