Back Pain Symptoms - First Look For The Underlying Cause Of The Problem

Back pain is a symptom of a body that's out of alignment. It's a symptom that weak and tight muscles somewhere in your body have allowed those bones to move out of alignment.

The pain is telling people to do something to get the bones in their lower back into better alignment.

What most people are not aware of is the principle that says, 'The cause of the pain is rarely at the site where it's painful.'

Their therapist probably hasn't heard of this principle either. You'll know this is the case if the therapist starts heating, rubbing, crunching or vibrating the spot where it hurts.

So if back pain is a symptom of a body that's out of alignment what is it that's caused the bones of the lower back to move out of alignment?

It's usually tight muscles attached you your pelvis - front, back and sides. If they're tight they'll pull the pelvis down and back and cause it to twist. If that's the case people won't be able to sit up straight with a nice hollow in their lumber spine.

When the pelvis moves out of alignment, the bones up above also move out of alignment. The natural 'S' shaped curve of the spine will have turned into a 'C' shape.

The usual cause of this happening is sitting down all day in the 'slump dog' position and not having a flexibility training program to loosen off the calf, hamstring and buttock muscles.

Flexibility is the first problem.

The second contributing factor is a lack of overall body strength. How can you expect the bones of your back to stay in alignment if the muscles supporting those bones are weak? Well you can't.

I recently had a bloke come to see me with lower back pain. He'd done the rounds and spent thousands of dollars on therapists who thought the cause of his problem was in his lower back. They didn't understand that his lower back pain symptoms were caused by weak and tight muscles attached to his pelvis.

No-none had checked to see which muscles were tight and no-one had checked to see how strong he was.

He could hardly do a situp. He could hardly do a pressup. He'd never done a Superman back arch or a squat. He didn't have a strength training program at the gym.

It beggars belief that no-one had made an effort to search for the underlying cause of his pain. Maybe it's too simple to ask people to see if they can sit up straight in a few simple yoga-type postures or watch to see if they can do the most popular strength exercises.

It just reinforces my belief that it's a waste of time going to see anyone who doesn't tell you the likely cause of your problem and/or doesn't give you a good suite of strength and flexibility exercises to restore poor function to good. Just treat any therapy as complementary health care. The primary health care for joint and muscle pain is the strength and flexibility exercises you do yourself.

In a nutshell the symptoms of back pain are weak and tight muscles somewhere in your body. Often it's tight and weak muscles right throughout your body.

In the meantime stay tuned highly tuned and embark on a regular and systematic strength and flexibility training program. Any therapy on top of that will speed up the rehab process.