In this video I'm going to show you 10 effective ways to help manage lumbar spinal stenosis pain.
Spinal stenosis happens in people aged 50 years and up. And it's commonly a reason for pain into
the hips, legs and in the lower back as well. People are told by their doctors that they have
spinal stenosis after getting an x ray or an MRI. And doctors often mentioned to their patients that
it's an eventuality that they'll eventually need spinal surgery for this spinal stenosis problem.
This is scary news to hear about your back. But the reality is that, at least here in our clinic
95% of cases that we see of lumbar spinal stenosis get better naturally and not just get better but
thrive, I mean get back to being active, even more active than they were before they had back
problems and leg problems. In some cases, we use a variety of ways to treat lumbar spinal stenosis,
some are focused on helping the back pain and others are helping the nerve pain into the legs.
We use a variety of ways to treat lumbar spinal stenosis to get the back pain to go away
and the leg pain to go wait for the long term. Coming up. Next, I'm going to detail the top
10 effective lumbar spinal stenosis treatments that we use with our patients here at our clinic.
My name is Dr. David Middaugh fan. I'm a specialist Physical Therapist here at El
Paso manual physical therapy. And this channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active
and mobile, while avoiding unnecessary surgery injections and pain medications. Please consider
subscribing to this channel so that you don't miss out on any of the helpful videos we post
each and every week. So let's get right into it. Number one, you've got to loosen your back muscles
in lumbar spinal stenosis, let me show you on the skeleton here. This is the lumbar spine and
there's muscles that run up and down the back of the spine. Consistently, I see people with lumbar
spinal stenosis that have giant back muscles rock solid, hard back muscles. And that's a
major contributing factor to the bone spurs and the spaces that are shrinking inside the spine.
Because these back muscles are just constantly compressing all the joints and all the spaces
all the nerves in the spine. So beginning to free up your stiff back muscles is going to be
the first step that you need to take to decompressing your spine. And I recommend using a
ball like one of these and I'll put a link in the description below to a little kit that includes
this kind of ball, you might want one that's smooth, that can has a smooth ball.
I like the pokey one, you can use a tennis ball as well. And what she would do is put
this on your lower back and lean up against a wall and press into it and move your hips
back and forth to let that ball move around against those back muscles on either side.
And the point is just to begin to kind of tenderize those muscles so that you can
move more freely in your back and decompress the area that are related to this, getting
massages in your lower back is typically very beneficial for those big stiff back muscles.
And what would be even more pinpointed is if you can see a manual therapist, that's my specialty,
my manual physical therapists have gone through additional training beyond what a
physical therapist goes through to know specific treatments that help to free up stiff joints
and stiff muscles. So find a manual therapist in your area, that would be the most specific thing
to do to free up your back muscles. Now number two, you need to avoid
back strengthening exercises because that's what is contributing to making those back muscles.
So stiff and big. And this is counterintuitive, or it doesn't make sense for a lot of healthcare
providers or people out there that are looking at treating their back because you would think
if you have a back problem, the muscles closest to the area need to be strengthened.
But it's actually the opposite. And when I explained it that way,
about how the back muscles are big, thick, hard stiff, they're just not very mobile in this area,
then it makes sense that you wouldn't want to exercise those back muscles. A common exercise
that is given to patients with lumbar stenosis in physical therapy clinics and on the internet is a
back extension exercise that looks just like this. People lay flat on their back,
and then they'll pick up their legs or pick up their upper body or pick up both at the same time
with the target of strengthening these back muscles right here. And you want to avoid
that exercise at all costs. I literally tell my patients don't do anything that isolates
those back muscles that makes those muscles work because then you're feeding into the problem.
Then number three, strengthen your abdominal muscles. This is the way to counteract
the over strengthened dominant back muscles. You've got to get the muscles on the front of
the spine, the abdominal muscles stronger. And just to quickly get you to understand
why this is, as I showed you the back muscles over here a really big lumbar stenosis case,
but the abdominal muscles in the front tend to be not very strong. those abdominal muscles
are important because they're attached to the ribcage, the front of the pelvis bones right here.
And then they do send tendons all along the edges of these pelvis bones and into the spine. And when
you strengthen those muscles appropriately, you can begin to relax the back muscles for the long
term. And there's many ways to strengthen the abdominal muscles. One of my favorite ways to
start out, if you've got lumbar stenosis is to use a device that looks like this.
This is an AB exerciser, I've done reviews on this product, I absolutely love it, definitely
give it my stamp of approval, because it makes you bend your back in a very safe controlled way.
It's it's supportive of your head and the frame just feels nice to move in. And just to show
you real quick, what it looks like to us, you can check out our other videos in our product reviews,
if you want to see more details. But she would put the device
over you just like this with the head rests right behind your head, grab a hold of the
frame right here. And then you've got to flatten your back first to engage your abs.
And then come up and curl you can see I'm shaking here and I'm a pretty strong person, I don't have
any lumbar stenosis problems, this makes you work. And doing holds or doing reps hold would be
just holding it right here, getting your abs to work. This is a phenomenal way to get your back
muscles to relax, while simultaneously getting strong in your abs to decompress your spine.
For number four, it's related to strengthening your abdominals, you've got to be using your
abdominals on a more consistent basis throughout the day, you can't just strengthen your abdominals
for a few minutes a day. Or even if you go for 30 minutes, it is not enough. You've also got
to be consciously using the dominant muscles throughout the day as you sit stand and walk.
Because think about it. If your ads are just a little bit engaged a little bit tight,
you're not using them throughout the day. How are you standing up or how are you sitting up,
it's usually those big back muscles that are doing the work. And that's why oftentimes
people with back stenosis problems have a history of feeling tightness in their back
achiness and their back spasms or with their back locks. And they feel like they they're stuck.
They've usually had a history of that leading up to getting the diagnosis of lumbar stenosis with
the leg symptoms going down the legs. And so you got to begin to tighten up your abs
which will make you kind of slouch a bit so that you can decompress your spine throughout the day,
we've got more on this in our channel. By the way, this is a good point to go into the
description below here and find our playlists and our 28 Day program for back health and wellness.
In the description below. You can learn more about that 28 Day Program. I'll talk
more about it here in just a minute. But we've got a lot of videos here in our channel that
can help you out with your lumbar stenosis problem as well as other back problems like
disc herniations. And general back pain. Number five, avoid sitting for more than
one hour consistently at a time. Now it's hard to do this perfectly, especially if you're
traveling or if you're going to a desk job. Or if you just in a position where you just
can't move a lot for other reasons you might have other injuries recovering from surgeries
or sicknesses, those kinds of things. But if you can increase the amount of time
that you're up on your feet are moving around with brakes, if necessary, because with lumbar
spinal stenosis, it does tend to get more comfortable, the more time you're upright and
it feels better if you sit or flex or bend over. But if you can avoid sitting for a long period
of time, it is helpful because then you get to use your joints, your muscles,
and you get to move your nerves and your body which is what your body needs
to begin to decompress the area and take pressure off the nerves and open up the holes in the spine
where you're getting the closing happening. Consistent, frequent movement ideally every
30 to 45 minutes or more often does make our patients feel better in the long run. It is a
bit frustrating to deal with at times because you feel like you can't just relax at times during the
day when you want to take it easy. But in the long term, it makes your symptoms better. And
it gets you to the point where eventually you can sit and relax for longer periods of time.
But in during the treatment phase where you're trying to get that lumbar spinal
stenosis to improve. Getting on a schedule where you're moving frequently helps a ton
so you can avoid being sedentary. For number six, this is possibly the
easiest health hack that you're ever going to hear and you've probably heard it before but I
need to stress it and it made the list As for sure, because I always run into patients that
don't do this well drink more water, upping your water intake, if you should be getting anywhere
from 100 to 150 ounces, depending on your size, your height and your weight and all that stuff,
you should be getting quite a bit of water. But even if you're already getting a good amount
of water, looking to increase your water intake or other hydrating fluids helps tremendously because
healing requires more fluid in our body, all the processes that happen inside our cells
happen in water, all the molecules and proteins and fats and everything that move around
in our body that are essential for life, and improving your situation in your lumbar spine.
They happen in water, those molecules move around in water. And if you don't have enough water in
your body, then you're not going to heal very fast, you're not going to improve very fast.
And not to mention that disk tissue in the spine, because you might have a herniated disk as well.
Those are 70% Water, they're quite a bit of water. And so you the if you're dehydrated, your discs
can get dehydrated as well, which can reduce the height of the disk and contribute to the
openings in the side of the spine here where you can get stenosis lateral or foraminal stenosis,
those holes can shrink down. And so you've got to up your water intake. If you haven't
already done that, start buying more bottles of water, get yourself a refillable bottle of water,
a container of water, figure out some routine in your day, that allows you to up your water intake.
For number seven, you need to sleep in the fetal position so that you can decompress your spine.
If you have lumbar spinal stenosis, and it looks like this, you need at least two pillows, a body
pillow works very well. And you're going to get one for your head, of course, to be on your side
and then bend up your hips and your knees at about this angle and get that pillow between your knees.
Of course, this pillow is going to be for your head. And you want to be in this bent knee bend
hip position because it puts your nerves going through from your back all the way down into
your legs on Slack. In other words, it doesn't tighten them up versus sleeping straight like this
or flat on your back. It puts tension on your nerves. And so getting in this position
tends to be more comfortable, and tends to allow people to wake up with less stiffness.
Now one other tip here is to suck in your abs when you lie down and push your back
outward that way but like behind you, so that you add a reverse curvature to your back. In other
words, you don't want to have your back really arms like this, you want to push it out that way
while you lie down on your side. Because that helps to take pressure off your
low back and sleep better. So many people don't think about this, they kind of stick up their
butt and arc their back more when they get in this position. And what it does is it shortens those
back muscles. And if you're going to lie here, for 5678 hours, however long you sleep, then your back
muscles are going to rest in a shortened position and add compression to your spine while you sleep.
So you want to definitely suck in your abs for a moment, push your back out.
And then once you feel like your back has rounded out that way, then you can relax your muscles and
start getting comfortable to fall asleep. And for number eight related to sleep,
you need to get seven hours or more asleep. If this is proven science that the more you
sleep up to about seven, eight hours or so beyond that, you can technically sleep a little too much.
But if you get about seven or eight hours of sleep, you're going to heal optimally. So
if you're dealing with constant pain right now or pain frequently throughout the day,
or you know when your pain is going to come on from the lumbar spinal stenosis problem,
you need to be getting adequate sleep so that you allow your body to heal.
Number nine is to keep your hips flexible. A lot of people forget about
how close the hip joints here are to your low back. And if you've got stiffness in your hip,
it can be contributing to excessive motions or excessive compression through your back. And so
keeping your hips moving decently is a big deal. Now you don't want to be aggressive with keeping
your hips mobile easy, very light stretches or just moving your hips in a consistent way is super
easy. So it looks like this. This is how I would keep my hips mobile I would just move my knees in
and out if you like to sit for work and you have to sit for work or you'd like to sit at home,
moving your hips in and out like this can keep them more mobile throughout the day.
Now this is kind of a easy one that you can consistently do throughout the day.
But if you wanted a dedicated exercise you can Do just simply dropping your hips out like
this and alternating to the other side is a great movement to do. And it just takes a minute or two,
you don't have to do this for very long, because the point here is not to aggressively stretch
is to just keep your joints moving within the range of motion that it can move.
One more stretch that I like to do for the hip is to move your leg back like this. And this is a,
you can get a very aggressive stretch on this one. So be careful not to overdo it. But just
move your hip forward and the leg that's up on the table here is going to be the one that stretches
so I feel the stretch here on the front of my hip and you can change sides by going the other way.
Of course, this one's great to do on a bed or on a sofa, you can find a chair a place to put
your leg onto. And you can also just stand in the lens position. If you want it to just
one leg back one look forward and dip down and get the stretch that way. And number 10 is work up to
doing 20 minutes of cardio exercise for three days a week, or better if you can.
The reason why this is important is that it helps tremendously when you're doing
some sort of consistent repetitive motion in your core and your hips and low back. It
helps tremendously to keep your hip joints mobile, your spine joints mobile to keep
movement going through your nerves because your nerves move within your body every time you move
any part of your body and that mobility of your nerves is critical in order to heal the nerves.
Also, of course, use your muscles and as long as you got good form and you're not using the wrong
muscles, you should begin to decompress your spine. Now some great cardio exercises they're
very common you probably have done some version of them before are going to be your upright bicycle,
the bicycle where you sit up right and you have handlebars right in front of you.
The recumbent bicycle is a great option as well that's when we're you recline back, it's going to
backrest and your feet are more in front of you rather than under you the elliptical machine,
that one's the one that's got pedals where you stand up, and it's kind of like you're
biking to a degree but you're standing and your feet are moving just like so on pedals,
big pedals. walking on a treadmill is great exercise and rowing can be fantastic as well.
Rowing is kind of an underrated cardio activity in my opinion. But that's the one where you have
to foot pedals that you put out right there, the pedals don't move but the seat moves and you pull
a bar that's connected to a chain or a cable, and it's like you're rowing a boat.
But that exercise can be fantastic for lumbar stenosis as well, because that folding motion
allows you to shorten the nerves, and then gently stretch out the nerves as you come out.
With all of this, I said work up to 20 minutes, because you might find
that after five or 10 minutes of exercise, your stenosis problem
begins to bother you. Well just do what you bought, what your body can tolerate,
and figure out a consistent schedule like where you're doing this every other day three
to four times a week. And just don't worry about getting a workout worry about taking your body,
your lumbar stenosis to its tolerance, and then just stop right there and resume your day.
Next time it's your turn to work out again in another couple of days,
then see if you can tolerate a bit more. And what we find with our lumbar stenosis patients is that
they gradually increase their time. And they can effectively get to 20 minutes of activity
consistently three times a day. And even four or five. I'm sorry, I said I said a damn it per week.
And they can even climb up to four or five days per week, doing 20 minutes or more of exercise.
And this always helps them out tremendously. They not only feel better, because you're
exercising, they're managing their weight. Of course they're getting stronger
with their symptoms or lumbar spinal stenosis symptoms are improving. Now I've got a bonus
for you here number 11 is to treat the root problem and I've alluded to this a little
bit with like strengthening your abdominals and making sure that you decompress the lumbar spine.
But we've got a program that we offer online it's called the 28 Day Back Health And Wellness
Boosts Program that is a detailed program. It's comprehensive on specific exercises and
progressions and you follow it for 28 days and you can repeat it again once you finish it you have
continued access to the course you pay one price and you get continued access.
And this helps you to treat the root problems that add a lot of compression to the lumbar spine
that sets up things like stenosis as well as disc problems.
So if you want to learn more about this program so that you can access it and begin to treat the root
problem go down in the description below and check out the link for the back health and wellness
boost program. Thanks, so much friends and I will catch you in the next video. Bye