Do you suffer from lower back pain? Laois Physiotherapy are here to help

Meet John

John woke up on Thursday morning and struggled to get out of bed. John had a pain in his lower back and felt as though everything had locked up.

When John tried to put on his socks he got a dart of pain in his lower back, when he went into wash his teeth he got another dart. John started to get really worried that something bad was going on with his lower back. John decided to lie down flat on the floor thinking that the hard flat surface would give him relief.

This only made things worse as John got another dart on the way down and ended up lying down on the floor for 2 hours as he couldn’t get back up. For a while John thought about calling an ambulance but then decided to call his son to come over and help him.

John arrived into us the following day for some help with his back. John was in a lot of pain and was frustrated as he did not sleep well that night. John told us he ended up getting a few hours on the couch as he could not get comfortable on the bed.

So why did this happen?

John told us he had spent the previous 2 days cutting the hedge out the back of his garden. It required a lot of leaning forward so that he could reach the branches at the back of the hedge. Each day he did 4-5 hours of hedge cutting.

What exactly was wrong with John?

Two possibilities popped into my head when listening to his story.

1. John’s back has gone into spasm – this is where the muscles tighten up and restrict movement. It is a warning shot for John – telling him to ease off what you are doing or something bad will happen.

2. A disc had protruded and was a touching a nerve, thus causing his back pain.

In Johns case we needed to figure out which it was. The good news was that John did not have any nerve type symptoms-burning, tingling, pins and needles or numbness. He also didn’t have any shooting pains down his legs.

I did some more hands on tests to see if Johns nerves were impacted. In this case John’s nerves were fine and thus I concluded that his back had gone into spasm and no major damage had occurred.

We treated John with some soft tissue release, stretches to do at home and advised him to apply heat to the area. We advised him that his back spasm will ease within the next 10 days as long as he follows our advice and doesn’t do anything too extreme until the pain has settled.

John was also happy to know that he didn’t have a protruding disc in his back and made a full recovery in the above timeframe. A couple of months later he informed me that he was back cutting his hedge without issue. This time he spaced it over a 4 days.

A back spasm can be very severe and will send off a lot of alarm bells for people. The majority of the time they will settle with the above treatment and advice. If you have any questions on back pain, do not hesitate to contact us.

Laois Physiotherapy Clinic,
The Coachhouse,
4 Kellyville Park,
Portlaoise, Co. Laois.
R32 NX59

Tel: 087 9945057
Email: info@laoisphysiotherapyclinic.ie

Written by

Conor Bolton BSc MSc M.I.S.C.P

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