I’m not looking for medical advice, but more understanding. I have chronic back pain. I can alleviate it completely with only 2 things - alcohol and a heating pad. Ibuprofen lessens it but it’s still present. Muscle relaxers do nothing (which makes sense because it’s not muscle related, it’s spinal disk degeneration).
A tall glass of whiskey makes my back relax and I can move normally. Once it wears off tho, it’s right back to tense and painful.
To piggyback on another comment. Massage. I’m a massage therapist who sees clients with disk issues all the time.
99% of the time it’s because of shortened hip flexors (your psoas attached to your bottom vertebrae and as it shortens, is too tight to let your spine stretch which then just crushes your disks) due to both extended time in a seated position as well as a weak core. Stretch, get a massage, find a PT to help with chronic back pain. Start doing crunches before bed.
Also drink more water. Only kinda related but basically everyone should be drinking more water.
Piggyback?! Bro, people are in enough pain in this thread!
Oh, take my damn upvote you punny bastard. 😂
Why crunches before bed? Physical exercise before going to bed seems like insomnia recipe.
Is it not better to do it in the morning or the afternoon?
Statistically, you should be doing more exercises in general.
But working out absolutely does improve sleep, as well as mood, digestion, memory recall, anxiety, and basically every other common ailment.
Please go work out more. Even if its just a walk or some crunches. Just get 15-30 minutes per day of continuous exercise. I promise you you’ll see a difference
No one says the opposite. I’m a very active person.
Just not at night right before going to bed. I feel like that could lead to bad quality of sleep.
Well it’s your feelings compared to the huge amount of scientific backing. And the article I linked to has a bunch of sources too, although I consider John Hopkins Hospital a valid primary source for medicine
The article you linked states that many people have trouble sleeping if they do exercise before going to bed, because the physiological response of doing exercise activates the body in a way that makes it harder to sleep for a while and recommend doing it a couple of hours before.
Like the other response said, some light exercise before bed is generally good for sleep. If you feel it’s waking you up, your brain might already be in go-mode. Do you limit blue light or anything before bed?
If you still feel before bed is no good, or don’t have the time or whatever, literally anything is better than nothing.
Strengthening my core literally straightened my spine significantly and improved my lordosis. It’s like putting on a corset.
But also, if you can’t really do crunches, leg raises and planks are good too.
Hip hooks are also great for getting at those muscles, which are otherwise very difficult to stretch.
Idk what happened but over the weekend my back went to hell in a hand basket. I’m usually in pretty good shape but this went from 0-100 immediately. I’ve heard some good things about the GIBoard for core strength and stability so I’m looking to see if that helps. It’ll help me with stretching too so hopefully that’ll do something…
Ok, that giboard actually looks kind of awesome…does it easily someone like 140-250lbs?
The only minor detail for me might be that my balance is totally shit.
You got me looking at these. Then I started looking around. Is there a reason to get one of the ~200 USD balance boards over a 20 USD wobble board? Other than durability, I guess.
Different applications mostly, this is a slackboard and those are balance boards. There are knockoff slackboards but so far this thing kinda kicks ass. There’s a lot of different exercises that can be done on them but idk, it’s your call. I’m satisfied with my purchase though.