The Most Common Cause Of Upper Back Pain & A Quick Exercise To Fix It

Do you think you’re suffering from upper back pain? This is a little talked about problem in the medical community. But it’s a very common problem that many people suffer from. I’m going to go over the most common cause of upper back pain, and a quick and easy exercise that you can begin to fix it at home.

My name is Dr. David Middaugh and I’m a specialist physical therapist over at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And I’ve been helping people with upper back pain problem for years and years. We’ve developed a cool way to look at it, to find it, diagnose it, and treated. The reality is that there just isn’t much diagnostic imaging like X-rays and MRIs to properly diagnose the problem. It needs to be seen hands on, and with eyes, by a specialist to fully diagnose it and understand it and treat it.

I’m going to tell you today some of the most common signs, and symptoms so that if you think that you might be having an upper back problem, like the one that I’m describing, then you can begin the exercise I will tell you about today, so that you can get some relief and begin to get rid of this problem for good.

People with upper back problems often have a desk job, or they’re in some situation where they have to be sedentary for a period of time. Like they have to be on online conferences or webinars, or in person at a desk for hours at a time. Or they might be in school as well. If they’re school aged children or college age, or if you’re an adult and older adult that is back in school, then that’s like a desk job, and that could be a factor contributing into the upper back problem.

Other factors include trouble sleeping at night, the back pain can get real severe and some problems with upper back pain is where the person just has difficulty finding a comfortable place lying on the back, because its uncomfortable, or on the sides or forward. It’s just difficult to find a comfortable position. Then often times, people with severe upper back problems, once they fall asleep, they’re waking up at night and losing sleep, because of this upper back problem.

Other factors could be that they also have a neck and shoulder problem contributing to the back problem. And also, usually people that come in for upper back problems openly tell us that they don’t have the best posture, and they haven’t had the best posture for a while. And that’s okay, it’s very fixable, and treatable. And the truth is that most posture problems are tiny, compared to other bigger issues that need to be addressed for an upper back problem.

Let me tell you the number one cause of upper back problems, it’s weak shoulder muscles. The purpose of the upper back, and when I talk about the upper back, I mean this part of the spine between the top of the lower back, so around this area right here, all the way up to the base of the neck, that would be the upper back.

People that get pain in that area, may not be right in the middle of the spine, but off to the sides a bit, but not quite in the shoulders either. It’s kind of that in between zone between the shoulder blades, that people often describe having their back problem bothers them in the upper back area.

The purpose of this part of the back is to stabilize and support the shoulders, the weight of the shoulder blades, the shoulder muscles, the arms, all the way down to the hands, is carried by the upper back, and it’s stabilized whenever you move your arm to do things as everybody does throughout the day. You need the upper back to be stable. The bones and joints are shifting too much and causing some issue. More often than not, people that have upper back problems have weak shoulder muscles.

There are many shoulder muscles, there are over 20, but one of the most common weak shoulder muscles, that people with upper back problems have, are the trapezius muscles which are up here in the neck and shoulder area, those muscles are responsible for holding up the shoulder blades in their position where they should be. But if they get weak, those shoulder blades can sink down and put inappropriate pressures through the upper back. This usually tends to lead to upper back problems.

The best place to start and fixing these weak shoulder muscles, these trapezius trap muscles is to simply do an overhead reach exercise, it’s going to look like a stretch, it’s going to feel like a stretch to some people. But what I need you to feel for sure is these upper trap muscles working.

Now just a quick side note on these upper traps, they do start out here on the on the edge of the shoulder, more on the back, top area, and they run up the neck to the base of the skull. So when you fire these muscles, you might feel the tension going all the way to the base of the skull in the back of the neck and that’s okay. As long it just feels like muscles getting tired. If it feels like pain or discomfort, then you might need to ease off and I’ll show you a modification so that you can do that.

So here’s a quick exercise that you can begin to do right now at home. To begin to strengthen these shoulder muscles, you’re simply going to reach up overhead. Make sure that your chin stays level, that it doesn’t go up or down, but level. And holding your chin level, shrug those shoulders, hold it up as high as you can, and your hands are just reaching up, hold it for 10 seconds, you can go longer if you like. And after 10 seconds, you can come down. Repeat that 10 times.

You might need to do this frequently throughout the day. In some more severe cases of weakness, I tell people to do this hourly. In less severe cases, we’re doing it at a minimum of three times per day. And that’s the starting point. As you get stronger doing these exercises, you might actually add a weight and do an overhead lift.

Now if you’re at home saying I can’t even reach up because my shoulders hurting, or my neck is hurting when they get to here, that’s okay, there’s a modified version for you to do this. So just simply hold your arms up at this position with your elbows bent, and shrug from there. But the same thing needs to apply, you need to keep your chin and head level, avoid tilting your head down or sticking your chin out or looking up, you have to keep it in position. And what you’ll find as you shrug is that your head kind of wants to move in one of those directions that I described, but you have to fight the urge to do that.

And then one other thing as you shrug up, whether it’s in this version or the other version, you might get some pops or clicks that happened through your neck and shoulder area. As long as there’s no pain associated with that, that’s okay. It’s likely one of those joints that is stuck that needs to free up to begin to allow your upper back problem to feel better so it’s a good thing.

Now if you are still having trouble with your upper back problem and you’ve tried this exercise and it really isn’t giving you relief. And that’s okay, it’s likely an upper back problem that isn’t due to a weak upper shoulder issue. What I recommend for you is to go get professional help. Go seek a specialist that can properly diagnose your upper back problems so that you’re not wasting time or making it worse.

If you did this exercise and you did get some relief, then that’s awesome for you. What you need to know is that this is just step one in the process that it takes to fix an upper back problem. If you’re not getting the relief that you’re looking for, then I also encourage you to go talk to a medical specialist, a specialist physical therapist is probably the best place to start, so that you can get this problem fixed for good for the long term so that it’s not coming back over and over again and still giving you trouble sleeping and working and doing all the things that you love to do.

If you felt that this was helpful for you and you’re looking for some extra help to get this taken care of and you want to talk to that specialist, I invite you to go up to the menu bar on our website and find the tab button there that says cost and availability. Click on that button. You’ll get taken to a form where you leave us your details. And then one of my staff will call you as fast as possible to begin to ask you questions about your upper back problem to see if it’s a type that we can help out.

If it is, then we’ll tell you the next steps to take in fixing your upper back problem with our help. Thanks, and I hope we can be a part of your success story real soon.