Lower back pain is a very commonly reported health condition, and it can also be one of the most frustrating ones; lower back pain can keep you from living your life, and it can even start to keep you from enjoying a great deal of your life if the symptoms get any worse.
If you’re experiencing any sort of lower back pain, it’s important that you find the cause sooner rather than later. Undiagnosed back pain can lead to much worse health trouble.
Did you know that back pain could point to an underlying health condition – or mean that you need to make some serious lifestyle changes? It might not even be related to your spine at all, so you should never assume that you think you know where the source of your pain is coming from.
Here are 10 common lower back pain causes and what you can do:
1. Incorrect Posture
Incorrect posture is a very common cause of lower back pain, and it’s seen in a great deal of the population – especially people who spend a lot of time in one position, such as office workers working at a desk; the same is true for many who work in the service industry (like restaurants, for example) and see a lot of time on their feet.
Other symptoms of an incorrect posture can include repeated muscular injury, pain in the neck and shoulders and misalignment of the hips over time. This can even lead to severe pain when walking, and an eventual problem with pinched nerves and arthritis.
It’s not always easy to correct an incorrect posture, and you should start by paying attention to the kind of chair you’re using while you work – or the resting position that you make use of when you stand on your feet for a while. Are your shoulders, hips, and feet in-line with each other, or are you hunching more to the one side? Is your back kept up straight, or are you going forward or back?