Lower back pain can make many everyday activities painful. Learn common treatments to relieve lower back pain in this medical video.
See a doctor immediately if you experience any symptoms
Perform pelvic tilts to strengthen the core
Dr. Stallworth is board certified in rehabilitation and phsycial medicine. She graduated from Baylor College of Medicine and finished her residency at Baylor. Dr. Stallworth is known for being a superb and compassionate physician that believes in not only health of the body of the mind as well. She currently serves on the board of Centennial Medical Center and is a former board member of the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. She now resides with her family in middle Tennessee.
DR. CATHERINE STALLWORTH, M.D.: Hi I am Dr. Cathy Stallworth and today I would like to talk to you specifically about low back pain. What are its causes and what you can do about it? Fortunately for most of us, back pain is caused by muscle spasm. Muscle spasm is simply contraction of the muscle that occurs when a muscle gets injured. What are some other causes of low back pain and when do you need to get concern? I have with me a sample of the spine. This is what your spine looks like. This is the front of the body; this is the back of the body. These are what we call the vertebral bodies and these little guys between the bones are called the disks. They can cause some significant issues in the low back. And I have got a smaller model to show you specifically what can occur on the spine in regards to the bones and the disks. One of the things that can happen is these disks can herniate and you can get a pinched nerve. If this happens, typical symptoms include pain radiating down the leg, numbness in the leg or even weakness in the leg or in the foot. Another thing that you can get is what is called spinal stenosis which is actually--this is looking at the spine from above, narrowing of the spinal canal. Another problem can be facet syndrome, which is thickening of the bones at the back of the spine can tend to cause pain with extension. Some people develop some instability of the spine and actually can have a little forward slippage of one vertebra on another one. That is called spondylolisthesis. If you are having any symptoms of pain, numbness or tingling down the leg or any bowel or bladder incontinence or changes in bowel or bladder habits, you definitely need to see a physician immediately. I would like to show you another exercise that you can do to begin to tap into stabilizing the core of the body. What [PH] Oni is going to do next is what we call pelvic tilt. We begin with posterior tilting, anterior tilting, and this begins to strengthen the core. So would you demonstrate that for us? Would you demonstrate a posterior tilt for us [PH] Oni? Okay. So when a posterior tilt, what [PH] Oni is doing is he is drawing the navel into the spine and gently rounding, pressing the small of his back into the mat in an anterior tilt. And here he is just letting his belly rise up gentle arch of the spine and posterior tilt and hold the posterior tilt and breathe and release.
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