“I was just bending over …”

How often do we hear this: ‘I was just bending over…’ ‘I only picked up my granddaughter…’ ‘We drove to Melbourne and when I got out of the car my back went out!” The answer is we hear this way too often…which is why this topic has made it onto to our first blog page. Just yesterday we had a patient who felt the ‘twinge’ as she was getting out of the shower and by mid morning she was ‘totally seized up’.  As she walked gingerly into our clinic she said; ‘I didn’t really do anything.” And this may just be the answer to her problem. Often it is ‘not doing anything’ that has caused the problem. To most of us this simply doesn’t make sense. It is much easier to get our mind around a sporting or car accident trauma. How is it possible to end up in so much pain from a simple day to day activity? It could be that the Multifidus muscle which supports the stability of our lower spine has switched off.  This muscle switches off when we are inactive and in a slumped position. When we are inactive for a period of time, let’s say driving our car for twenty minutes into the city, our body is in a state of static lumbar flexion (a slight slump) and the muscle switches off. ¹ A simple movement such as getting out of the car and then twisting to take the shopping out of the back seat is enough to send this sleeping muscle into spasm. Similar to spraining an ankle that hasn’t been limbered up on a football field we are doing a similar injury to this very important muscle. To avoid such injury and pain it is up to us as individuals to keep this muscle activated throughout the day. Read our next blog for tips on keeping the Multifidus activated.   Jackson M, Solomonow M, Zhou B, Baratta R, Harris M (2001) Multifidus EMG and Tension-Relaxation Recovery after prolonged Static Lumbar Flexion; Spine  Vol 26(7) pp 715-723