Alleviating Lower Back Arthritis Pain: 10 Quick Relief Exercises and Home Remedies

Lower back arthritis can flare up and cause debilitating back pain. In this video, I’ll be covering 10 quick relief exercises and home remedies that you can do to get your back pain under control. Use a combination of two or three of these to see which one’s best benefits you because not all of them are going to work for everyone.

And keep in mind that solving back arthritis is a long-term process that can take many months, possibly even more than a year. But that’s why I’ve included a few bonus tips that are at the end of this video that begin to show you how to get long term relief and fix the root of back arthritis problems are:

The number one exercise they used to start out with is a hand heel rocking movement.

This one provides tons of relief because it takes pressure off your back joints, and can begin to get you some more mobility at the same time, all you need to do is get on your hands and knees on the floor or on a bed anywhere you feel comfortable getting your hands and knees, you can be hands flat or on your fists, it doesn’t matter.

Then once you’re in this position, you’re going to rock your bottom towards your feet as far as you can comfortably go and get your low back to stretch out a bit, then rock back up so that your shoulders are back over your hands. And just repeat the motion 30 to 60 times. And you could take as little as just a moment to come back just like I did right there.

Where you can hang out back there and stretch. Some people get a lot of benefit from waiting back here and stretching and feeling the muscles moving sometimes allow them to get joints popping, and they’ll get some instant relief from that. The key thing here is to get more movement without any sort of pain, you don’t want your pain to increase.

As you’re doing this, it should feel like it’s freeing up. Now the important thing to note about this exercise is that doing a round of this doing 30 to 60 reps is not nearly enough, you need to be doing this hourly, think of it as pain medication. Just like you might be taking pain medication around the clock, you need to be doing this exercise around the clock hourly 30 to 60 reps in order to get the full benefit of it and reduce your back arthritis pain flare up.

The second exercise is an ab exercise that helps you to shut the back muscles off so that you can take pressure off the joints because very often, in back arthritis, those back muscles that are right in here are overly developed and they’re giving way too much pressure to the back.

So if you can get the abdominals working, and then you can begin to get what’s called Reciprocal inhibition, which is big words for your getting your muscles to work right around your spine. So getting your get onto your back like this knees bent, then you’re going to push your back flat, that automatically should turn on your abdominal muscles.

And we’re going to do it again watch my chest and shoulders and watch them the hips do here with my with my butt does when you push back like that chest and shoulders kind of come up, and so does it. But when you push your back down as much as possible, it shortens your abs, and it should lift your pelvis and ribcage up just a bit.

Once you’re doing that, hold your back down as hard as you can, and then begin to reach up towards your knees like this. And that should make your abs have worked very well hold it for 10 seconds. After 10 seconds you can relax, it should not hurt your back. If it does do it less intensely. You know, see if you can do 10 reps like that back flat, come on up, hold it for 10 seconds.

After 10 seconds, take a quick break, you can take along as long of a break as you need to. And then just repeat it 10 times now like that rocking exercise need to be doing this around the clock, I would pair those two exercises together and do them every hour throughout the day. And you should see a massive reduction in your lower back arthritis pain.

The number three exercise is hanging. Getting some hanging force through your lower back can give it some tremendous relief. Now I’m a big fan of hanging vertically this way rather than upside down, I want you to hang right side up. Because it’s more tolerable, you can last here a lot longer. Plus, you can begin to do some exercises that are making your body operate more normally.

So here’s how it looks, you would get on a device like this, you have to have access to one of the gym own one. And you could do this from a pull up bar more people will have pull up bars like that they can reach like this as well. Anyways, you’re going to get up like this, your feet might be touching the floor, that’s totally fine, it’s still going to distract your lower back, then you just begin to let the weight of your body rest on your elbows.

And while you’re here, you want to push your back flat like you did on that abdominal exercise. So it should feel like you’re doing this kind of emotion. And if you’re hanging device has a pad like this if the one of the gym that you might be going to has a pad like this, then you want to push into it. If there’s no pad like that, that’s fine.

Just move your back in that direction and you’re still going to get the benefit out of this exercise. Push it back flat and hold it for CBT go three to five or even 10 seconds or longer and get as your abdominal muscles to tighten up while you’re dangling, and it’s okay, if you have your feet touching the whole time those three to five or 10 seconds.

And if you prefer to hang, you can also hang with your feet touching and still do the same thing with your back, you’re trying to push your back flat and hold it there for 10 seconds.

Now this one you may not be able to do as frequently as the last two, you know, every hour, like I said, but this hanging exercise should be done as frequently as you possibly can. Now ideally, if you’re looking at getting an inversion table versus one of these, I would go with one of these devices, they’re roughly about the same price anyway.

Plus, you can do a lot more things in the future with a pull up bar and one of these tools, and they’re going to benefit your back tremendously. Go find one of the gym in the short term if you don’t have one at home right now. Now, the rest of the things here are not going to be exercises, they’re more like traditional home remedies.

So the next one is a back brace. Putting on a back brace can provide some pretty quick relief, almost instantaneous relief, as soon as you get the support from the brace on your body. And I like this one by sparkles. I’ve reviewed it on our channel here. And it’s got double straps. So you just put each strap on.

And what I always tell people putting on a back brace for the first time is, it’s kind of like shoe shopping, he might not find a brace that fits you right away, you might need to try a few. Not every brace fits everybody the same way. So you would strap the inner part here and you went snug. And then it’s got these two straps back here that you would just cinch over each other.

So this first one goes this way. And this next one goes on to that velcro right there. Now you could wear this under your clothes, you could put on an over your clothes, it doesn’t matter. The idea is that it supports your spine so that your muscles don’t have to work as much they can feel like they can relax for a moment. And that’s what can give you that quick relief.

Braces like these will run you anywhere from 20 to $50. It just depends on the quality of the materials, the size of the brace may also be a factor in the price. And you can get one like this over Amazon delivered to you sometimes same day, at least within a few days. Or you can run down to your department store and get one from like a Walmart, Walgreens, and he sort of pharmacy stores should have some brace like this too.

Number five is using a heating pad. Now this is an old technique that is still proven, it makes a huge difference. If you get any kind of heating pad they sell them at the same store that you see the back brace is that you can order some off the internet, you can get electric pads as well. There’s some that you heat up in your microwave, there’s hot water bottles, that are those rubber bottles that you just pour hot water into and you put it on, there’s all kinds of options out there that you can use.

Using heat makes an enormous difference when it comes to calming down overactive, achy muscles in your back that are causing back arthritis problems, I would highly recommend using a heating pad before going to go take pain medications. And you would just put it on for 15 to 20 minutes at a time, then take it off for 10 to 15 minutes or longer if you like and repeat that cycle three to four times in a row and that should be enough to get you to calm down.

Of course during that time, you’ll have to stay seated or lying down. You have to kind of rest a bit while you’re doing that. But that should buy you enough relief so that you can get up and be active again for a bit along with a heating pad.

Number six is an ice pack. Not everybody is going to benefit from a heating pad. And some people are going to benefit from an ice pack. It’s clear in the research that whether to ice or heat is uncertain. And it seems like everybody’s just different. Some people like ice better and some people like heat better and some don’t like either and that’s just fine.

But if you have tried out a heating pad and it didn’t work for you, then go try out a cold pack and ice pack you could literally get ice cubes in a ziploc bag and put it on your back or you can get a dedicated ice pack that will sell right next to the heating pad at the store.

You can look it up on Amazon, you stick it in the freezer and just put it on your back that might distract you away from the back pain and give you some relief so that you can sleep at night or so that you can go to move better and more importantly you will use this before you start taking pain medications by mouth so you can save your organs because of the side effects of pain medications.

If you can get enough relief from either using a hot pack or an ice pack, then go that route for as long as you possibly can before you need to take anything prescription strength over the counter. Use a cold pack or an ice pack the same exact way as a hot pack put it on for 15 to 20 minutes, then take it off for 10 to 15 minutes or longer if you want and repeat that cycle three to four times in a row. That should be enough time for you to relax, get the relief from the cold and they get back to moving again.

The number seven tip that can help you get relief from your lower back arthritis problem is using a percussion massage gun like this one on your back muscles. All you would do is turn on the gun like so, sit somewhere, lie somewhere and get the gun on your spine muscles. And just let it go there for a minute or two on each side of your spine muscles, if you can get somebody to help you out even better, because they won’t miss a spot.

And you would just hang out on the spot that has the most knots on it. So that you can free up that hard muscle and get it to relax and allow your spine to move more normally again, now to show you exactly where to put it on the spine, you don’t want to put it directly on the spine, but just off to the sides where the thickest part of the muscles are, and usually where they’re most tender. Now I tell people to not do things that hurt them.

But because the muscle is going to be tender here where it’s overused, you actually do want to push into that muscle area right there, but not so much it’s making you cringe, or make you tighten up or stiffen up more, it should make you feel like you’re relaxing as time goes on using the massage gun.

Now you tend to get diminishing benefits with this meaning you won’t get that much more loose fee for using it longer. Usually about a minute per area is good two minutes per area tends to be a little more than what’s necessary, going 345 minutes. Some people do benefit from doing that you might be one of those.

But I often have patients that tell me Yeah, you know what, after a few minutes, I’m done with this and I’ve gotten the most benefit I’m going to get out of it. These guns really save your hands. But if you wanted to go get a massage from or if you have somebody at home that can give you a massage on your back.

That’s always beneficial as well. In fact, I think that’s probably even better than getting a massage going like this. But these are great these days. They’re powerful and they get the job done.

The number eight way to get back arthritis pain relief is taking a hot shower or a hot bath. Letting that hot water hit you directly on your lower back is consistently one of the easiest things that my patients tell me that they do every morning. It’s how they free up their back and get to moving normally.

And if you have a bathtub and it’s not too inconvenient for you to fill it up and take a hot bath that can provide some even longer-term relief, even greater relief. And you can do cool things like put Epsom salts in there.

Or if you want to take a bubble bath or you know put bath bombs that’s the trending thing right now. All of those things make it nice but the hot water actually getting onto your back is of huge benefits. And if you’re able to get somewhere where there’s a hot tub with jets or if you own a hot tub that has jets on it, that is tremendous back pain relief as well.

Number nine is using pain relief creams. Now we’re talking things like Ben gay icyhot Asper, cream boltaron. All of these are over the counter pain creams that you can buy at your drugstore at your pharmacy at a Walmart target any of those big department stores will have versions of these creams as well. And I’m going to lump in with this pain patches like lidocaine patches salon paws is one of the popular ones.

We’ve done reviews on many of these products, I’ve actually linked a playlist with all the reviews we’ve done for all these pain creams and patches down the playlist below in case you want to research them just a bit more.

There are subtle differences between them like what active ingredient they have, as far as like menthol, or chem four. There are wintergreen oil ones, there’s all different kinds of ingredients they use to provide pain relief. Capsaicin is another interesting one because it uses the active ingredient that makes chili peppers hot.

So that that can provide pain relief. For some people you see all these may work for some and not for others, you have to figure out which combination are going to work for you at this time. And that can even change over time.

The number 10 is over the counter pain medications. Now I took to number 10 to get here because this is not something you want to do right away, which surprisingly, is the thing that most people will do right away because it takes the least amount of effort to pop a Tylenol or an Advil or Excedrin, whatever it is that you have that’s over the counter pain medication.

And my only warning to you and taking these pain medications is they are intended for short term use, you should not be really relying on medications over the long term. If you find that you’re taking an over the counter pain medication, especially without a doctor’s supervision. And it’s been days weeks even then you really need to stop and think of another plant need to go visit your doctor and tell them what you’re doing so that they can monitor you.

There’s high risk for injury to your organs, especially your stomach if you’re taking ibuprofen, but long term you can get kidney damage, brain damage, all kinds of other things can be affected as a result of taking pain medications for a prolonged period of time on a consistent basis. More people die or are injured from side effects to meet pain medications that he would think it’s incredibly surprising. So you got to be careful when you’re using them.

They’re usually okay in the short term and I’m talking just a few days, but you need to find some long term solution in order to not rely on medications anymore. However, if you’re in a pinch, you’re looking for quick relief. You can’t sleep you can’t get up and do your normal things. You have dependency yet Take care of her pets. Taking over the counter pain medication can be a lifesaver, just don’t rely on it for the long term.

Now let’s get into the bonus tips that are going to help you get relief from your lower back arthritis. And I think vitamins are a very underrated thing that you should be taking in order to get some good relief for back arthritis for any arthritis condition. Now we’ve reviewed a bunch of these in our channel.

And I’ve actually got a playlist of just our vitamins and supplements reviews down in the description below. Go check that out if you want more detailed information. But just to rattle off the ones that give you some anti inflammatory effects that can help reduce your joint inflammation, which helps your back arthritis, vitamin D.

We’ve got calcium, magnesium with boron. Boron is a big one there. We’ve got selenium and glucosamine, hyaluronic acid can Royden MSM. These are all sold our brand, they’re my favorite brand. Currently spirulina can help with anti inflammatory effects.

Quercetin is another one and Omega three fish oil also helps out. Now the key thing with all of these vitamins and minerals is they’re not going to give you quick relief you to build these up in your system. So the best plan is if you’re having back pain right now from back arthritis, of course do all the short term stuff that I talked about to get that quick relief.

But you should consider starting to take vitamins and supplements like this so that you can stave off the next flare up then you might have in another few weeks or another few months. The hope is that if this stuff is built up in your system, the inflammation is not that bad, you’ve gotten it under control. And you can begin to work on the mechanical side of the problem that’s causing your back arthritis so that you can solve this problem for the long term.

Now the second bonus here is looking at solving the root problem of back arthritis by learning more about our 28 Day Back Health And Wellness Boost Program. Now this program is designed by me it’s videos of me walking you through what exercises to do at home, you can access this program from anywhere you have an internet connection in the screen, a smartphone will work or a computer, a tablet and iOS devices.

And this program walks you through 28 days or about a month’s worth of exercises and when it tells you what to do every time so that you’re fixing the root problem that’s sitting up back arthritis. And just to tease you real quick about what the program’s focused on is, in back arthritis, the muscles that are on the spine here on the back are usually very dominant, they’re compressing the joints, and that extra force is what’s causing the arthritis to build up in your back.

And if you can take the pressure off those back muscles, then you can take the pressure off the joints, and that helps a flare down arthritis. And it sets you up to cure the problem to not have this progress worse over time, to more things like stenosis and lead to problems like having back surgery.

These are exercises that I run my clients through here in the clinic. And when done appropriately, they’re proven to help reverse the imbalance that causes back arthritis. The third bonus is getting with a specialist going to go see a specialist who can help you avoid surgery and fix a back arthritis problem. Now I myself I’m a manual therapist, and I help people with this directly.

I am a specialist at dealing with this. All I want to guide you on is make sure you do your research and your due diligence before you go see any health care professional because if you go see somebody who specializes in surgery, well that’s probably what they’re going to offer you in order to fix this problem. And I think physical therapists aren’t great people to help you with this back arthritis problem.

But make sure you do your research and find a physical therapist who is a specialist in helping people avoid surgery because most physical therapists help people after they’ve had surgery already. And if you show up in their office saying I’ve never had a back surgery, I’m looking to make my back arthritis better.

They’re probably going to say they can help you but they’re going to make you do the same exercises that somebody who has already had a surgery do very likely because that’s what they’re used to seeing. That’s what we’re used to doing. And you’ll know this if you go to the clinic, talk to the patients there. Ask them have you had a back surgery. How’s it going for you here?

If you ask the therapist or the staff there as well like what do you see more of your DC law people that have had surgery? They’re like Oh yeah, a lot of people have had surgery Dr. So and So refers to us and surgeon so and so refers to us and they keep rattling off all the surgeons in town that refer patients to them, then they’re specialists in helping people after surgery and they’re probably very, very good at that.

But it may not be the best fit for you. You probably need to find a physical therapist or a manual therapist who knows how to handle this problem without surgery. Getting with the specialists will help you get specialized exercises and get you some hands on work they can free up specific joints and muscles that may not be allowing you to move normally or exercise normally.

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