Back pain can be one of the most frustrating and painful experiences.

Back pain can be one of the most frustrating and painful experiences. It’s also one of the most commonly misdiagnosed problems.

That’s because back pain often isn’t caused by your back. It’s often an issue with your muscles or ligaments.

Let me explain.

Your body is filled with tendons that attach your muscles to your bones. There are also ligaments that attach bones to bones. As you age, your flexibility decreases. Muscles in your body shorten, and your joints lose their range of motion. These shortened muscles then pull your bones out of alignment. This causes undue pressure on nerves and tissues, resulting in back problems.

There are three things that mainstream medicine prescribes for back pain – and all three of them are wrong.

First, they promote unnecessary surgery. Second, they give you drugs.

Finally, the more thoughtful back doctors may promote stretching exercises. But the exercises I’ve often seen that come from orthopedics’ offices are just plain wrong. A lot of them wind up stretching the ligaments, which ends up stressing them and weakening them more. So, not only do they not work, they often wind up making the problem worse.

What’s worse, some doctors may even advise surgery before exploring alternative methods. In most cases surgery should be a last option. I’ve had many patients come into my office after having back surgery, complaining of the same symptoms and pain they had before the surgery. They wind up trading one problem for another.

Even some personal trainers and physical therapists are way off the mark. Many don’t know that you don’t want loose joints. Tighter joints mean stronger joints. Tighter joints mean you’re less likely to suffer an injury.

The good news is you don’t have to spend hours a day doing boring stretching exercises to deal with your back pain. There’s a correct and simple way to do them. It involves expansion of the spine. And it takes only a couple minutes a day:

They’re called hip flexors…

Most people don’t realize it, but between sitting at their desk, in their car, or watching television, they often spend 6 to 8 hours a day sitting down.

But your body wasn’t designed to spend so much time sitting down. And all this sitting can put enormous pressure on your hip flexor muscles.

This is a major cause of minor low back pain. Stretching your hip flexor muscles several times a week can prevent this kind of lower back pain.

Here’s how to do this stretch:

1. Stand up straight with your right foot forward and left foot back. Keep both feel flat on floor.

2. Put your hands on your hips and keep your back and hips in straight alignment.

3. Push forward with your hips, while maintaining your erect posture. Slowly, push your hips forward only until you feel a comfortable level of tension.

4. Hold for 10 seconds.

5. Then switch sides by reversing your leg stance and repeat.

This is just one simple exercise that works for me. I’ve also seen many of my patients get rid of their lower back pain by just doing this one exercise for a few days. But sometimes the solution is not this simple.

If you need extra help with your back pain, my colleagues at the Healthy Back Institute have published a brand-new book that enables you to find out exactly where your pain is coming from and how to deal with it. It’s called The 7-Day Back Pain Cure.

Many of my patients have been using this program with great results.

To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD