Back pain and posture

Too often, I am exposed to theories as to why individuals are suffering with low back pain, especially when it has become chronic. I often hear about specific muscles being inhibited or certain joints being stiff. To me, this is a great example of addressing the issue by looking at the small picture.

When looking at the big picture, we address the body as a whole and we look for postural imbalances and how stable the body is in space. This is what I’ve seen work best for individuals to actually get rid of chronic ailments. This is what a few researchers did in their study entitled Postural control in individuals with and without non-specific chronic low back pain: a preliminary case-control study.

What is discussed here is that chronic low back pain (cLBP) affects 12-33% of the adult population. In total, 44 individuals were tested. 21 of them had cLBP and 23 did not. What came out of this study is quite clear! Patients suffering from cLBP had postural deficits and were unstable when their eyes were closed while standing on unstable surfaces.

Moral of the story: if you present with postural imbalances and are unstable, you are more likely to have cLBP.

Solution: it’s called posturology!