10 Treatments That Actually Make Upper Back Pain From T4 Syndrome Worse

T4 Syndrome causes sharp stabbing pain right in the middle of the upper back. There may also be radiating symptoms like numbness, tingling and pain to the neck, shoulder, the entire arm, hand fingers and even to the fingertips. Since this is a common problem yet it’s rarely diagnosed by healthcare professionals, you may get treatment that does not help you.

In this video, I’ll be sharing with you 10 treatments that actually make upper back pain from T4 syndrome worse. The first treatment is a back extension exercise. This is done in a variety of different ways. Two of the most common ways to do back extension exercises are through bird dogs. And Superman’s here’s what those exercises look like.

A bird dog is where you’re on all fours, hands and knees. And then you lift up one leg while picking up the opposite arm, you might hold it or you might do reps where you alternate legs and arms. And the point of this exercise is to exercise to strengthen or work the muscles that are in the back that are directly in the middle part of the spine.

Right where the T4 syndrome problem happens in the Superman exercise is where you lay face down like this, and you’re picking up your arms and your legs at the same time. This exercises your back muscles, you might stretch out your arms, you might just pick up the upper half or just pick up the lower half.

Either way, these two exercises strengthen the muscles that are directly on the back of the spine. In getting muscles stronger, there tends to add more compression to the T4 syndrome area, which makes the disc and ligament problem there worse.

The second is rowing exercises. This is any sort of exercise where you’re pulling in this direction while trying to squeeze the shoulder blades together to exercise the muscles that are in the middle between the shoulder blades, because it’s in that area that the problem tends to happen.

However, using these muscles back there tends to add more compression to the T4 disc and ligaments, which will make it worse in the long run. Some exercises that you may end up doing that involves rowing our cable rows like we’re attached to a cable that you’re holding on a bar, you’re pulling in this direction, sticking out your chest and pinching your shoulder blades back.

Sometimes we’ll do the same exercise using large rubber bands, they call them Thera bands. And you’re you have the bands tied around a post or a pole or something and you’re pulling in this direction, you may also use a rowing machine that has a seat that can slide forward and back on a rail.

And you pull a rower like you’re actually rowing a boat, and you’re trying to pinch your shoulder blades together to work the muscles that are between your spine right where the back problem is. And the fourth version is weighted rose, you might hold a weight like a dumbbell, possibly even a barbell, you typically will bend over just like this, and you’re pulling in this direction to pinch your shoulder blades together and workout that center part of the spine.

Now face value, it would make sense. And they’ll explain it to you this way that you have to work out the muscles that are right in the area where it hurts because those muscles might be weak is what they’ll say. Or that’s what they do is work out muscles in the area where it hurts or just exhaustively trying to exercise the muscles in the area. But this adds compression to the discs and ligaments.

So it’s not a good thing to be doing for the long term. If you do get relief, it might be temporary, because the muscle will get fatigued and tired and my for a time might actually take pressure off the disk and the ligaments as it gets tired. Just like if you get a really good arm workout and your arms are so tired that you can’t even pick it up to beat yourself or drink something or scratch an itch in your head.

But then over time the muscle recovers and it gets even stronger. And in your back. It’ll add more compression gradually as the weeks go by doing these exercises. The next one is backward bending stretches. There’s a variety of different ways to do this. Sometimes they’ll have you do it leaning on the backrest of a chair and lean over the edge.

Sometimes you’ll be on a foam roller lying on the floor or on a mat and you’re rolling onto the foam roller. Or you might just be sitting or standing that you might be instructed to lean backwards this way just like that, that kind of emotion makes the vertebrae the bones in the spine, then too far backwards. And typically they’re already overstretched in that direction.

Here’s what I mean by their overstretch in that direction. When the discs and ligaments get loose here because their stiffness up above and stiffness down low, this part of the back that’s supposed to be slightly rounded out, they call that kyphosis it kind of flattens out because there’s less stability in the area.

And so you’re leaning backwards in this parts flattened out it’s not curved out as it’s supposed to be. Then you’re actually feeding the problem you’re making the curve go further in and flattened out further.

This keeps the discs injured and the ligaments injured as well. Now fourth one is twisting stretches for the back and that’s where you’ll twist this way and twist that way, and it’s a similar process that happens with backwards bending, you’re putting too much force to this part of the spine, and keeping the discs and ligaments overstretched for a longer time than they need to be.

The fifth one is an exercise called tees. And why is this is commonly done in physical therapy clinics. And there’s many different ways to do it. But the most common way to do it is with Thera bands with those yellow rubber bands sometimes, or green, or blue, there’s all different colors.

And a tee motion is where you go out this way, or you extend your arms and open them this way. And a y motion is where you go up like the letter Y, just like this, the point of these T’s and y exercises is to get the muscles are right in this area to fatigue and strengthen eventually.

But like I said, with the rose, you’re going to strengthen muscles that don’t need to be strengthened, they’re going to add more compression to this area, and actually injure the disc and ligaments further.

Now oftentimes there’s shoulder pain associated with T4 syndrome. So you might be encouraged, you’re told to do shoulder stretches, there’s different ways to do it. One of the more common ones is where you put your arm against the wall like this and you stretch out the stretches, the front side of your shoulder may get told to move your arm this way, or come up. And over this way.

There’s all different kinds of shoulder stretches. But what this does, it’s probably not beneficial to you, if you have to force syndrome is it stretches out the nerves that come off the spine and go down into the arm to have to pass to the shoulder. And stretching irritated nerves is not a good thing. It makes them stay irritated for longer.

So even though it might feel good because you have stiff muscles in the area, doing this stretch in the short term may help. But in the long term, it keeps the nerves irritated. Number seven is neck stretching. Sometimes you’ll be told to do this type of neck stretch or turn all the way all the way or go all the way backwards or all the way down.

And it’s a similar thing to like what I explained with the shoulder, you have nerves that come off your thoracic spine, your upper back, that go up into your neck because this is part of the sympathetic nervous system. I have more on that in other videos here on our channel, which by the way, you can find a playlist for T4 syndrome help down in the description below.

There’s a link for that. And we’ve got a bunch of videos that explain more about T4 syndrome, including what to do to help it that will actually work. But you don’t want to be stretching out your neck because those nerves from the sympathetic nervous system come up into your neck and head.

And if you’re doing this to stretch them, you’re going to overstretch irritated nerves, that’s not going to be beneficial for you in the long term. Number eight is dry needling. Now dry needling is a newer form of treatment often done by physical therapists. And the reason why it’s called dry needling is because you’re putting a needle into your skin and into the muscle, and it’s dry.

In other words, it’s not injecting anything like a doctor’s injection would be that’s wet needling. So they’re trying to get the muscle in the area to spasm to contract it’s kind of painful for a lot of people. But then it does provide relief afterwards, for a short time for usually days, potentially a week or two, that dry needling, the muscles of the back may give you some short term pain relief.

But it’s not solving the root problem, that’s going to get you more mobility in the upper part of the spine above where it hurts and in the lower part of the spine below where it hurts. So I’m okay with people getting dry needling done for this condition, I just want you to have the right expectation about it.

It’s not going to fix it, it’s only going to mitigate the pain so that you can get a little bit more comfortable, potentially sleep well if you’re having trouble sleeping at night, because the symptoms from tea for syndrome, that sharp stabbing, searing kind of burning pain that happens right in the middle, the back can get quite intense. And people can get very desperate for finding pain relief for this problem.

Which takes me to number nine pain medications. Very often people will take pain medications for this. And that’s okay too, just like with the dry needling just to take the edge off and get more comfortable, get better sleep.

But it’s not something you should ideally be relying on for the long term as a solution to fix T4 syndrome because of course, their side effects of taking pain medications, it can affect your liver, your kidney, your brain, other internal organs that are very important for you. But using pain medication in the short term to get through the day or possibly tolerate some exercises that are going to be beneficial for you.

That’s a better strategy. And coming in at number 10 is pain injections. So that’s injected medication directly in the area where you have pain. Sometimes this is done. And this can be more effective than taking pain medication by mouth, but it’s the same long term situation that’s not going to fix the root of the problem.

Second to make you more mobile and your spine where you’re stiff above the T four area and below the T four area. It’s just a band aid solution that lasts a little bit longer than taking oral pain medication. If you do feel like you need to go get an injection for pain medication, that’s totally fine. Just make sure that you have the right expectations.

It’s not going to solve the problem. You’re going to use this time that you now have some relief to get Good sleep, to be able to tolerate more exercise it’s going to help you out. And you can learn more about addressing the root muscle imbalances of T4 syndrome by watching that playlist down the link below in the description.

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