So what’s the best remedy for chronic low back pain?  Well, the solution comes from understanding how the problem first came about.

Modern conveniences have made us increasingly more sedentary and less active.  This has contributed to our ever expanding waist line, along with a slew of other health problems.  As your weight goes up, so does the stress on your body and just the shear pressure on your spinal joints is enough to cause irritation and inflammation causing pain and discomfort in your low back.

Although being overweight definitely adds to the problem, surprisingly, it’s not the most common cause.  There are plenty of people that aren’t overweight that suffer from chronic low back pain and even people that are in good shape can have low back pain.

So what’s the most common cause of low back pain?

Sitting.

Yep…you heard it right.  Just think about it.  You sit at work, at school, in your car, on the bus, in the theater, at home, on the toilet…wherever you are there’s a strong likelihood that you’re sitting.  And it you’re not sitting you’re walking to get to your next destination so you can sit again.  It’s the most common position people spend their lives in.  Now let’s think about our basic anatomy.  If you looked at the way we’re built, we weren’t meant to sit for long periods.  We’re supposed to be moving.

Our ancestors were constantly moving to hunt and gather food for survival.  Motion is key to our survival and lack of motion is detrimental.

Just look at our sedentary society.  We have become fat, sick and fully dependent on modern conveniences and modern medicine.  It’s no wonder we have back pain!

Spending too much time sitting and not moving causes the following detrimental effects which leads to back pain:

• It causes “creep” a stretching of the ligaments and cartilages.  These soft tissue structures are supposed to keep your joints tight and in place.  As it gets stretched out, it weakens and deforms joints.

• It causes muscle amnesia of your posterior chain.  The muscles that make up your posterior chain are your glutes, hamstrings and low back.  This means that the opposing anterior chain muscles become short and overactive.  This causes muscle imbalance which alters biomechanics and can affect even the simplest movements like walking and running.

• It causes shortening of the hip flexor muscle (one of the anterior chain muscles).  The hip flexors are anchored onto your lumbar vertebrae (lower back bones), so when they’re shortened it pulls on the lower back causing the spine to extend (or arch).  This puts additional pressure on the vertebral joints and can cause pain and discomfort

• The altered biomechanics get carried over to normal movements.  These movements further enhances the imbalance.  For instance when you’re running you further strengthen the anterior chain muscles (hip flexors and quads), which weakens the posterior chain muscles (glutes, hamstrings and lower back) even more, setting you up for further muscle imbalance.

So in order to help your low back pain, here are 3 simple things you need to do…

1. Minimize your time spent sitting and move more.  If you’re working at a desk, you may want to take a break every hour and walk around the office or go to the break room for a quick stretch.  Just 5 minutes of movement will do your low back wonders.  If at all possible try and get a standing desk.  I’ve been using a standing desk for some time now, and it’s done wonders for my back.

2. If you don’t exercises regularly, you need to start.  Even though weight isn’t the number one reason that causes low back pain, being lighter, leaner and more fit will undoubtedly help.  And as I mentioned earlier, moving your body is key to a healthy back.

3. If you’re already exercising, than it’s likely that you have muscle imbalance that needs to get fixed.  Here’s a short protocol you can do:

You can do the stretches and various bridges on the floor (without using the swiss ball) at your office as well. If you want, you can even bring a foam roller to work so you can do it whenever you take a break.

So there you have it.  Avoid sitting longer then you need to, move as often as possible and include the stretches and exercises I showed you in the video.