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There seems to be a minor epidemic...
...of people on my friendslist coming down with back problems. If you haven't been following my LJ long (and even if you ahve), you probably don't know that I recently spent almost two years in serious pain because I pulled a ligament in my back hauling heavy luggage up and down stairs during a trip in England, and three months later graduated, had no job, and therefore had no health insurance and so went without treatment for a long time. I eventually got employed and treated and my back, while not at the level it was before I injured it, is significantly better. It's got its bad times (like this past week and a half, started due to sleeping on a hotel mattress the weekend of the 17th), but I can actually do things like stand up for ten minutes at a time without crippling myself for the next 24 hours.
Anyway, this random collection of advice from a non-doctor goes out to all of you who have been having back problems. Feel free to add any advice you may have.
If your back starts getting worse, or doesn't get any better, go to the doctor ASAP - that's how I ended up in serious pain for almost two years. :D
Advice: as long as it's hurting, don't sit on the floor (I think I delivered the coup de grace by drawing 17 pages of a comic over four weeks while sitting on the floor), and make sure that you're following proper ergonomic sitting posture if at all possible.
Get up periodically and stretch.
Try to prop your feet on something.
If it's the low back (and, heck, if it's the upper back as well) here are a bunch of exercises, a number of which were in the info sheet my doctor gave me. Do them slowly - the goal is to stretch more than work out. If one of them hurts, try another one instead.
If your back is spasming, sometimes a good slow set of exercises can help.
I also found that my back was easier to deal with during the day if I went through a set of exercises in bed right after I woke up, and before I got out of bed.
Cold is better than heat on inflamed, injured muscles - heat makes the inflammation worse. And a bag of frozen cut-up vegetables is the best thing EVAR because it molds itself to your back. Wrap one in a dish towel to keep it from being OMG COLD on your skin, and hold it against the sore area (or stuff it between your back and the chair).
If you can tolerate it, try an anti-inflammatory drug like Aleve or Advil to keep the inflammation down. When I first threw my back out lo these many years ago thebitch of a doctor claimed it was my weight when my skinny dad had the EXACT SAME PROBLEMS all his life and my back went pop when I was hauling a bulky monitor down a ladder and refused to give me muscle relaxants or anything stronger than OTC medicines, no, I'm not bitter AT ALL had me take 4 Advil every 4-6 hours to keep a therapeutic level of ibuprofen in my bloodstream. I'm not a doctor, so I'm not giving medical advice to do that (especially since that much Advil can easily be very bad for some people), but taking something to help the inflammation go down is an option.
Look at the way you sleep - flat on your stomach and on your back are really bad. On the side, with the top leg sort of canted up to keep your back rounded and not swaybacked is pretty much the best you can do. You may not have much control over how you sleep, but stuffing a pillow behind your back or decamping to the sofa for a few nights might keep you from flopping over in your sleep. Ironically, my back now often hurts pretty bad in the mornings because when the injury was active, I couldn't even start to roll over without waking up - often I wouldn't move all night long - because of the pain. Now I can flop over on my back or belly without waking up, and in the morning my back lets me know it. I try to view this as progress of a sort.
A Christmas-themed post will probably show up later tonight or tomorrow.
Anyway, this random collection of advice from a non-doctor goes out to all of you who have been having back problems. Feel free to add any advice you may have.
If your back starts getting worse, or doesn't get any better, go to the doctor ASAP - that's how I ended up in serious pain for almost two years. :D
Advice: as long as it's hurting, don't sit on the floor (I think I delivered the coup de grace by drawing 17 pages of a comic over four weeks while sitting on the floor), and make sure that you're following proper ergonomic sitting posture if at all possible.
Get up periodically and stretch.
Try to prop your feet on something.
If it's the low back (and, heck, if it's the upper back as well) here are a bunch of exercises, a number of which were in the info sheet my doctor gave me. Do them slowly - the goal is to stretch more than work out. If one of them hurts, try another one instead.
If your back is spasming, sometimes a good slow set of exercises can help.
I also found that my back was easier to deal with during the day if I went through a set of exercises in bed right after I woke up, and before I got out of bed.
Cold is better than heat on inflamed, injured muscles - heat makes the inflammation worse. And a bag of frozen cut-up vegetables is the best thing EVAR because it molds itself to your back. Wrap one in a dish towel to keep it from being OMG COLD on your skin, and hold it against the sore area (or stuff it between your back and the chair).
If you can tolerate it, try an anti-inflammatory drug like Aleve or Advil to keep the inflammation down. When I first threw my back out lo these many years ago the
Look at the way you sleep - flat on your stomach and on your back are really bad. On the side, with the top leg sort of canted up to keep your back rounded and not swaybacked is pretty much the best you can do. You may not have much control over how you sleep, but stuffing a pillow behind your back or decamping to the sofa for a few nights might keep you from flopping over in your sleep. Ironically, my back now often hurts pretty bad in the mornings because when the injury was active, I couldn't even start to roll over without waking up - often I wouldn't move all night long - because of the pain. Now I can flop over on my back or belly without waking up, and in the morning my back lets me know it. I try to view this as progress of a sort.
A Christmas-themed post will probably show up later tonight or tomorrow.
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But since when I'm traveling I get annoying, short-tempered, snappish, and bitchy, and Mom knows it, I'm not sure she really paid much attention to it. I turn into a real bitch, especially when I've been travelling with the same person for more than three or so days. The pitfalls of being an introvert - contact with other humans drags me down instead of energizing me. So I may ahve injured my own back out of bitchiness and spite.
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damn back injuries!
I was told that stretching and doing enough exercise with your core muscles will do wonders towards preventing back injury? Of course, once you have been injured it probably tosses that advice out the window? (And yoga, coincedently, combines both! =D)
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(I just think it would be fun to use! =D And if my boss pisses me off I can kick it down the hall at him! Muahahaha!)
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