Why Sitting All Day Is Quietly Destroying Your Lower Back

For many people, sitting feels harmless — even restful. But prolonged sitting is one of the most damaging things you can do to your lower back, especially when it happens day after day.

In this episode of Ask the Chiropractor, Dr. Brant Hulsebus explains why sitting all day quietly creates stiffness, joint restriction, and recurring lower back pain. Learn why pain often shows up after sitting, what chiropractors in Rockford look for in sitting-related back pain, and why standing desks and stretching alone don’t fix the problem.

If your back feels stiff after work, hurts when you stand up, or flares up later in the day, this episode will help you understand what’s really happening — and what to do about it.

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask The Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs. Let's dive into it. All right, so last week I promised I would come back and talk about sitting to your spines the same as sugar to your teeth. Why sitting all day is quietly destroying your lower back. A lot of people ask me about that. I have a sitting job. What can I do to make my lower back better? And you've been talking a lot about lower back issues and sciatica. What can I do over my lower back? And here in Rockford, Illinois where I practice, we get a lot of people in who have desk jobs. Like I said, one of my favorite professors always said, sitting to your spines the same, it sugar to your teeth. So what can we do that would, how do what do I do about sitting all there? What can we do about it?, My back in my dad's time, I did a podcast, oh, about a year ago, about a piece of research paper that came out. What do we tell you about your lower back pain today that's different than 30 years ago? So let's talk about 30 years ago, four 40 years ago, there used to be people that would operate a jackhammer or do manual labor at a job, and they come see the chiropractor. This chiropractor would be like, oh, your back's all messed up. I don't think you could keep doing this giant physical laboring job. You should really consider getting a desk job. Or maybe as a kid I played sports, I had a history of lower back pain. I don't want to do anything manual and I get older. I want, I find myself in nice desk job so I don't keep hurting my back. It turns out that's one of the worst decisions you can make for your lower back pain is sitting in a chair all day. It's a lot harder on your back than you think it is. People feel like they're doing safe. They feel like I can't get hurt. I'm just sitting all day. But it's slowly, slowly rearing your back. because when you sit, you're putting more compression directly under your disc and your vertebrae than you are when you're standing. And the longer you sit in that flex position with your legs out and knees out in front of you, we actually start to get muscular change., I talk to a lot of people about their shoulders rolling forward from typing and driving and sleeping on your side, that your pictorial muscles will actually short. And so you actually have to consciously pull your shoulder blades together and stretch those muscles. The same thing happens in your hips when you sit all day. Those hip flexor muscles are not supposed to be in that position that long, and they actually start to go through changes. And so we start to see that issue now. We also see blood flow issue problems when you're sitting too long and just overall muscles are shutting down and joints are getting stiff. And tight. Your back was assigned for you to walk all day, not to sit all day. Pain doesn't show up when you're sitting down. It goes when you go to stand up or when you bend or when you. Ing off the floor or later that night, or you wake up the next morning and you're in even more pain. So when I'm sitting, it doesn't bother me. So I don't know. People always judge how they feel, but what's be going on? When I'm sitting all day, I don't have the pain, so it can't be that bad for me. I'm sitting in my chair, I don't feel it. So I can't really blame that. That is what to blame. It's definitely what to blame, we can't always have the pain. You don't always get the pain while you're doing the negative action. A lot of the times the pain shows up because of the negative action you did before. I talk about this with patients all day long. They said, I can't figure out what I did this morning. I said, what'd you do yesterday? Oh, I chopped the tree down. Oh, you're probably sore from chopping the tree down. No, doctor, I can't be sore from that. I felt fine after I did that. So it's just this mentality that we have. It's whatever we're doing. The moment was caused the pain. Like everything must be an acute snap injury when in reality it's something that builds up more and more than it finally gives out. So that's what we see. Here in my community, Rockford, we're a big driving community. We're not a big, walking community because things are spread out just far enough. Driving all day, those people that are doing the Uber Eats and the Ubers and stuff like that, they're, their backs are getting tighter and tighter from driving. We take care of a trucking company here in Rockford. It's my Borg Brother's Trucking. Their driver stood all day. Their boss started to know that there was some severe health problems with their employees, so they said, we're gonna get all of our employees to go to the chiropractor so they can be healthier, stronger, and have a better life. While they're working and hopefully in retirement. We have a lot of, still a lot of manufacturing here. People are sitting doing those things. Winter activity. Today it's like negative 13 degrees outside because there'll be a lot of people sitting around, students sitting all day, and just, , again, here in Rockford we're not. The city's spread out so the people are commuting. We have a lot of people that commute into the city, to the Chicago area for work, and it's just more and more sitting. So we see this a big problem in my community here in Rockford. All the sitting, creating lower back pain. So what happens is when you're sitting, nothing's moving, right? The lumbars that stay nice and straight, they're not moving at all. The lower backs staying there. So we see people come with tight, lower backs. We see people come in with crooked hips and they tell me, it hurts right here on my belt line. This side, not so much this side. They'll point right at that SI joint, tell me how much it hurts. because their hips are off from sitting too much. They'll, they won't have any. S stamina. Like when they go for walks, they can't walk as far as they used to. They'll tell me and they'll tell me that the they get pain in their legs, , from the sciatic nerve being irritated, whether it's sciatica or piriform syndrome. They both happen when we sit too much. Maybe they tell me it hurts right in the middle of their cheek when they're sitting, and then it feels like it goes down their leg, or they hit groin pain on the front side from these hip flexor muscles not behaving properly. And we also notice them. They go to stand up and there's not like they're standing all the way up. It's like they're still flexing those hips. They're not standing all the way up. So those are issues and a lot of people will come to me and say, you know what I did? I bought a standing desk. Or they'll tell me, I'm doing a little bit more stretching. And these are not wrong things, but they're not the astronomical change you're hoping they're gonna be. because when you're standing still all day, I take care of a lot of cashiers too. because you're not moving, you're not walking. They're just sitting there all day, standing still. So they still get the stiffness. When I tell someone a standing desk is better than a sitting desk every day when I tell everybody a standing desk, go solve all their problems, I would never say that it's just a small positive in the right direction, but not to cure. So yes, I do like a standing desk, but in the sitting desk, but it doesn't fix everything. So what do we do? What we know is that when you're not moving, you're not walking, the bones aren't moving, and they tighten up and they get stiff. When they get stiff, they get locked into place. We call that a subluxation. When the subluxation is there, the two bones are moving as one, and the motion's been diminished between the two bones. Here's a situation, genetically speaking, we're hunters and gatherers. We're supposed to be out walking the earth when we're walking around the muscles around our vertebrae contract. When they can track, they actually push the nutrients into the disc space and pull the toxins out with the vertebrae is locked up. Too stiff, not moving right. This is not happening. So as this is not happening, your discs are not getting replenished and flushed the way they're supposed to. So toxins are building up and nutrients isn't getting in. In other words, the disc is starting to dehydrate and get sick. Degenerative disc disease, it's starting to get sick. It's starting to lose its height, its integrity, and its overall performance long term. This leads to the agenda of arthritis. Short term, it gives you a weakened disc. Weaken, meaning that if I twist the wrong way or get an accident or go to lift too much because my disc is weak, it's easier to give out, easier to get more inflamed and more irritated. Along that, there's also two joints in the backside called facet joints. These joints now are also more acceptable to injury. And these are the ones that usually get inflamed and irritated and cause you to come into my office sideways because you've irritated a facet joint. These are the joints that are most common to irritate the nerve, causing the sciatica or causing other things to contract and move around. So that's what happens. And as a chiropractor in my job scope and on your spine, and find these ones that make them move again. So who should we be thinking about with this? Our drivers, the people that spend all the time driving, our office workers. Anyone that sits in a chair too long. Unfortunately more and more, today's world's becoming computerized. So even like a police officer, you never would think of them as somebody that says too much. But even if they're walking around downtown Rockford and they make a couple arrests, they have to go back and fill out the reports. They might have to go to court and sit all day. So even then. So we're finding more and more people today are having to sit in my community. So anyone that sits for more than six hours a day, their back is not getting better. So come see the chiropractor now. What are we gonna do if you come see us? We're gonna get to the heart of the problem. Is it this misalignment causing hips to rotate? Hips, rot, rotate, causing this? Is it the sciatic nerve? What is it exactly that's out causing your issues? And as a chiropractor, remember that we're a lot about prevention, so we'll come up with exercise and stretches to help you with your sitting, when to take breaks, how often you should get your spine checked, who else you should work with, how many walks you should go on a day, how to get this thing moving. And remember, we're a non-medical, non-surgical approach. So we're not doing anything to harm your body, we're just helping your body move better and take care of itself better. So who am I talking to today? I'm talking to anyone that sit too much. And if you know someone that sit too much and complains about it too much, make sure they reach out and come find us. Okay? Next time we're gonna talk, dive into this hot topic again and talk about why stretching alone isn't gonna fix your back. So if you'd like to learn more about that, come back next week. And remember, if you have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care only a chiropractor is trained to answer. And if you have a question, go ahead and leave a comment wherever you're watching, listening to this, and maybe next week you'll be the question of the week. Thank you.