if you find that coughing flares or exacerbates low back pain then in this
video you're going to learn why that is and how you can avoid that in the future
hey what's up it's Coach E here from precision movement and today I want to
answer a question that I received from one of my customers of spine control and
they're asking why does coughing cause my low back pain or my low back to hurt
and there's a few different reasons for this the first thing you've got to
understand is not all low back pain is created the same so there's different
people have different things that flare their low back and there's three major
categories of that one is flexion dysfunction which is any type of flexion
movements whether it's staying in a flexed posture repeated flexion over
time or lifting something super heavy with the flexed spine that's one that
one those activities when those movements irritate the low back that's
known as flush and just wash another is extension dysfunction so it's the
opposite of flexion dysfunction any movements or positions where the spine
is an extension it could be standing it could be walking it could be lifting
with a may be squatting with a very extended spine if those types of
movements tend to exacerbate or cause low back pain for you then extension
dysfunction is what's what is identified for you finally there's compression
distortion so this is where it's straight up compression which is the
force even without any weights or anything it's the force of gravity
acting on my spine pushing it down together if that's irritating for you
then compression dysfunction is it and there are a few different things that we
can do for either a flexion extension or compression dysfunction to mitigate the
effects of coughing on so what is that so first of all when you
cough most people go into flexion when they
cough so your cough the abdominals engage and it's just that subtle
movement right there because the abdominals are flexors of the spine so
this typically irritates people with flexion dysfunction more than any of the
others because if you have extension dysfunction and you go into flexion
that's actually going to relieve some of the pressure off the part of the disc or
the ligament or tissue that is irritated if you've got compression dysfunction
then any type of strong muscular contraction of the torso muscles could
irritate your spine so here's quick tips to get away from that if you have
flexion dysfunction and you're coughing get up tall so get into a little bit of
extension and cough from there okay so if you're sitting down you're gonna want to
stick your hand behind your back get into extension lean back and then call
from there and that's gonna eliminate the possibility of coughing causing
problems if you have compression dysfunction than any type of strong
abdominal contractions may irritate you if they
cause more compression of the spine so to mitigate for that one technique that
I recommend is place your hands on your hips on the pelvic bones and push up but
allow your shoulders to shrug and cough from there so what you're doing is
you're creating length through the spine which when you cough you're gonna have
less compression on the irritated tissues so if it's a disc for example
that's in your lumbar spine that's irritated and every time excess
compression is going through that disk it hurts
then lengthening the spine will minimize or eliminate the compression from the
coughing okay so that is the basics behind why coughing can irritate the spine and
how you can avoid if you do have a cough and you have low back pain how you can
avoid flaring up your low back more so because
of your cough if you don't know what the root cause of your low back pain is
then I've created an assessment for you that you can walk through at the link
you'll see at the end of this video or in the description and in this
assessment we're gonna determine through a series of tests and questions whether
you have flexion extension or compression dysfunction so if you're not
sure of what the root cause is follow that link take the assessment and we'll
help you identify what might be the irritating movements to your spine and
how you go about avoiding them and then healing your spine so those movements no
longer irritate you in the future all right so check that out and get your
diagnosis it's not a medical diagnosis I'm not a doctor I'm just some dude on
the internet but check it out get your identify what it is that's the root
cause and then you can work from there