Aa
Lower back pain only in morning
I wake every morning with horrible pain in lower back (kidney area) that radiates to the front of stomach (rib area). I have had battery of tests and found nothing. I am only able to sleep 5-6 hours before pain wakes me, also unable to take a deep breath until I get out of bed (very painful just to roll over), once I stand and get out of bed the pain almost immediately starts to ease. After about 20 minutes of walking around and after first morning void, pain disappears for remainder of day.
Could this be a pinched nerve or nerve compression? Had MRI of lower lumbar which showed normal...chiro recommends stretching excersises, something serious has to be wrong with this kind of pain. If anyone has any ideas it would be GREATLY appreciated!!
Could this be a pinched nerve or nerve compression? Had MRI of lower lumbar which showed normal...chiro recommends stretching excersises, something serious has to be wrong with this kind of pain. If anyone has any ideas it would be GREATLY appreciated!!
I got the same thing everything came.out normal now i found out. Its rib problem read about it n the symthoms n ull find out more.things about it im still.with.this horrible pain );
A happy update for you - I have no more morning back pain! Here’s what I did:
Find a Chiropractor who specializes in Active Release Technique (ART). Mine is great! I saw several doctors, sports medicine specialists, and physiotherapists, and she was the first health professional to understand what I was talking about when I said, “My back only hurts when I sleep!”
I also find massage therapy to be helpful. You can look up how to do self massages with tennis balls too.
Also, I started doing beginner’s yoga twice a week and started stretching for 45 minutes to an hour every day. Yes, EVERY DAY...it’s annoying but my muscles need it after years of office work and 6 months of daily pain!
Here’s what I do:
1.Cat/cow stretch,child’s pose, child’s pose with arms stretched out to the left, child’s pose with arms stretched out to the right (about 30 seconds each, 5 repetitions of this sequence)
2.From hands and knees (tabletop position), sweep one arm up to the ceiling and look up at the arm. (Repeat 5-6 times for each side)
3.Lying-down glute stretch – “thread the needle”
4.Lying-down psoas stretch (grab one knee, bring it in to your chest)
5.Lying down twist - drop both knees to one side, look in the opposite direction
6.Seated – butterfly stretch
7.Seated – hamstring stretch, one leg at a time (once you get to the point where you can reach/grab your feet, this becomes an awesome back stretch)
8.This stretch, for the muscles in between your shoulder blades: http://www.drbackman.com/rhomboid-muscle-stretch.htm
9.Pigeon pose
10.Warrior 1 and 2
11.Kneeling psoas stretch (http://www.floota.com/PsoasStretch2.html) with one modification. My Chiro told me not to do the hard lunge...so I keep everything at 90 degrees, tilt my pelvis forward, raise one arm (the arm opposite the kneeling leg) and then lean over the side of my kneeling leg.
12.Calf stretch – up against the wall or on the steps
13.Chest stretch against the wall: http://www.fitsugar.com/Wall-Pec-Stretch-Explained-1806590
14.Neck rolls – chin to chest, right ear to right shoulder, head tilted back, left ear to left shoulder
Of course I’m not a doctor, don’t push yourselves to the point where a stretch is painful etc. etc. I just had to develop this routine on my own because doctors were so clueless about this problem and ended up scaring me more than they helped me!
And stick with it! The Chiro/ART combined with daily stretching has taken about 3.5 months, with gradual improvement and a couple setbacks. But I feel like a new woman!
Also...use heating pads! I slept with mine on all night, which most people are scared to do, but it reduced my agony to manageable levels and let me sleep through the night. If you don’t want to use it while sleeping, use it before you stretch to warm up your muscles.
Good luck!
Find a Chiropractor who specializes in Active Release Technique (ART). Mine is great! I saw several doctors, sports medicine specialists, and physiotherapists, and she was the first health professional to understand what I was talking about when I said, “My back only hurts when I sleep!”
I also find massage therapy to be helpful. You can look up how to do self massages with tennis balls too.
Also, I started doing beginner’s yoga twice a week and started stretching for 45 minutes to an hour every day. Yes, EVERY DAY...it’s annoying but my muscles need it after years of office work and 6 months of daily pain!
Here’s what I do:
1.Cat/cow stretch,child’s pose, child’s pose with arms stretched out to the left, child’s pose with arms stretched out to the right (about 30 seconds each, 5 repetitions of this sequence)
2.From hands and knees (tabletop position), sweep one arm up to the ceiling and look up at the arm. (Repeat 5-6 times for each side)
3.Lying-down glute stretch – “thread the needle”
4.Lying-down psoas stretch (grab one knee, bring it in to your chest)
5.Lying down twist - drop both knees to one side, look in the opposite direction
6.Seated – butterfly stretch
7.Seated – hamstring stretch, one leg at a time (once you get to the point where you can reach/grab your feet, this becomes an awesome back stretch)
8.This stretch, for the muscles in between your shoulder blades: http://www.drbackman.com/rhomboid-muscle-stretch.htm
9.Pigeon pose
10.Warrior 1 and 2
11.Kneeling psoas stretch (http://www.floota.com/PsoasStretch2.html) with one modification. My Chiro told me not to do the hard lunge...so I keep everything at 90 degrees, tilt my pelvis forward, raise one arm (the arm opposite the kneeling leg) and then lean over the side of my kneeling leg.
12.Calf stretch – up against the wall or on the steps
13.Chest stretch against the wall: http://www.fitsugar.com/Wall-Pec-Stretch-Explained-1806590
14.Neck rolls – chin to chest, right ear to right shoulder, head tilted back, left ear to left shoulder
Of course I’m not a doctor, don’t push yourselves to the point where a stretch is painful etc. etc. I just had to develop this routine on my own because doctors were so clueless about this problem and ended up scaring me more than they helped me!
And stick with it! The Chiro/ART combined with daily stretching has taken about 3.5 months, with gradual improvement and a couple setbacks. But I feel like a new woman!
Also...use heating pads! I slept with mine on all night, which most people are scared to do, but it reduced my agony to manageable levels and let me sleep through the night. If you don’t want to use it while sleeping, use it before you stretch to warm up your muscles.
Good luck!
Nice book, Uniquename! Good luck! New discovery, even if its not a cure : curling on my side in a ball (curl lower back in and upper back in) in the wee hours of the morning (after a wee!), gives me the next 3 hours of less restless sleep. Had MRI today. Clueless doctor. Voltaren suppositories!!! He thinks its psycological stuff!!! Do you have any emotional problems, he asks? Yeah, Im thinking about them at 3am! He's very pro using drugs and painkillers. That's a first! I loved the permission! Didnt sit at computer yesterday ; had a better night last night. Mmmm. Makes you think! Might try Bowderchoff's idea of a few pints one night and see how that goes! BUT, Im a cyclist and so I am often dehydrated, and it doesnt make for a better night, if anything, the opposite is true - but perhaps the alcohol has something in it!! ;)) Any improvements on your side?
Thanks for your thread on the psoas muscle. I, like almost everyone else in this thread of postings, has been experiencing low back pain for years and, for the past year or so, it has been especially bad after waking in the morning. Like so many others here, the pain goes away (almost completely) after I get up --- when I am standing and walking around.
I saw your thread on the psoas and elsewhere saw a diagram for the psoas stretch where you kneel on one knee with the foot of the other leg far in front. I did that stretch once (moving my pelvis toward the ground) and found significant resistance. It seemed to reduce some tightness in my lower back. I tried the stretch a few minutes later and the resistance was much less. I did a few more of that kneeling stretch (holding on to a chair or bed to steady myself) that evening.
The next morning my stiffness and pain on getting up was much less.
And by doing the stretch a couple of more times, the tightness and pain
were almost immediately resolved.
After doing the stretch for just a few days now, I find (like CindiK) that
this may be a 90% solution rather than a 100% solution. But I think
that I may need to also stretch the quadratus lumborum muscle, which
wraps the lower back just above the psoas and iliacus muscles.
Here is a great web page on a stretch for the quadratus lumborum muscle --- http://www.floota.com/QuadratusLumborumStretch1.html
That site (floota.com) also has a great, detailed guide on stretching the psoas muscle to maximum benefit. See the link at the bottom of the page-link above.
---
I should point out that I was referred to a sports medicine doctor
(for low back pain) back in 2007. He took x-rays and showed me that I had scoliosis in my back.
(It looked really bad to me, but he said it was not real bad. I guess you have
to be bent into a pretzel to be considered bad --- like when doctors say
350 mg/deciLiter trigycerides is nothing compared to what they've seen in
some patients --- even though 350 is over twice the recommended 150 max ---
and some doctors recommend 100 as the max. I guarantee you, anyone with
350 and above triglycerides for a period of years is going to have serious
cartilage and vision problems. 350 is nothing to pooh-pooh about.)
Anyway, he recommended physical therapy so I went to a physical therapy
clinic next door for about 12 sessions, about one per week. They DID have
me doing a 'hip flexor' stretch -- the one done on your back with one knee
at a time to the chest. I see on the internet that that stretch is often
recommended as a stretch for the psoas and iliacus and quadratus lumborum.
But it never did anything for my psoas --- or, I should say, nothing
significantly helpful for my lower back pain.
I point this out for others here. That is, if you are doing the stretch
LYING ON YOUR BACK with one knee at a time to the chest, it will probably not
stretch your psoas adequately. You will probably get more benefit from
the KNEELING stretch --- with your back semi-erect and one foot-and-knee forward and the
other knee on the ground behind you. Move your pelvis GENTLY toward the
ground to feel the stretch.
And when you feel you no longer get significant stretch/resistance that
way, you may wish to try the psoas stretch at floota.com where he actually
shows a loop over the back foot. With the back knee on the ground (and the
body on the edge of a bed), the loop is used to pull the back foot toward
your head. Of course, this again should be done GENTLY.
I hope to report back with closer to 100% resolution of
the back-pain-in-the-morning problem --- after trying the quadratus lumborum
stretch (done with pillows under the waist, on the edge of a bed), and
after trying the loop-over-the-foot psoas stretch.
---
One more thing I should mention: I 'rescued' my back x-rays, that were
taken in 2007, from the doctor's office, since I knew they would just throw
them away eventually and never look at them again.
I have suspected for several years now that my scoliosis (and my lifetime
of incidents of lower right back cramps) may be due to one leg being slightly
shorter than the other. And, in fact, for a couple of years now, I have
been wearing a heel lift in my left street shoe or tennis shoe --- since, when
looking in a mirror, it seemed that the left-heel lift straightened a slight
tilt that I could see in my upper body.
Sure enough, when I looked at the bottom of the front view x-ray, I noticed
that the 2 lowest points of my pelvis did not determine a horizontal line.
One point was about a quarter inch lower than the other.
This may not seem like much, but a quarter inch drop over a distance of about
a foot corresponds to the floor of a 12 foot wide room dropping about 3 inches
from one side of the room to another. Any marble or pencil dropped on that
floor is going to definitely roll to the low side of that room.
And a tilt like that of the surface on which the L5 vertebra lies, over a period
of decades, is bound to have an effect on the spine.
What I am getting at here is that people with the back-pain-in-the-morning
problem should probably have a deternination made whether they have some
scoliosis (the kind many doctors consider 'mild') --- and, if so, see if
they can get a determination made whether they have one leg shorter than
the other (even if it is only a quarter inch or so difference).
I have not been able to find any place on the internet (even at chiropractic
clinic and orthopedic clinic web sites) where they describe a foolproof
way of determining whether one leg is shorter than the other. But the x-ray
examination that I describe above, to determine if your pelvis is tilted,
is better than anything that I have found so far.
By the way, while you're at your doctor, get your triglycerides checked.
---
More later on psoas and quadratus lumborum stretching.
I saw your thread on the psoas and elsewhere saw a diagram for the psoas stretch where you kneel on one knee with the foot of the other leg far in front. I did that stretch once (moving my pelvis toward the ground) and found significant resistance. It seemed to reduce some tightness in my lower back. I tried the stretch a few minutes later and the resistance was much less. I did a few more of that kneeling stretch (holding on to a chair or bed to steady myself) that evening.
The next morning my stiffness and pain on getting up was much less.
And by doing the stretch a couple of more times, the tightness and pain
were almost immediately resolved.
After doing the stretch for just a few days now, I find (like CindiK) that
this may be a 90% solution rather than a 100% solution. But I think
that I may need to also stretch the quadratus lumborum muscle, which
wraps the lower back just above the psoas and iliacus muscles.
Here is a great web page on a stretch for the quadratus lumborum muscle --- http://www.floota.com/QuadratusLumborumStretch1.html
That site (floota.com) also has a great, detailed guide on stretching the psoas muscle to maximum benefit. See the link at the bottom of the page-link above.
---
I should point out that I was referred to a sports medicine doctor
(for low back pain) back in 2007. He took x-rays and showed me that I had scoliosis in my back.
(It looked really bad to me, but he said it was not real bad. I guess you have
to be bent into a pretzel to be considered bad --- like when doctors say
350 mg/deciLiter trigycerides is nothing compared to what they've seen in
some patients --- even though 350 is over twice the recommended 150 max ---
and some doctors recommend 100 as the max. I guarantee you, anyone with
350 and above triglycerides for a period of years is going to have serious
cartilage and vision problems. 350 is nothing to pooh-pooh about.)
Anyway, he recommended physical therapy so I went to a physical therapy
clinic next door for about 12 sessions, about one per week. They DID have
me doing a 'hip flexor' stretch -- the one done on your back with one knee
at a time to the chest. I see on the internet that that stretch is often
recommended as a stretch for the psoas and iliacus and quadratus lumborum.
But it never did anything for my psoas --- or, I should say, nothing
significantly helpful for my lower back pain.
I point this out for others here. That is, if you are doing the stretch
LYING ON YOUR BACK with one knee at a time to the chest, it will probably not
stretch your psoas adequately. You will probably get more benefit from
the KNEELING stretch --- with your back semi-erect and one foot-and-knee forward and the
other knee on the ground behind you. Move your pelvis GENTLY toward the
ground to feel the stretch.
And when you feel you no longer get significant stretch/resistance that
way, you may wish to try the psoas stretch at floota.com where he actually
shows a loop over the back foot. With the back knee on the ground (and the
body on the edge of a bed), the loop is used to pull the back foot toward
your head. Of course, this again should be done GENTLY.
I hope to report back with closer to 100% resolution of
the back-pain-in-the-morning problem --- after trying the quadratus lumborum
stretch (done with pillows under the waist, on the edge of a bed), and
after trying the loop-over-the-foot psoas stretch.
---
One more thing I should mention: I 'rescued' my back x-rays, that were
taken in 2007, from the doctor's office, since I knew they would just throw
them away eventually and never look at them again.
I have suspected for several years now that my scoliosis (and my lifetime
of incidents of lower right back cramps) may be due to one leg being slightly
shorter than the other. And, in fact, for a couple of years now, I have
been wearing a heel lift in my left street shoe or tennis shoe --- since, when
looking in a mirror, it seemed that the left-heel lift straightened a slight
tilt that I could see in my upper body.
Sure enough, when I looked at the bottom of the front view x-ray, I noticed
that the 2 lowest points of my pelvis did not determine a horizontal line.
One point was about a quarter inch lower than the other.
This may not seem like much, but a quarter inch drop over a distance of about
a foot corresponds to the floor of a 12 foot wide room dropping about 3 inches
from one side of the room to another. Any marble or pencil dropped on that
floor is going to definitely roll to the low side of that room.
And a tilt like that of the surface on which the L5 vertebra lies, over a period
of decades, is bound to have an effect on the spine.
What I am getting at here is that people with the back-pain-in-the-morning
problem should probably have a deternination made whether they have some
scoliosis (the kind many doctors consider 'mild') --- and, if so, see if
they can get a determination made whether they have one leg shorter than
the other (even if it is only a quarter inch or so difference).
I have not been able to find any place on the internet (even at chiropractic
clinic and orthopedic clinic web sites) where they describe a foolproof
way of determining whether one leg is shorter than the other. But the x-ray
examination that I describe above, to determine if your pelvis is tilted,
is better than anything that I have found so far.
By the way, while you're at your doctor, get your triglycerides checked.
---
More later on psoas and quadratus lumborum stretching.
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