How I eventually cured 2 years of back pain in 2 weeks
/In March/April 2019, I did the first lawn-cut of the season. Nothing too strenuous, but I noticed afterwards a twinge in my back. Of course, after a bit of exertion that may not be unusual, so I just assumed it would pass over the next day or two.
It didn’t.
I hadn’t felt anything unusual whilst mowing the lawn, so I was staggered that I had some muscle pain down below my right kidney. And even more staggered that as time went by, it wasn’t cured with rest.
Over the course of the next year (2020) I tried many remedies, including some absolute quackery, out of pure desperation. Amongst them:
Purchase of a “Rem-Fit” hybrid mattress (which was way too firm and was sent back)
Purchase of a “Nectar” memory phone mattress, which was more comfortable and supportive, but did not improve anything.
“The cubes” memory foam pillow ( https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1468455840/the-cubes-the-worlds-first-geometric-structure-pil ) - which is a brilliant pillow by the way, and helped with a lot of neck ache. (But not back-ache)
Switching to a “sit/stand” electric desk. I’m a full time homeworker, and I thought being able to stand and improve posture at my desk, might help
Purchasing a massage cover for my office chair (this type of thing: https://amzn.to/3QClIJz ) which allows you to heat and massage your back and neck while sitting at work (or in the car, for that matter).
Heat Pads and heat cream
Kailo Patch (complete scam and quackery - claims to interrupt nerve signals)
It has to be said, apart from the final item, all of these did provide some sort of relief, albeit temporary. Nothing would actually cure what was really just a bit of muscle strain, and it got to the point where i couldn’t sit on the sofa, or the dining chairs, or any seat in the house without being in agony. It was ridiculous!
Now, it just so happens that I’m a “side sleeper” and I happened to notice one night that how when I moved/lifted my head, it affected the painful back muscles near my pelvis/kidney. Likewise, how I moved my leg and feet did the same. It was suddenly obvious that there is inter-connectivity of the muscle structures and posture from head to toe. This made me realise that my posture in bed, especially when lying on my side, could be putting strain on my back and side muscles, due to improper alignment.
It was an epiphany.
That night I tried to concentrate on removing this strain, and found that lying more on my front seemed to relax my muscles the most. Now, I don’t mean flat on my stomach with face in the pillow, but something more like 135 degrees over from flat on my back. (45 degrees facing the bed). The next morning, my back was a little easier, so I kept up this posture.
Within days, I could really tell the difference, which encouraged me to keep going: after a week, my pain was reduced by about 60%. I kept going and after 2 weeks I had no pain at all! It was incredible - literally 2 weeks of sleeping on my front had cured 2 years of back pain.
And, if I had written this article at the time, the story would have ended there.
Then, about a year later (2022), my wife needed hospital treatment and recovery and couldn’t make it upstairs to bed, so she spent sometime recovering in the spare room.
During those few weeks, I started spreading out in bed a bit more and changing my posture. I also noticed that the Nectar mattress had deformed. It was depressed/compressed where we each would lie, and higher/uncompressed in the middle. (Nectar offer a lifetime guarantee, but only if the mattress sinks by 4cm, which this hasn’t). The long and short of it is, I started to lie in different postures, partly trying to figure out if the mattress needed replacing, and my back pains started to come back again in the same place.
It underlined the fact that this back pain was almost entirely caused by sleeping posture, and that the current mattress was ok in some positions, but not in others.
As my wife recovered, she wanted to get out of the spare room again, and use the main bed; in order to make that more manageable for her, we added the Panda Memory-foam topper ( https://amzn.to/3vNXDWq ) we had for our spare room sofa-bed. Wow, what a world of difference that made. Within only ONE night, I woke up with the pain in my back gone, though I felt a few twinges during the day, After the second night it was cleared again, and this time during the day, it was all clear.
What I did notice were a few neck twinges, so I need to adjust my pillow again, so my neck is straight.
In conclusion
So what can I conclude? Basically that years of back pain was ultimately being prolonged by sleeping position. Sleeping in on my front on the existing mattress eliminated the pain (caused by uneven tension on my back muscles in bed). When that mattress started to age and no longer offer quite the same support at exactly the right height, a memory foam topper got everything back on track again. (As an aside, I use the Nuzzle pillow system now, and it’s amazing.)
I couldn’t believe it was so simple.
