Is Your Lower Back Pain Normal?

When we report our findings to clients struggling with lower back pain there are usually negatives involved. Either ‘X’ joint in your body doesn’t move the way it should, or ‘Y’ test(s) are clearly difficult for you to perform. Both show that your function, and therefore nervous system, isn’t where it should be, where I want it to be and where you should want it to be. 

When I present this to clients of ours with back pain I often get asked, ‘is this normal?’ which is a funny old question to ask. I get what you’re trying to say, it becomes an awful lot less daunting when you think others are in the same boat as you. But why would you want to be in a boat that’s sinking? Think of it this way… 

(and yes this actually happens a lot)...

Stacey, the 54 year old carer who’s had lower back pain for years and years on and off, finally comes to me to get help for it because it’s now at the point where she can’t brush her teeth without dropping to her knees half the time. She can’t even put her own socks on, let alone perform the one of the vitality markers where we ask clients to touch their toes. 

When I show her the results of that test, plus the other results where she’s struggled, she asks ‘isn’t this normal for someone my age/in my profession/who’s had issues in the past though?’

Well, we’ve done these tests on a LOT of people, and I can say with confidence it is a common finding. Whether you’re 25 and sporty or 85 and full of degenerative changes, we do see this frequently. 

Now consider the fact you’ve only come to seek help because your MULTIPLE YEAR LONG issue has got so bad that you can’t do the aforementioned, very simple, daily tasks. You’ve pushed and pushed until your body has hit its limit, which is unfortunately where we start to see our clients with lower back pain for the first time. The amount of compensation going on to keep you upright means your body is screaming out for help. 

But is this normal?

OF COURSE IT'S NOT NORMAL

Your body is SUPPOSED to bend and twist and move. It’s literally designed that way from the shape of your joints to the arrangements of your soft tissues! If it can’t do that properly then of course you’re going to have symptoms. It’s BECAUSE you’ve gradually lost this ability to move properly that your body is in the amount of pain it’s in. And if we want to truly help we have to improve and shift this dysfunction, not just cater to it. 

Is it COMMON? Yes. 

Is it NORMAL? No. 

So what do we do about it?

With all my clinical experience so far, it really comes down to a mindset shift. We live in a society that views health in basically two ways. Is it going to kill me or is it not going to kill me? If yes, seek help. If not, I’ll deal with it later. But there’s such a huge gap in between that we are missing that takes us from being ‘not dead’ to being ALIVE! Everyone breathing on this earth right now is ‘not dead’, but are they all living the life you would want to live? Are they all able to do DIY work in their house, play sports, keep fit, work the job they want, sleep well at night, wrestle the kids? Definitely not. And that’s what’s really at stake here.

Changing this mindset at first glance looks like a humongous task. We need to take a society that only wants to deal with problems after they’ve arisen and stuck around long enough to become a nuisance (‘normal’) and changing it in to keeping on top of their health and making sure anything that does happen is nipped in the bud before it starts dictating your life. 

But we kind of do this in at least one area already…

The vast majority of us brush our teeth twice a day right? We all invest in multiple products with our oral health in mind and around 70% of people in the UK see a dentist on a yearly basis. We keep tabs on our dental health pretty well so why not make the leap to our physical health as well? It’s not too dissimilar at all when you think about it and makes a lot of sense given the fact we use our bodies a lot more than we do our teeth. 

Food for thought.