When it Hurts Too Much to Sit Down and Rest
SI joint pain, often confused for sciatica, is just as painful. Unfortunately for all of us who have ever had to deal with SI joint pain, it comes in far more “flavors” than your regular sciatica pain. It can come on sharp or dull, while it starts in your SI joint it can spread to your upper back, groin, thighs and buttocks. Usually, you only feel it on one side of your lower back, but it can spread to both sides, and while the pain is most common when sitting, for some people it can make standing up miserable.
What Causes SI Joint Pain?
If you’re dealing with SI joint pain, chances are you’re a student, you make your living driving or are pregnant or postpartum. It all has to do with how stable the ligaments keeping your SI joint is.
The root cause of all SI joint pain comes down to fault lines caused by muscle disbalances and joint misalignment. If you’ve been reading our previous blogs you already know that the body is a system of suspended hinges and pulleys being balanced but constantly pulling muscles holding the different sections upright on top of one another. If you had a tree with poor roots, for instance, being pulled in two opposing directions it would remain in place. If you had one of those two sides being pulled harder than the other, however, the tree would topple in that direction. Our bodies work exactly the same way with each muscle working with it’s “antagonist,” or, the muscle opposed to it, to keep constant balance. When one side is regularly stronger than the other, the body starts to collapse on itself, and this HURTS.
Specific to SI joint pain, the most common causes include weak core muscles such as the three layers of abs you have stacked on top of one another, a weak Gluteus Maximus (your behind) and/or weak Latissimus Dorsi which is the large muscle that runs along the side of your back–this is the muscle you see on older bodybuilders giving them the “V” shape.
The “Magic” Cure?
It isn’t really magic–sorry to disappoint.
Let’s go back to the tree example. One side is being pulled harder than the other side. Eventually, this is going to result in the tree being torn to the ground. If we’re going to prevent that from happening we need to make sure that the amount of force pulling on each side is equal. To do this with the human body we need to build up the muscles that are lagging behind to make sure that force on the joint is equal and proportionate in each direction.
At the most basic level, this takes good old-fashioned exercise to strengthen the lagging muscles to create the needed balance.
We don’t like settling for the bare minimum, though, not when there are options to get you healthy faster.
So, we involve eight different practices that are proven to not just relieve the pain, but to make sure to fix the problem causing it and make sure it doesn’t return.
That includes:
- Alignment correction with muscle energy techniques
- Soft tissue manual therapy and multifunctional movement to release and stretch tight musculature
- Joint mobilization to improve spinal mobility
- Multifunctional movement to engage synergies and stabilize hip and core
- Taping to improve Si stability, decrease laxity and therefore eliminate excessive joint shearing
- Cold laser to eliminate pain, speed up healing and decrease inflammation
- Body mechanics/ ergonomics/ gait and self-care education
- Bracing for pelvic stabilization
When used together following through a complete program, these steps relieve pain, restore natural functional movement, provide habits for future wellness and injury prevention, allow you to safely reach towards further fitness goals and contribute to a greater quality of life and wellness overall.
How Long Does This Take?
Our patients see significant improvement with their pain and ability to comfortably move within the first 3-4 visits, and are ready to finish treatment after 12 visits.
What’s Holding You Back?
There’s no reason to settle for living in pain. If you need help with SI joint pain, we can help. We accept most forms of insurance and offer no-interest cash payment plans for those need it.
You deserve to live pain-free.
Call us at (425) 224-2476
