Why Can Sitting Cause My Back Pain?
/Low back pain is one of the most common reasons why people end up having to miss work. Depending on what your job is, it might be contributing to your low back problems.
Generally people sit for long periods of time at their job regardless if you're a lawyer, admin, or UBER driver. Sitting is a normal thing that our bodies can do, the problem becomes how you sit and for how long you are sitting for.
There is a common chain of events that happen when sitting for long periods of time. First you usually bend at the waist, then bring your head forward, roll your shoulders in, and lastly lean forward closer into the desk or steering wheel.
Some studies or research calculated it to be almost 200% more pressure in your low back!
You can see how this can become a problem, right?
When you stand up after sitting for long periods of time, people tend to experience a tightness or even feel like they “threw their back out”. There is a reason for this. Your hip flexor muscles have to contract and shorten in order for you to sit. After a while your muscles and tissues become accustomed to that and when you try to stand you are lengthening a muscle that has been trained to be shorter and tighter. When this happens it usually results in pain or discomfort.
Your best course of action is to make sure to get up frequently and move around throughout the day. This is in addition to being evaluated by a health care professional to help get you out of pain and give you the tools to help keep you out of pain.
