Low back pain can affect up to 60% of women during pregnancy.

Many women suffer from lower back pain during pregnancy.  This is due to several factors, including changes in hormones, posture, and biomechanics. Today, we are going to go over the changes that can make back and pelvic pain more likely during pregnancy and how we help address those here at IHS. 

The main causes are changes in posture, pelvis tilting forward,  and sometimes people are more sedentary and increased sitting will also affect posture. 

Hormones are very different throughout pregnancy as well. One of the  hormones that most affects lower back pain is Relaxin. This hormone is responsible for relaxing ligaments throughout the body. This helps with having a baby, but if there are already imperfect movement patterns, it can come at the cost of needed stability. Function is    imperative to restore and with less ligamentous stability, we rely on our muscles even more. 

Postural changes are mainly due to the tipping forward of the pelvis that occurs as the baby grows. This causes the back and hip muscles to get tighter and the gluteal muscles and core to get weaker. 

How we move, or our biomechanics also change as a result of the hormones and posture changes. Excessive movement at the pubic symphysis and sacroiliac joints can cause fairly sharp pain that can be worse with walking make moving more even less likely. 

We can help in several ways. We use dry needling and soft tissue work to address the tight muscles and tension. Adjustments to restore motion to any joints that are stiffening in order to restore motion. We also use rehabilitative exercises to strengthen the areas that are moving more than usual in order to restore some of the lost stability and get you feeling better as fast as possible. 

Content provided by Dr. Elizabeth Bouse