This video doesn’t exist How can I reduce my lumbar lordosis? Here is a video I shot of how to measure your lumbar lordosis. The lumbar lordosis angle here is the sum of the angle between T12-L1 and horizontal and the angle between L5-S1 and horiztontal. All you need is the app and a friend or a mirror. Fortunately a simple iphone app call iHandy level has been studied and found reliable at measuring lumbar lordosis. If you want to see if you can actually change your lumbar lordosis angle, you will need to learn to measure it. Approach your posture change project with a focus on the sensations of the process while acknowledging and confronting any fear of movement. The way you think about the process of changing your posture is likely more important than the postural changes themselves. In fact, it is perfectly plausible that the process of working on your posture could reduce pain through improved spinal position sense and sensory processing that is independent of any biomechanical changes in posture. There is no reason to believe that trying to change your lordosis is harmful. However if you want to try to change your lumbar lordosis to see if this will reduce your current back pain, or because you don’t like the way the arch in your back looks or makes your pants fit, then go right ahead. Should I try to change my lumbar lordosis?Īt this point it should be clear that there is no biomechanical rational for reducing your lumbar lordosis to prevent back pain. See my article on pain and damage for more on this topic. This stimuli could include a posture of lumbar lordosis, but it would more likely include a workload you find excessive, a relationship in turmoil etc. Pain is a response your brain creates to stimuli it perceives as threatening. ![]() Pain is not a simple input to the brain caused by biomechanical “overload” or “imbalance” from too much of this or that. Lumbar lordosis posture isn’t meaningless, rather it is just one part of the whole bio-psycho-social system, and probably not the most important part for most people. Just remember that there is no biomechanical reason to fear returning to your prior spinal position. If you already have back pain, and it hurts more when you arch your back more, then change your posture to arch less until it feels better is a reasonable approach. The thing to remember here is that having a lot of arch in your back doesn’t increase your risk of having future back pain. How can there be no association between lordosis and pain? Various methods of measuring lumbar lordosis used in the research. Rest assured, your hyperlordosis does not increase your risk of getting low back pain. Sanne Christensen et al reviewed 54 studies on the topic of and found no relationship between sagittal spinal posture (including lumbar lordosis) and low back pain.They recorded their reports of back pain occurring on 8 or more days in the past year and found that the children with more lumbar lordosis were not any more likely to later report back pain. ![]() Mikko Poussa et al measured the lumbar lordosis of the same 430 children at ages 11,12,13,14 and age 22.In order to find out if a posture of lumbar hyperlordosis causes back pain, you need to measure the spinal posture of a large group of people, follow them for a long time and see if the people with more arch in their back end up having more back pain.įortunately, this has been done by two large studies. Muscle imbalances proposed to cause and/or be cause by lumbar hyperlordosis Prospective Studies on Lumbar Lordosis and Low Back Pain ![]() First we develop a backwards curve in the neck (cervical lordosis) as we begin to sit up, and second we develop a backward curve in the lower back when we begin to stand and walk (lumbar lordosis). Other primates maintain this flexed spinal posture their whole lives, but we humans start to develop a few curves in the other directions with upright activity. We are all born with c-shaped forward-curved (flexed) spines. In this article I will answer a question about lower back posture and pain that can be worded several ways: Will having too much arch (lumbar hyperlordosis) in my back cause pain? If I have too much curve in my back will it cause pain? Why do I have so much curve in my back, and is it a problem if my back is so arched? More generally, are there any deviations in posture that have been found to cause pain in high quality research studies? Some Data What is lumbar lordosis? Does the way you stand or sit affect the way you move and do either of these effect whether or not you will have pain? A Question A central question of my blog is the relationship between these three things: posture, movement and pain. I have been publishing articles on human posture, movement and pain since 2012. My name is Bryan Ausinheiler, I am a physical therapist with advanced training in orthopedics as well as a personal trainer and nutritionist.
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