What to do with lumbar instability and what are the treatments

The lumbar spine is the most important skeletal part of the human body. The lumbar spine is relatively long, almost running through the entire back, and is the most important part that supports the body upright. However, keeping the lumbar spine under load for a long time can easily cause lumbar diseases. For example, lumbar instability is one of the typical symptoms. So, what are the treatments for lumbar instability? Let’s take a look at the explanation below.

Lumbar instability means that the range of motion between spinal segments is too large and the movement pattern is abnormal. In this case, as long as the lumbar spine is under force, the unstable lumbar segments will be displaced more obviously than normal, causing pain, progressive deformation of local structures, and compression of neural structures or increased risk of compression.

We all know that the functional spine is mainly composed of two structures: one is the vertebral body, intervertebral disc, and ligaments, and the other is the various large and small muscles that grow around the spine. These two structures protect the nerves and enable people to maintain standing and perform various postures and movements. Among them, the vertebral body, intervertebral disc and ligaments play a rigid supporting role, while the muscles play two roles, one is to make the spine more stable, and the second is to allow the spine to move. The vertebral bodies, intervertebral discs and ligaments are generally not easy to repair after being injured. A large proportion of patients with lumbar instability are caused by intervertebral disc herniation. However, muscles can be trained, and by training muscles, the spinal segments can be made more stable, thereby improving the patient's lumbar symptoms.

How should patients with lumbar instability be treated? Many patients have a consensus: why my lower back pain becomes more severe when I do flying swallow training or sit-ups? In fact, there is a piece of knowledge you need to know here. The muscles around the spine can be roughly divided into two types: deep, small muscles and superficial, large muscles. The small deep muscles (such as the multifidus muscles) are directly connected to the vertebrae, controlling the movement between the vertebrae and are very important for the stability of the spinal motion segments; the superficial muscles are very long, and muscle contraction causes large movements of the human body such as flexion and extension, and scoliosis. To put it simply, the small deep muscles help stabilize the spine, and on this basis, the large muscles allow the body to move better.

When the lumbar spine becomes unstable, the deep muscles will inevitably lose strength, atrophy or even become fatty, and lose their stabilizing effect. On the contrary, the superficial muscles will become stronger. In such a case, doing exercises such as the Little Swallow Flying will strengthen the superficial muscles and increase the range of motion of the spinal segments, aggravating the symptoms, which will further reduce the strength of the deep muscles and lead to worsening of the symptoms. Therefore, the treatment measure for patients with lumbar instability is to train the deep small muscles first, and then start training the large muscle groups after the deep muscle strength reaches a certain level. Of course, the large muscle groups also need to be carefully evaluated to decide which muscle groups to train first and which muscle groups to train later, so that a balance of strength can be achieved between the muscle groups of the human body. We call it lumbar functional stability training.