Lower back pain is a common symptom that almost everyone will or would have experienced sometime during their lifetime. It can be very minor, like a small niggle that goes away in a few days, or can be extremely debilitating and last a long time.
If you are experiencing lower back pain that does not go away spontaneously in 2 to 3 days or is recurrent and not going away for good, it is time to get professional medical advice.
Lower back pain causes can range from simple muscle strain to more serious pathologies such as spinal cord compression or cancer. For more serious pathologies, you will need a trained professional to assess you clinically and rule out any serious medical issues. The incidences of serious pathologies are low but are still prevalent even in seemingly healthy individuals and should not be dismissed lightly.
In most instances, lower back pain is of non-serious pathologies and is more commonly a result of strains or sprains that could have occurred suddenly (both major or minor events can trigger them) or due to prolonged overload on structures in the lower back. If it is a minor strain, the body can take care of itself and lower back pain symptoms will go away in 2 to 3 days.
However, if it lingers on for more than 3 days or eases off but quickly comes back, it means that there are underlying issues (such as ongoing stiffness in lower back joints, maladaptive muscle spasm or altered muscle function) that is not allowing the body to heal by itself and it needs some external help. In this case, your Physiotherapist is the best person to help you work out what exactly is happening and how to best manage your back pain.
At Sydney Advanced Physiotherapy, your Physiotherapy session will consist of a detailed history taking to find out what happened to cause your symptoms. This is followed by a full body posture and movement assessment, and all our Physiotherapists believe in looking at the body as a whole.
The source of your lower back pain may be coming from a particular structure in the back but that does not mean that the cause (or driver) of your back pain is also coming from the back. A very common driver of back pain comes from one hip or from asymmetrical movement in the torso. This puts unequal load on the lower back and gives rise to lower back pain. And so, looking at the back alone will not fix the problem.
Our Physiotherapists will work out the driver(s) of your lower back pain and treatment and management will be tailored according to that to get the best treatment effect.
With lower back pain that has been around for a long duration, research has shown that there are maladaptive muscle changes in the deep and superficial core muscles that can become an ongoing driver of lower back pain. The way your body moves also changes and becomes non optimal.
These muscles and movement patterns need to be retrained and Pilates is an excellent way to rebuild those muscles and learn how to move your body well. Our clinic offers one to one private Pilates sessions with a Pilates trained Physiotherapist, or small group classes of 4 to 5 students to 1 Pilates trained Physiotherapist to ensure that you are getting the monitoring and guidance you need in class.
Physiotherapy exercises for lower back pain can be a beneficial approach. Our physiotherapists can create a personalized treatment plan that includes exercises to strengthen and stretch the muscles in the lower back, improving mobility and reducing pain.
Physiotherapy for back pain may also include manual therapy techniques such as massage or spinal manipulation to help relieve tension in the affected area. Whether it's acute or chronic pain, seeking the help of a physiotherapist for back pain can help you regain function and reduce discomfort.