How do you prevent chronic back pain from turning you into a bitter recluse?

I do yoga and then find a sunny window to meditate by!

I don’t know of any great ideas. I hurt my back in a car accident and that was hell for 18 months. I have a few friends that swear by acupuncture. If I was in that kind of pain I think I’d try just about anything. Good luck.

Thank god or whatever I don’t have chronic back pain.

On the other hand, now I need a better excuse for being a bitter recluse.

I did have a girlfriend several years ago who was rear-ended with considerable force in an auto accident (an ambulance totaled her van with no irony whatsoever). She lived with a lot of back pain for several years, but in her case she refused to even acknowledge it. That one had guts, she did. She just got up and got on with things, regardless of the pain that she obviously felt every day.

A good physical therapist.

Physical therapy, therapeutic massage, acupuncture, and stretching can be very helpful. It depends on the cause of your pain, too, whether the root cause is muscular, joints, or your spine. Every time I have a pain flare up, they tell me ‘stretching, stretching, stretching’ and send me home with the right kind of exercises. They always tell me to work on my back and stomach muscle strength, as both will take some of the weight off your spine and other parts of your body and will help with proper body alignment.

Heat helps me and is very soothing. I was cautioned by a doctor, however, not to rely solely on heat because it can end up causing more inflammation. So you might want to check to see what heat/cold regimen would work best for you.

Sorry to hear you’re hurting.. trust me, I feel your pain. I spent 5 months straight this year in daily pain and often, it was difficult to walk normally.

I really feel for you.I have a friend that is going through the same thing.She has done yoga,other forms of exercise,supplements,surgery and none have helped much so far.She has told me that with her it has been all about acceptance but that does not stop her from pursuing different avenues of treatment. Good luck.

When you say chronic back pain, are you saying that your entire back is aching or is it generally confined to a specific area? Back pain can be caused by a number of issues. Not having the right supportive bra for one example. Another would be the muscles in your stomach not being strong enough to support your back. It could also be from a pinched nerve, twisted vertebrae or any other sort of anomaly with the spine. The first point is to figure out where the pain is stemming from. Treatment can then vary. If its just your stomach muscles, you can do some crunches. You shouldn’t be lifting your head all of the way maybe 15–25% at most depending upon your body. You shouldn’t pull at your head with your arms or hands either. Just lightly cup the sides of your ears and let your torso do the work. You should also push your hips in or lower back down so that it touches the floor. You may find you have to “tuck”, crunch and then tuck again until you are use to keeping your body in such a position. But that can make a big difference with your back. Also try correcting your posture when standing or sitting.

Look up John Kabat Zinn on you tube and see if you like him, he teaches meditation to deal with chronic pain and that kind of thing.

@wickedcriket When I was a child, I broke my thigh bone in three places. When the doctor put me back together, the leg healed slightly shorter than the other one, causing an unnatural curvature in my spine. For 30 years, I never had any pain from this. Last May, I began having pain. It took me a few weeks to figure out what it was from. I thought it was my ribs, but that was just a secondary symptom of the original problem. I’ve been to the Chiropractor several times, and he helps quite a bit, but I still have pain. I need to do exercises to strengthen the left side of my back. The good news is, I have trained myself to be 75% ambidextrous by doing daily tasks left-handed. ;)

It’s a bit unusual that it took that long for the curvature to pose an issue. It should have been apparent much sooner in your life unless you were taking any sort of pain reliever daily? Was there anything you did before the pain happened/leading up to the pain that could have jeopardized the spine curvature? Weakness makes sense if you are leaning slightly. You have to spend time on one side of your body to keep it even with the other. If you were generally doing things that worked out your left side more and stopped that could possibly have been what made the pain begin in the first place. Kudos on the ambidextrous. It really does come in handy to have function on both sides because you never know what could happen.

Have you been checked by a spine specialist or an ortho? Having one leg shorter than the other puts wear on your hip, which then throws off your spine. Sometimes, replacing the hip can fix the back. Also, wearing a shoe that’s built up on the shorter leg takes the pressure off the hip and spine.

I’m really sorry about what happened to your leg.
I have a similar situation in that I think my right leg might be slightly shorter because it’s bowed outward and my left one isn’t.

I usually compensate for that by walking slightly tip-toed on my right foot.

Are you using any corrective footwear to compensate for your slightly shorter leg?

Before May of this year, I never had any issues with it. For thirty years, for the most part, I’d forgotten I’d even had the injury (except for in pictures, my right hip is a bit more prominent than my left)

In May I got Whooping Cough, which was the beginning of the pain. The coughing caused some kind of injury (either a slipped disc, or something else.) I went to the doctor and they took xrays. He didn’t see anything unusual, so he prescribed Naproxin for what he called “Chest Wall Pain”.

After that I was expecting the pain to get better, but it remained constant, so I went to the Chiropractor. He took xrays and discovered that my neck was out of alignment. He told me that the neck should have a natural curve, and mine did not. He adjusted my spine, and the pain was gone completely for three days.

So I went back, and he adjusted me again. This time the pain was still there, but less severe. He said I needed to do exercises to strengthen the muscles to keep my spine in alignment.

Each time I go to the chiropractor, the pain gets slightly better.

I still have pain in my ribcage on that side and my pectoral muscle on that side is swollen and painful. I asked my Chiropractor about why this is, and he told me that my spine is putting a strain on my ribcage and making my muscles sore and inflamed. I need to stretch after using hot compresses.

The part that is the most depressing to me is that this effects my ability to sing. It is very painful to take deep breaths and use my lungs for anything else other than normal, calm breathing. If I sing it puts me in pain and I have to take pain medication in order to sleep at night. I do need physical therapy. Acupuncture sounds like a good idea too.

I just recently got my very first voice audition, and it is my dream to be a vocalist.
I will not let this injury stop me, it is just that sometimes, it makes me extremely tired.

Thank you to all have have read this.

Are you doing the exercises? If you’re getting relief from the alignment, then go at strengthening your core muscles.

Acupuncture. It was the last resort for my pain (I’m afraid of needles) but I was that desparate. I’ve been hooked ever since and go a few times a year for a tune up.

I’ve actually have misaligned hips so that one is set lower than the other. They believed it caused my vertebrae to twist. They’re not backwards, but they’re turned slightly. I have three of them like that. Anyway, one of them causes the ribcage pain when it pinches a nerve or if I strain my back by doing things inappropriately like not lifting with my legs. The swelling does in fact cause pressure against the lung which can thus cause breathing difficulties. The crunches have helped. Stretching also works. There is also a little board you can get that literally stretches out your upper body to try to stretch out your spine so it aligns better. I tried that but being strapped in kind of freaked me out even though it was velcro.

The best thing was changing the bed. I also got one of those pillows that curve to your head and neck. I bought the actual brand name, not the cheap one and found that it was too high for my body. So I bought the cheap brand and found it to be thinner and just right. I think you can order them through a chiropractor so that it can fit your head specifically. I also bought a mattress topper about 6 inches of memory foam. Sometimes I have to take it off and sleep on the firmer mattress, but most of the time the combination of the two help my spin and relieve pain overall. Stretching is really great, but you need to be sure you are doing it correctly as with the crunches. Incorrectly will just cause you more pain. Try working on your posture in the mean time to ease the pain. Also, have you tried laying down on the floor? Any pain then? Let your chiropractor know what positions bother you the most and if any relieve the pain. That may be able to help him/her with the diagnosis and treatment.

Good luck with your audition!

Morphine lets me get up and going if it’s going to be a bit of walking.

@wickedcriket Yes, it feels as though a couple of my vertebrae are twisted. It feels like the twisted vertebrae are pulling (or pushing) on my ribs, putting strain on two (or three, not sure) rib bones, causing the muscles and tendons to hurt.

I bought one of those orthopedic pillows, specifically designed to cradle the neck. It didn’t help much until I tried something new last night.

I put the pillow flat on the bed and I tied my right arm to my body with a scarf, to make it immobile, so that I would not move myself with it when I tossed or turned.

I think that is 90% of my problem. I definitely need a more comfortable mattress. (Which isn’t in our budget yet) I have been tossing and turning a lot at night and putting a strain on the arm, shoulder, ribcage.

Last night I did not use my right arm to shift positions with and this morning I had 70 percent less pain. Even right now, the pain is better. It is still there, but it isn’t quite as excruciating as it has been.

I hope it lasts into this evening so that I don’t have to take any pain medication tonight. I will try this ‘arm immobilization’ thing all this week. Maybe by next Sunday I’ll have great results to report. Maybe the tendons need to stay immobile for a while so they can heal. It is really difficult to do this since I am right handed, and the injury is on the right side.

I’ll keep the fingers on my left hand crossed ;)

I’m glad you found something that is working for you. With the pillow, is the smaller end cradling your neck or the bigger end? I noticed with the brand name pillow, I needed the smaller end under my neck but I would still incur pain. The cheap pillow I can use the bigger part under my neck and it cradles it just right. It felt weird at first though and took a few nights to get use to it.

I would recommend Big Lots. They have some nice mattresses with pillowtops. If your boxspring and frame are okay, you could probably get away with just buying the mattress itself which could save you a few hundred.