Top 7 Tips For Lower Back Arthritis

Are you looking for help with arthritis in the lower back? Have you been suffering from stiffness, shakiness, tiredness in the low back? Especially in the morning, when first getting up to take those first few steps and start your day? Is it tough to get going after sitting for a long time or when lying down for a while? If you have these symptoms, or if you have been told by a doctor after having x-ray or an MRI, that you have arthritis in your lower back? And when we talk about arthritis, I’m talking about osteoarthritis, not psoriatic arthritis or rheumatoid arthritis. Those are different conditions that I’m not going to be able to help you out with.

But if you have osteoarthritis, then you are going to want to listen in on this video. I’m going to cover with you today, the top seven tips for people suffering from arthritis in their lower back. Now real quick, my name is Dr. David Middaugh, and I’m a specialist physical therapist over at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. I’ve been helping people suffering from low back arthritis for years. Sadly, some of these do end up having a surgery for it, many have to get injections on a regular basis, and many more than that live off of pain medications every day. They are taking over the counter pain medications or prescription strength stuff that they’d rather not be on because its harmful effects on another body parts.

But here in the clinic, we help people tremendously. Over 9 out of 10 of them get back to being active and healthy again, and mobile in their back and not waking up so stiff in the morning and their lower back and having trouble bending over to get to their feet. So, it is possible to manage a lumbar arthritis problem, a lower back arthritis problem without having to rely on medications, injections or having to have some surgery.

But let’s get into it. Let’s talk about the top seven tips to help out lower back arthritis.

Tip Number One Core Strengthening Exercises.

A lot of people say just go get exercise, but to be specific, we have to strengthen the core and it’s typically the abs muscles, but I would also throw in the glutes, just about every single time. It’s pretty rare, I’d say 9 out of 10 times, it’s just an ab problem. It’s an abs and a glute weakness problem that contributes to a lower back arthritis situation.

So, if you haven’t really worked on your abs, and that’s something you want to get going on. If you are confused about how to do it, or maybe you have already been trying it out, and it’s been hurting your back more than helping your back. Then I encourage you to go over to our playlist on lower back videos in our channel for El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. There are tons of videos in there that talk about specific exercises for lower back problems and start with those. Those tend to be pretty safe and easy to do.

And if you are still having trouble, you need to get some professional help to make sure that you are doing your core exercises correctly. Because it is proven, I see it in the clinic all the time. That’s how we help people is by strengthening certain muscles, in addition to all the hands on work that we do, but core strengthening is going to be your number one place to start fixing a lower back arthritis problem at home.

Number two simple stretches.

When I talk about stretches, you want to just stay in this forward and back motion. Like going towards your toes and going backwards can be beneficial. I would, there are certain stretches that I would want to avoid. That’s actually tip number three. I’ll cover that in a second. But its stretches where you feel like you are bending your back all the way forward or all the way backwards are generally okay to start with.

Now, what I want to point out with stretches is, they can be overdone and can actually become harmful after a while. So use them sparingly, but it’s a good way to relieve the backache to relieve some tension off your back and possibly avoid taking pain medication in the short term. Just to kind of get you by for a period of time. But I wouldn’t look to do stretches to cure a back problem. It’s just going to get you started and allow you to avoid taking the harmful medications.

Number three, avoid twisting motions.

Typically, and this is related to those stretches, avoid twisting motions. Some people like to twist all the way around one way, and the other way, and maybe you enforce a joint to pop or click. And that can be relieving sometimes, but I would avoid it if you have a low back arthritis problem, because chances are, there’s a bunch of stiff joints in the lower back because of the arthritis. And there’s usually one or two joints that are compensating for all the stiff joints. And you might be over twisting that one joint that’s moving way too much in creating a disc problem or a pinched nerve problem later on.

I would avoid the twisting motions. Our spines are just not designed to take a lot of twisting and repetitive twisting. So, make sure you avoid daily twisting motions, as well like twisting while doing little things, at home activities, like chores in the yard at home. If you have to stand with your feet pointed in one direction you twist over one way, or if you are sitting at a desk or cooking in a kitchen and you find that your feet aren’t really going with the upper body, make sure to just reposition your feet so that they are in line with the rest of your body so that you avoid twisting through your spine. So, keep away from those twisting motions.

Tip number four drink lots of water stay very hydrated.

Our joints are reliant on our hydration so if you feel like you have not been drinking enough water over the past few months, and you are back arthritis problem is just getting a bit worse, it could very well be affected by your hydration levels. Cartilage is over 60% water up to 70% water and you have tons of cartilage. Discs in your spine are also highly dependent on hydration. And then there’s fluid inside the little spine joints. The rosette joints is what they are called in the lower back. And that fluid needs to be there in order to properly lubricate the joint surfaces. So drink plenty of water.

I know the side effect is that you have to get up and go to the bathroom frequently. But I would weigh that if you are having a problem with having to go frequently versus potentially having some surgery some day because this arthritis problem was managed properly. You got to weigh those risks. So just think about that I would I’m always going to lean on the side of drink plenty of water and it’s okay if you had to get up every now and then go to the potty. Just make that trip counted as exercise.

Tip number five, avoid shoes with heels.

Now this goes for both men and women. Of course, women are probably the ones that are typically going to wear heels more so than men. But men do wear heeled shoes here and there. You know smaller heals typically with like in boots or dress shoes, but that little elevation even if it’s a small amount, it changes the way that your ankles are positioned when you walk, which influences the knees and hips and can translate all the way into the lower back. And generally, the bigger the heal, the more forces are going to be disrupted and affecting your back & neck.

Really, so it just doesn’t allow the muscles that control the spine, the lower back to properly operate and give you the stability that is needed for everyday motions. If you have a chronic back problem, if you have arthritis in your back, I would definitely stay away from the heels until that problem gets resolved.

Now, let me put a disclaimer in here. I’m not against heels forever. I think if you are healthy, and if your back is fine, you don’t have any other issues that are affected by the heels. Wear heels all you want, and it should be just fine for you. But if you are trying to avoid medications, injections and having a surgery, get off those heels in the short term and let’s fix the back problems so that you can get back to her in the heels as you might like want as you want to later on in life.

Tip number six, avoid walking for exercise.

I put this tip in here because a lot of people that I meet here in the clinic and out in public, they say hey, I want to start exercising and stretches, start with walking, right? That’s kind of the easiest thing to do. You just get out and put on your walking shoes and go for it. And yeah, it’s an easy thing to do and it was pushed a lot back in, in the 90s and even early 2000s as a great way to start exercising. I think it’s still generally accepted as a great way to start exercising.

If you don’t have any sort of back problem, I’m okay with it. But if you are dealing with back arthritis, lumbar arthritis, it is not a good thing to go walking for 20 minutes, 30 minutes or more to cover many, many miles because there is a decent amount of twisting that happens through the spine when walking. And if your joints aren’t moving properly, because you have arthritis in there that’s preventing the motion, then you are technically doing a repeated twisting motion over and over again, and it can aggravate the back problem.

We have seen people come in here in the clinic that say, I started walking and it kind of felt better because it’s stiff. I understand and my back eased up some. But then it started to bother me as time went on and I just didn’t enjoy going for walks. So, if that’s you stop the walking right now. There are other exercises that you should be doing. And then walking can begin to happen for regular exercising if you choose to. If you like to go hiking or you are just an outdoors person like to get out every now and then it’s not a forever thing kind of like with the heels.

You want to just put a pause on the walking beyond what you’d have to normally do for everyday living, walking within your house and for work. But walking for exercise like where you go on a dedicated walk, I would avoid if you are trying to correct a low back problem, an arthritis problem in the low back.

Tip number seven, get expert help.

This is by far the quickest way to make sure that the lower back arthritis problem gets under control and managed properly. Now the reality of what we’ve discovered in the healthcare field over the past 20 years is that arthritis in the past, is actually Okay, as we age, it’s expected as we age.

Think of it as like rust on a on a car, if you look under an old car like from the 60s or 70s, or even before that time, if there’s bits of rust here and there, it’s not going to impede the function of the car, your car’s still going to run and you can go enjoy a cruise. But if there’s a massive hole that is rusted out on the frame or on some important part of the of the undercarriage of the car, then you should get some concern and you should think Am I going to be able to enjoy my rider? Is something going to break or is this crazy? We’re going to start then you got a problem. It’s the same thing.

If you are looking at the arthritis in your spine, it’s all over. It’s just there’s tons of it. Just like there’s a lot of rust on the bottom of a car. You are going to have some likely long-term back issues and you can still get under control and manage it so it’s not worse and avoid a surgery or having to rely on medications. But the fact of the matter is, it’s just affected more joints, more cartilage in the spine. But if it’s just a little bit of arthritis, in other words, if they told you that you have mild arthritis, even moderate arthritis, then I wouldn’t get too concerned that’s like looking at a 56-year-old car.

And if it just has mild amounts of rust or even moderate amounts of rusting but everything still works, then you have an excellent shot at getting back exactly to what you were doing before, without having to worry about having surgery one day or having to rely on injections or medications.

But getting expert help really just speeds up that process to make sure that you are doing the right exercises that you are not doing the wrong stuff. And that you are thinking about this properly so that you can learn how to take care of your back arthritis for the rest of your life. So I strongly encourage you to reach out to an expert like a manual physical therapists to make sure that your lower back arthritis problem gets under control and handled properly.

If you are thinking of hiring us to help you out with your low back arthritis problem, the quickest way to begin that process is by going up here on the cost and availability tab at the top of our website, click there. And you’ll get taken to a page where you can type in your info, leave us your details. And what we’ll do is we’ll call you back as soon as we can, to have a conversation about your arthritis problem in your lower back, we just want to make sure that we can help you out that it’s a type of problem that is good for us to treat and that you are going to have a good outcome.

If you don’t want to do that, you can just call us directly at 915-503-1314 and just tell us about your back problem. Let us know what’s going on. We want to hear all the details so that we can make sure that we can help you out or not. I look forward to helping you out real soon. Have a great day. Bye.