Short intermittent walks and lying down are two preferred activities to speed up the healing of a sprained lower back. That is why I always recommend to reduce sitting for the first 2 weeks of an acute lower back injury. Let just say that if you are lying down you have 100% compression in your lower back, when you stand up there is 200% compression, when you sit in the perfect ergonomic position at work it is 500%, when you slouch like we do in a vehicle or couch, it is 900% more compression. With a lower back sprain and fracture you want to off load the compression forces through the spine by lying down. You can be icing your back once an hour for 15 minutes. If you injure your lower back, lie down and take the weight off you back, place a cold ice pack over a washcloth to prevent frostbite, and decrease swelling and reduce your pain, by numbing the affected area, until you can get medical treatment. ![]() He had to slow down for 6 to 8 weeks to allow for healing, but did well in his rehab and has returned to full activities and an active lifestyle. He returned for treatment once the fractures were healed, to restore his mobility, CORE strength and endurance, and overall function for his active life. The transverse processes are the boney horizontal arms come off the sides of the vertebrae that attach to muscles in the back. At that point due to the history and his symptoms I sent him off to his doctor for X-rays that came back the next day as positive for oblique fractures of all 5 transverse processes of the lumbar spine. He had hypertonicity in his right paravertebral spinal muscles which where splinting his back and guarding any further movement. Upon assessment he had no right side bend and his pain increased with the specific movement in the back with no referred pain down his leg. He complained of the symptoms above, and felt it was just mechanical and wanted me to manipulate his lower back to give him some pain relief. Sprains will tend to have INTERMITTENT pain once you have iced and settled the pain down and a movement pattern of pain reproduction, meaning when your reproduce the mechanism of injury you get pain, but at rest when lying down (non-weight bearing) there is little or minimal pain, whereas the fracture will keep thumping away constantly telling you something is really wrong no matter what position the lower back is in.Ī loyal client was mountain biking down a hill and the front tire got stuck and he flipped over the bike handle bars and landed on his right lower back and hip. If the Lower back has a CONSTANT intense ache that is unrelenting no matter what position the back is in, and there is limited ability to weight bearing in sitting and stand up on your legs, you should go get an X-ray to rule out a fractured bone in the lower back. Bones when broken or chipped do tend to bleed a lot, but often you cannot see the bruising right away as the tissue is deep under 2+ inches of spinal muscles. Initially, the Lumbar spine disks will tend to swell up quickly and often you will feel like someone kicked you in the back and you experience a bruised feeling. ![]() I have seen many lumbar sprains and fractures while covering sports and dealing with active weekend warriors for a lot of years. Your pelvis is made up of 3 bones the sacrum which is an upside down triangular shaped bone in the middle of your pelvis, between 2 innominate bones that form the pelvis. The lower back is comprised of 5 lumbar vertebrae attached to your pelvis. A sprain is an injury to the ligaments that help stabilize the lumbar vertebral bones and usually results from a sudden or gradual irregular movement or an unnatural twisting motion of the joint or an improper heavy lift.Ī fracture refers to a break in the actual vertebral bone. Both lower back sprains and fractures can share a large portion of the same symptoms such as sharp pain, muscle spasms, and limited mobility.
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