How To Fix Lower Back Pain From A Spondylolisthesis Problem

Do you think you have back pain from a spondylolisthesis problem? Well, I’m going to cover with you today, three ways to improve back problems, if you’ve got spondylolisthesis. Real quick, just about a spondylolisthesis, what it is. If you think of the low back bones, the vertebrae, it’s when one of those bones begins to shift forward towards the front of your body, and it begins to pinched nerves. It can injure discs, and then in really severe cases, it can cause a broken spine bones.

If you don’t know that you have a spondylolisthesis problem or not yet, then it’s something that you might want to get checked out. But basically, it’s found or diagnosed by a doctor, whenever they do x rays or MRI, they can see the bones of the spine and can see if they’re shifted or not.

There’s a ton of reasons for back pain. This is just one. It’s more of a rare one, it doesn’t happen too often. But when it does, it’s potentially a very dangerous problem. But the good news is it can be fixed and can be helped without surgery, without having to rely on medications or surgery or injections as well.

So if you’re not sure what kind of back problem you have right now, you’ve never been checked out, or you really haven’t looked into this as much, this may not be the best information for you. Now, if you’ve got a known spondylolisthesis problem, and this is a good place to start fixing your back pain from a spondylolisthesis problem.

Real quick, my name is Dr. David Middaugh, and I’m a specialist manual physical therapist over at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And here at the clinic, we’ve seen all kinds of different back pain problems. We have helped people get off of pain medications, injections, and avoid surgery, literally get off the surgeon schedule and successfully solve the back problem.

One of the problems that we see in back pain patients is a spondylolisthesis. These are less common. There is a lot of other reasons why people get back problems like disk issues, muscle problems, muscle imbalances, muscle spasms, itis problems like you know tendinitis, those types of things. joints, arthritis, there is a slew of reasons why people get back pain problems. But a spondylolisthesis is a specific one where those bones shift. That’s, like I said, diagnosed through an X ray or an MRI.

It’s especially dangerous because when those bones shift, there’s a high risk, if it shifts too far forward, for a bone to break or fracture to happen. And if that’s the case, that’s usually immediate surgery if it gets that bad. Now there’s signs leading up to this like, for instance, people started having unrelenting numbness and tingling, like where it’s just constant down the legs. Usually it’s on both sides. symmetrically. It’s not just one leg, because it is possible to just get numbness and tingling or weakness in one leg, but not the other, that doesn’t always present like a spondylolisthesis symptoms present. Because that bones just forward, it can pinch the spine, the spinal cord, the nerves within the spine. And that’s where you get symptoms happening on both sides.

Now fixing this issue is actually kind of straightforward for us. You know, as far as here at our specialty clinic, we can handle this type of issue very well, as long as it’s not too far gone. And there hasn’t been a fracture, obviously, if we detect that somebody might have a fracture here, we’re not proceeding, they’re going to the doctor, they’re going to the surgeon, and they need to get checked out by that person to make sure that they take the proper measures to fix this kind of back problem surgically if necessary.

So hopefully yours isn’t that bad if you know that you have a spondylolisthesis. And you’ll be able to benefit from the exercises that I’m going to show you here personally today. So before I show you these exercises, I just want to talk to you about a routine with these exercises. Now fixing a spondylolisthesis problem is a process it’s not something that happens right after doing these exercises, by the time you’re done with this video, if you do everything, you’re not going to have a fixed problem that would be misleading you if I told you that it’s doing these on a consistent basis.

And then after you begin to see some improvement progressing the exercises, which can go a bunch of different ways depending on your specific activities to do every day your exercises that you might like to do, or your role at home or at work. And you just have to consider, are you more of a sitter, do you sit a lot? Because that’s the nature of your job? Or are you up on your feet quite a bit at home? Are you involved in the chores quite a bit or you have kind of a low maintenance home, maybe you don’t have kids at home and it’s not just you taking care of her. There isn’t that many things to do as well can create some work for you.

And if you’re very active as far as exercise, you like to go outdoors, hike, walk, you’re in the gym, you’re doing you have a gym at home, you have to consider those activities. And so you might want to go in different directions. But as far as the starting point, that’s what I’m going to cover with you today. If you haven’t known spondylolisthesis problem, these exercises should begin to shift the bone back into position. So that you can begin to get some relief and heading the right direction for recovery.

So let me show you the first exercise, the very first one, you have to get an abdominal bracing maneuver down correctly, because this is going to carry over into other activities. So what you want to do at home is lie down on the bed or on the floor, wherever you’re at, I’m going to lay down here. And if you put your hand under your back, so I’m just I got my hands flat here, I’m going to put it under my back.

And then what you have to do is push your back down against your hands so that your abs also go down. it flattens your back against your hand against the table here. So just to do it again, here, it’s like that, you should feel your abs tighten up, which is a good thing. You might also feel but muscles tighten up, that’s also a good thing. When you do that motion. Think of the spine bones.

Like I said, one of those bones has shifted forward. When you do that, that adds in motion, it pulls that bone back into position using your muscles. Now sit on up and do this in sitting, I want you to sit like I am right now. And then put your hand behind your back and push in the same direction like you did when you when you were lying down, you should feel the abs turn on similarly.

Now go 100% go as hard as you can 100% hold it there for a little while you should feel the muscles tightening up. Now relax for a minute, for a few seconds, and then do it again. But go 50% not as hard but same direction, same kind of contraction where your where your abs sucking. Hold it there. And relax now just do 25% we’re going to hang out here. So just lightly suck in the abs, flatten out your back, the back should not curve more in the lower back, it should flatten out.

Because when you flatten out, you’re pulling all those bones backwards into the position that they should be in. You don’t want a big, accentuated curving low back because that means the bones are going float relatively forward, you want to suck them back. Do this and it needs you to get good at holding it for 10, 20, 30 seconds, minutes. At 25% intensity of doing this,.

If you can do this while you’re driving, while you’re sitting while you’re standing and walking around while you’re doing the house chores while you’re doing your desktop at work. If you can begin to do this more often throughout the day, you can suck those bones back into position, allow your discs to heal so that they can hold them there. And I happen to do it so consciously with your muscles, it can take off pressure from the nerves, and it can begin to put you on the right course to healing the spine, you’ll have a problem.

So I want you to right now practice doing this for as long as you can. So let’s just do 10 second holds 10 times flatten your back, and we do with here all your back knee and we’ll do some seating as well. So you just go like that. Hold it for 20 for 10 seconds, and then relax and they’re going to repeat, hold it for 20 seconds get control over these muscles involve the backside muscles as well. After about 10 seconds, relax. And just keep doing that motion.

You need to get good at doing this so that you can do it on Command and Shift those bones into position. Because if you’re not doing this consciously right now, chances are your bones are going more forward and you’re feeding into the problem. The bones are shifting more forward, the nerves are getting paged the disk is getting stretched out, you’re sitting up arthritis, and worst case scenario, you’re going to get a fracture in your back and you don’t want that because then you lose a lot of stability.

So here in sitting, suck in those same muscles, pulling your abs and hold it there. 10 seconds in which you want to do over time is get good at doing this throughout the day so that you can hold it for 20-30 seconds.

I went to school in Austin, I am from El Paso. It’s about an eight-hour drive back and forth. No joke, I when I figured out this process with the apps, I would play a little game with myself and watch all the mile markers on the side of the road. And I would tell myself, Okay, I’m going to hold my abs in just like I’m showing you right now. And I’m going to do a 25% for the next five mile markers. It gets pretty intense.

It takes about a minute roughly to travel a mile out there and I tend in on that road, being there for five minutes at a time I as you’re killing me and after repeating this process over eight hours. The next day, I felt like I did a ton of setups, but my back felt great. never had any back issues went from sitting for eight hours straight, you know, minus little pitstops here and there. So I challenge you to do this all day long.

This isn’t like a one way you necessarily Sit down. I mean you do practice at the beginning just to figure out the motion gets your muscles going and I want you to take some time where you just Lie down or sit up and do this, this motion. But eventually this needs to be happening in everything that you do. Sitting standing. Anytime you’re upright, pretty much.

Okay, we’ll move on to the next exercise number two, knees to chest. So for this one, this also helps to shift the bones and this is one word, you’re going to get some help from your legs. So also stuck in your abs like we just did. So you’re going to practice that same maneuver, then pull one knee and pull the other knee in, and just hang out here.

This is especially good if you’ve got constant pain, like it doesn’t stop hurting. Usually, as long as you’re sucking your abs in and pushing your back flat, you can shift the bones into the proper position and get some relief within the spine. And it takes some effort, like I’m not just hanging out here, if I was relaxed, I’d be like this, but I am pushing my back down. It is working in my abs to do this, I feel a very subtle stretch in my low back. You should feel similar sensations.

One of the things that we tell our clients here all the time, is the way an exercise looks is one thing, but the way it feels is another thing, because we often get asked by our clients, am I doing it right? Will you look at me? And I tell them, it doesn’t matter? I mean, I’ll look at you and I’ll tell you, but what do you feel? Do you feel the right muscles working? Because if so you are on the right track, our bodies are all shaped differently.

And if you if your movement looks different from somebody who’s shorter than you are taller than you are wider than you are longer than you, all those variables can change slightly how the how the movement looks. But as long as you feel in this case, those abdominals tensioning up, you’re on the right track. So do that. Hold it for 20-30 seconds. And once if you feel like your muscles are getting tired, then go ahead and relax.

What I don’t want you to feel is muscles right here working because these are your hip flexor muscles, not your abdominals, abdominals are on the abdominal area. hip flexors are on the thighs, they go into the abdominal area. But you’ll feel them working usually right here. If you’re working your hip flexors, interesting thing about the hip flexors, their influence on the spine as they pull muscles forward.

So if you’re doing this move this nice chest movement right here, and you’re not really working your abs, you just kind of hanging out if you’re even pulling it in with your legs, you’re going to work those hip flexors, it’s going to yank the bones more forward.

A common mistake that people make whenever they’re thinking about working their ABS for their spine for the back problem, even for a spine angle, the thesis problem is they’ll do leg lifts. So they’re picking up their legs and holding like that. And you’re feeling these muscles work quite a bit for really the pulling their spine bones more forward, it’s better to focus on using these muscles here.

So just suck it in, right, their feet don’t matter, you can have them crossed or not whatever you want. Just make sure you’re sucking those abs and getting your back flat so that you’re shifting those bones into position. So a good number of reps and seconds to get up to on that one would be three sets of 30 seconds each. And you do this as frequently as you want.

Get into a routine of doing this as much as you need. Think of these exercises as medicine, like a physician would give you medicine. He’d say, hey, you weigh so much. You’re this old, you’re this gender, you need 800 milligrams of this medication. It’s hard to dose exercise, because it depends on your fitness level and your irritability. So you’ve got to figure out the dose by saying okay, this feels good, too much, no more than 30 seconds hurts.

Or you know what, 30 seconds didn’t really do much. Let me go for a minute. Now I feel some relief. You can play with it. But these emotions, the way that I’m telling you to do them are a good thing. You got to figure out the dosage in your end. Okay, one more exercise here, that’s going to give you some relief, usually instantaneously, but also begin to strengthen the muscles so that you get more long term relief and you build towards progressing these exercise.

These exercises. It’s an angry cat exercise, so it looks like this, you’re going to get on hands and knees. It can be flat handed or fist It doesn’t matter. But then once you’re right here, what you’ve got to do is suck in the abs. So it’s the same maneuver like we’ve been talking about. When you pull this in, your back should round up here like you’re pushing it up like an angry cat are arches their back whenever they’re angry. Hold that there for 10 seconds. And you should feel your ads working a bit. And then just relax. J

ust make sure you’re relaxed all the way down, kind of come to the middle and then come back up. Hold it for 10 seconds and repeat 10 times. This exercise gives you movement within the spine, but makes you use the right muscles so that you’re sucking those bones back into the position. where they’re supposed to be. Now what you don’t want to do on this exercise, it’s a yoga move. By the way, the Campbell cow, I forget which one exactly.

But when you come down this way, you’re pushing the bones forward on your body, which is the same direction that they’re involved in a spondylolisthesis. So it’s going to feed into the spinal diseases problem, if you come down this way, so you got to only come down to the middle. So come all the way up, hold on for 10 seconds, and then relax the middle. And repeat. doing these exercises diligently. sucking in your abs, doing the knees to chest during that angry cat exercise should begin to calm down the symptoms.

Once you calm down the symptoms, because you’ve been pulling the bone in the right direction, it then sets you up to begin to address the long term muscle imbalance so that you can solve this funny little diseases problem for the long term. In order to get the next steps on what to do, you can go see a physical therapist, of course, I’m a definitely a biased fan of manual therapists, I think we have a special understanding of how to handle certain things without surgery.

Whereas most physical therapists are excellent at handle handling a post-operative case, like if you just had back surgery, you can go to just about any physical therapist, and they’ll help you out fairly well there. But he’s pretty good at doing that. But handling a non-operative case, like if you’ve never had a back surgery, and you’re afraid of getting one and you want to make sure that you take all the proper steps so that you don’t end up having surgery. So you’re not having to rely on medications or injections. And seeing a specialist physical therapist is going to be your best bet.

Now another option, if you’re stuck at home, or you don’t want to go out is we have a program where we put in our own progressions, it’s not a specific progression for you. Obviously, it’s more of a general one. But it’s a darn good set of progressions that can help out a spondylus thesis problem, we have a program called the 28 Day Back Health And Wellness Boost Program.

This program covers a few exercises like this that are kind of beginner level, but then it goes into more advanced stuff. And as you get stronger over the course of 28 days. In this case of a spaniel, the thesis is you suck the bones back into position, you can begin to fortify to strengthen the bone, the muscles around the bones, to keep it there for the long term so that you can heal the disc, heal the nerves, get the muscles normalized and proceed through life without being afraid that you’re going to make it worse and have that fracture situation pop up.

So if you want to learn more about that 28 Day Back Health And Wellness Boost Program, just go to the description below here, and you can find out all about it. Well, I hope this video was helpful for you if you have a back-pain problem. And you think that it might be coming from a spondylolisthesis. Or you were told that you have a spondylolisthesis and you’re considering getting some help from us.

Of course, we’d love to help you out if you’re especially if you’re in the El Paso region, the best thing to do is go to the tougher website here and find the cost and availability button. Once you click on that you can leave us your details. We want to hear all about your issue. And then we can look at taking the next steps if it’s appropriate for you.

We’ll talk about doing an in person consultation or virtual consultation as well. But we first just want to talk on the phone and make sure that we’re the right people to help out your type of back problem. If it’s a spine illness thesis and it’s not too severe, you haven’t had a fracture, chances are we can make it tremendously better to where you can prevent it from becoming a fracture and having to become a surgical case. I wish you the best of luck in your back issues. And hopefully we’ll talk real soon.