Looking for lower back and knee pain treatment when you are 20-something? Are you feeling like your body is ageing faster than it should? Well, hold that thought!
We don’t age before our biological clock allows us. So, if you have symptoms that indicate something else, you might have to make lifestyle changes.
Can lower back pain cause knee pain
When all the parts of our body function optimally, we are our fittest selves. During this time, we do not find links between different body parts. But when discomfort in one part impacts another, we realize how they are all connected.
Lower back pain can cause knee pain even when the two aren’t directly connected. Our knee has complex joints and helps our leg flex at different angles. Our vertebrae keep our upper body together and secure the nervous system. The combination of our knee and back offers flexibility and support. Together they create an equilibrium that creates balance.
A back ailment can cause knee pain due to sciatic nerve. The sciatic nerve is the longest nerve that can cause pain if compromised. A pain that begins with a back problem can lead to a degenerative nerve condition like degenerative disc disease or osteoarthritis.
Lower back and knee pain causes
Our sedentary lifestyle is one of the primary lower back and knee pain causes. Here are some reasons why these problems are now common among young adults in their 20s and 30s:
Desk job
Sitting for 6 to 8 hours daily is an unavoidable lifestyle disorder we are compelled to due to our livelihood. It severely impacts our lower back and results in constant pain. Taking frequent breaks to walk, using an ergonomic chair or a standing desk, and adding stretching activities daily can make this manageable.
Driving
Not many people consider driving as a disadvantage for the lower back. But adding the number of days throughout your life, even 20 minutes of driving each day, aggravates a back condition. It is worse for people who ride two-wheelers as their backs do not get the support that cars provide.
Lack of exercise
The only way to manage a sedentary lifestyle that involves 8 hours of work (sitting), and 8 hours of sleep (lying down), is by adding at least 1 hour of intense exercise. Stretching and yoga greatly improve flexibility and retain mobility. Adding them alongside strength training and cardio is important to relieve or manage back aches.
Obesity
One problem that triggers several health disorders, including the lower back and knee problem, is obesity. When you accumulate excess body fat, different body parts function abnormally.
Excess fat makes your pelvis and lower back slant forward and creates an abnormal arch causing aches. When your upper body weight increases, your knees find it difficult to hold the weight exerted from the abdomen.
Medical conditions
There can be multiple reasons that trigger both back and knee problems. Strain in muscles, ligaments, ruptured disks, arthritis, and osteoporosis, are reasons that can cause pain. In such circumstances, one must seek medical assistance to alleviate pain and bring the body back to normalcy.
Lower back and knee pain treatment
From sitting in the right posture to light activities that keep the body moving, there are many ways to relieve pain. Here are some remedies for back and knee pain treatment at home –
Light exercises and yoga
The best remedy for lower back and knee pain treatment is stretching. Light exercises that involve the support of a table, chair, and wall puts less stress on the lower back and knee.
If you refrain your body from light exercises and yoga postures, you will have to turn to medical treatments. Young individuals can push their bodies to take up practices that ease pain rather than consuming allopathic medicines or physiotherapy.
Improve your mobility by incorporating the following stretches into your routine:
- Cat cow posture that strengthens the lower back and core
- Knee to chest stretch that lengthen lower back while relieving pain
- Pelvic tilt to strengthen core muscles while putting pressure on knees
- Bridge exercises to get instant backache relief
- Cobra posture to reduce lower back aches
Strength training
One of the causes of knee pain is not adding strength training activities to your exercise regimen. Strength training keeps our cardiovascular fitness strong, tones muscles, and reverses weakness in the back or knee.
Using your body as resistance is great to start with when you are new to this form of exercise. You can also try exercises like:
- Wall push-ups
- Arm circles
- Supported squats
- Lunges
Medical assistance
If you have a severe condition that needs medical assistance, you can resort to the following options depending on severity:
Chiropractic care
A chiropractor develops skills to manipulate a patient’s body using techniques that alleviate pain. Depending on your condition, a chiropractor exerts pressure on certain body parts to treat it. Chiropractic care can be painful if someone dislocates their bone. However, a moment of pain can resolve severe conditions that might otherwise require surgery.
Spinal cord stimulator
Spinal cord stimulators come to the rescue when non-surgical treatments do not show results. It uses an implanted device to send your back signals through mild levels of electricity to reduce pain. People with psychiatric disorders cannot go through such remedies as they impact their ongoing treatments.
Physiotherapy
A physiotherapist can help you identify your problem and practice knee pain relief exercises on people unable to try themselves. They first examine your condition, evaluate your gait, identify joint abnormalities, and determine the pressure you can take. Physiotherapy includes exercise, stretching, wax therapy, and other treatments that relieve pain and improve mobility.
Medication
Medicines are accompanied by other treatment forms for knee and back pain. You might need over-the-counter products to assist in physiotherapy or chiropractic practices.
You are suggested to seek out medical advice to support the physiotherapy or chiropractic practices. Please avoid self-medicating by purchasing and consuming over-the-counter medicines.
While general medicines help reduce inflammation, severe conditions might need opioids. Such medicines are consumable for a short period. Your orthopaedic might also recommend muscle relaxants and antidepressants to reduce pain.
Knee pain in ladies vs knee pain in men
Have you ever wondered why our mothers and aunts are more prone to knee problems than older men in the family? Science does not have a direct answer to explain why knee pain in ladies happens 2 to 8 times more than in men. But some hypotheses shed light on the probability.
Female anatomy
Women are built in a way to have wider buttocks than men for childbearing. Our legs turn slightly inwards towards the knee and shift weight towards the inside. Since knee injuries happen from actions like twisting, the rotational force impacts women more than men.
Quad dominance
Our knee movement highly depends on the quadriceps, the front thigh muscles, and the hamstrings or back thigh muscles. Women tend to develop quad dominance as their bodies rely more on quad muscles than hamstrings. It is a natural phenomenon, and doctors suspect it to be one of the causes leading to Anterior Cruciate Ligament injuries.
Hormonal impact
The presence of estrogen makes our ligaments relax, and it constantly flows through our bodies. We need estrogen to have a regular menstrual flow and prepare ourselves for pregnancy. During ovulation, our estrogen levels start rising.
Interestingly, most female athletes reportedly injured their joints before ovulation. Laxity in ligaments leads to anterior cruciate ligament and Medial Collateral Ligament injuries.
Osteoporosis
Osteoporosis is more common in women as it is related to menopause. When females stop menstruating, their bodies go through several hormonal changes. The drop in estrogen levels post-menopause impacts women as this hormone maintains healthy bones.
A deficiency in vitamin D can indirectly impact bone health. One needs to include adequate levels of vitamin D to their diet to improve calcium absorption.
Calcium absorption prevents conditions like osteoporosis. It is a condition where bones weaken and gradually deteriorate in density. Early loss of bone leads to fractures along with constant pain in the knee.
How can you cure lower back and knee pain?
If you are a young adult facing lower back and knee pain due to lifestyle disorders, you must change a few habits. The first step is acknowledging an ongoing problem and finding the right solution that suits you.
At Half Life To Health, our team goes through a detailed analysis to understand your lifestyle and working conditions. We then create a specific meal plan and exercise regimen that you can follow to maintain fitness.
We recommend light exercises to manage lower back and knee pain that you can do at home. You can use home equipment to try different variations of standard exercises. If you can hit the gym regularly, we will assist you with a list of exercises that helps you manage your pain.
Your case could be severe and require a specialist’s expertise in orthopaedic or chiropractic. We might recommend medical assistance for your lower back and knee pain treatment after detailed consultation.
References:
2020 American College of Rheumatology guideline … – wiley online library (Accessed: April 17, 2023). Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/acr.24180.
Interaction between low back pain and knee pain contributes to … (Accessed: April 17, 2023). Available at: https://www.oarsijournal.com/article/S1063-4584(18)31361-X/pdf.
Rahbar, M. et al. (1970) [PDF] association between knee pain and low back pain.: Semantic scholar, JPMA. The Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association. Available at: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Association-between-knee-pain-and-low-back-pain.-Rahbar-Shimia/3956a5633bda62d7f47067ad2fc15ce9f990be40