Why Your Back Hurts More at Work (Even When You’re Careful)

“I didn’t do anything… I was being careful.”

If you’ve ever said that about your back pain at work, you’re not alone.

In this episode of Ask the Chiropractor, Dr. Brant Hulsebus explains why back pain at work is rarely caused by one bad movement. Instead, it’s usually the result of repetitive stress building up over time — even from light or “safe” activities.

Learn how sitting, bending, standing, and twisting throughout the day create cumulative strain, why pain often shows up after work instead of during it, and what chiropractors look for when evaluating work-related back pain.

If your back tightens up during the day or hurts more after work, this episode will help you understand what’s really going on — and why it’s not random.

www.rockforddc.com

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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. Welcome to another, ask the Chiropractor. Today I was asked about why my back hurts more when I'm at work, even when I'm being. And I want to clarify that this podcast, I am talking about people at work when they go into work, but I'm also talking about people who are retired and work around their house, or people who have a hobby and they work on that. Or people like me who get odd jobs thrown at them and , have a garage full of tools. And they do that kind of work too. So this is not just a work at the place of employment heard at work. This is. We're hurt at work and play. So let's dive into this topic. Okay, so back pain at work is usually from repetitive stress, not one bad movement. That's the most common thing that we find. We find a lot of people have a job or an activity they do that requires them to do the same activity over and over again and their spine changes to it. Here, I'm a chiropractor in Rockford and I had the benefit of being the chiropractor for the Rockford iceHogs, the hockey team. And before the season starts, every year we x-ray the players. We do this for a couple reasons. One, player safety. We have various techniques that we use, and we want to make sure that we use a safe technique on every player as to make them better. That's our goal, is to make them better now, make them worse. And it's interesting when we x-ray them because of their job, we can tell if they're left or right-handed. Because the way you hold a stick, your forearm that's down is gonna be your low shoulder and your stick's up high. That's gonna be your high shoulder. Even when they don't hold the stick, we see that in them. We call it hockey back because they also have a matching hip rotation that goes right along with that. So every year when we x-ray them, we put them up and say, oh, there's a left-handed guy, there's a right-handed guy. Then we look at the roster and we find out how accurate we are and we're pretty accurate. But this isn't just for ice hawks or hockey players. In Rockford we have more than just hockey team. We have other jobs too. We have pollster carriers that go walk up and down the street delivering your mail, and they have a satchel. They put over their shoulder and we see the same high shoulder and low shoulder based on the satchel they carry. When I first started practice, a lot of people were still on telephone all day before they had the Bluetooth technology to put stuff in your ears, and we could see the way they would hold their phone by the way their neck was. They always have a high shoulder and low shoulder. A lot of them, if you can think back, if you're, like me and , my fifties, they used to have a little pad on the back of the telephone they could put on their shoulder so they could still type and hold the phone up there and keep going. My dad was able to predict that real easy. People who cut and trim hair, they come in here, they have the high shoulders from hunching over to do your hair all the time. We see a lot of them. So a lot of times it's repetitive stress that happens over and over again. When I first started, the police all had to wear belts with all their gear on their belts, and they wanted to start curing vests so they didn't have to have the same stress every time on their waist. They wanted to move that weight around, and I remember it because they had to have a note from a doctor to qualify to go from the belt to the vest because it was better for them., I told them all, I was happy to write that note because I knew that was true for everybody. So I wasn't lying. Every policeman would be better carrying their stuff on their chest versus around their waist. So I gladly wrote that note for any officer that wanted it because I knew it was true for everybody I wrote it for. So what do we have? We have these different backs, have adapted to these lifetime of different stresses. And again, I wanna fall back on even, the, let's just say a stay-at-home mom who likes to cook a lot. She's in the kitchen hunched over the stove and the oven and the kitchen counter all the time, and we see the same posture change. So this isn't just always somebody that is at work all the time. Me, I, when I was in college, I had a big Jeep and I used to drink good offroad a lot while I always had the stick shift and I always had the same position, and I'm sure my back became evident of that over time. So a lot of times they come in and they tell me I got hurt at work, but I didn't do anything. I was being careful. I didn't lift anything heavy. It just tightened up and see back injuries at work are not really one event. They're cumulative. So what happens is it's not so much lifting one heavy thing, but over the years you change your posture and you made yourself vulnerable. So every time somebody comes here. And we talked a lot about this last week too. They wanted to know what was that one thing that I did to make my back go out? What was that one thing that I did? Hey, I bent over to brush my teeth and this thing, I came up, my back hurt. I usually tell them, stop brushing your teeth. Then of course it wasn't from brushing your teeth, it was your back was already under tremendous amount of stress and that was the final straw. That's when your backs it. Enough, enough. I just can't do this anymore. It, it can be lifting small loads or I keep changing positions or I'm trying to avoid long durations of doing certain things, and those are all great things. But if your back already has developed an underlying misalignment and you keep doing repetitive actions over and over again, it just starts to, that area becomes an area that we start to see issues. Let's talk about some of these most common work problems. We see prolonged sitting. You know when you sit, that puts more pressure on your lower back gravity wise than standing. Not only that, but when you walk and you move around, what happens is the muscles around there contract and they push the good stuff in. The joint spaces, take the bad stuff out. So if you have a job that requires you to sit for long, long periods of time, your back starts to suffer. Now I take care of a lot of people that have jobs that. Acquire them to sit. Some of them are in healthcare, some of them are in law enforcement, the people who watch the jail guards and stuff like that. 9 1 1 operators, and I'm happy to sell you. Over the last 20 years they've gone from sitting desk to standup desk, but we're still just not moving. Repeated bending. I work in a lot of people here in Rockford, Illinois, where I'm a chiropractor. We have a lot of manufacturing still, and they have repetitive bending. When they do at work all the time, they have to, bend and reach, put this part on Bend, bend, and it's the same part over and over again. So they're getting micro fatigue going on those repetitive bending actions. It static standing. We talked about the sit down desk and the standup desk. I take care of a lot of cashiers at the grocery store. They're standing all day, they're on their feet. There's no cheer for them. They're just standing still the entire time. And like a cashier, they'll face the register to check you out. But after to turn the scan your items, there's a little turn there. I've also had some fast food restaurant people that work at the checkout window. When you go through the drive through, they're on their feet all day. They're standing still. There's a little bit of a twist. But it's always the same twist in the same way. Speaking of twisting, and reaching, I've taken care of a lot of people that have a job where they have to turn and grab a form. They reach the same way, it's the same form, same way. They keep doing the same action over and over and over again. And that starts to create a pattern, a muscle pattern, neuroplasticity within your joints and an action that makes that. Movement easier for them to do, but also easier for you to become more vulnerable because you do it too much. And they say, I'm gonna be careful. I'm gonna, I'm gonna stand up and do a stretch. But technique doesn't eliminate the load, right? So no matter how careful the hockey player is when he is out there skating, he's still got that high stick and low stick. No matter how careful that postal carry is with that satchel on their hip, on their shoulder, they're still creating a vulnerability. No matter how careful the company makes the factory worker, I did a tour of, the, what used to be a Chrysler plant, our town, before it got sold. And they came in and showed me how their techniques are so safe and they have things that help the workers. And those are all great things. That's all better than having the, , a hydraulic arm to lift and put a part in. It's much better to have a guy lift it and carry and put it in, but it's still the same repetitive action. What's the healthiest way to eat a Snickers bar? There isn't one. It's still wrong. You're eating candy, right? So these are all good things, but they're not solving , the underlying problem, doing the same thing over and over again. So what are some things, that we do need to alert for? Why does pain come after work? Again, I'm moving, I'm going, I'm moving. It doesn't, pain doesn't kick in until I stop moving, right? A baseball pitcher, as soon as they finish the game, what do they do? The ice their shoulder. Why? Because they know all that repetitive pitching is gonna make their shoulder flare up, so they put ice on it right away. It doesn't hurt at that moment, but they do it anyways just like a basketball player will ice their ankles and knees. They don't hurt in the moment, the game's over, but all that running up and down's gonna cause them to swell up later. So why do I get pain after work? I finally stopped moving. I finally have a chance for the inflammation to rush in. My muscles and fatigue line has finally crossed and I'm just done. And at that point, the body says, okay, let's protect these areas. They've been beat up all day. They've been under stress all day. And the protective muscle spasm are locking in that area, curse. And now I go to get up. Now I'm in pain. So what do I look for when you come here? What should you expect? We're gonna see these areas of limited motion. You're gonna see these spots where you've locked up. We're gonna look to see where your spines adapted to your job. I have these misalignments in my spine from doing a certain activity. Let's go find those. To me, it's interesting taking care of the local prison guards. They're all different sizes and shapes and ages. These different individuals. They don't, if you line them up, you would never guess. That one's taller, one's shorter, one's heavier, one's lighter, one's in shape, one's not in shape. One exercise and one doesn't. But they all have the exact same problem in their spine. They all have different beds and different pillows. They all drive different cars, but they all have the exact same problem in their spine, and that's obviously from their job. And so as your chiropractors, my job is to find these misalignments through x-rays and through exam, get them adjusted, and then try to teach you some counter things that you can do during the day to balance off the spots that we found because we can't change the job. They've HR people have hired. Really smart, physical therapists, athletic trainers, orthopedic doctors that come in and try to alter your job to keep you as healthy as possible, but yet you're still failing. So therefore, that's why you're in my office. Again, even as a chiropractor, I can go in there. I can't change the job that you're doing., I don't know how to change the satchel on your hip, put it in a backpack, but now you gotta twist, get the backpack off. It's always the same thing. It's just different stresses. It's just the world we live in. And that's why your chiropractor exists. because our job is to find and correct those misalignments. Today more and more people , are recognizing this and they're trying to make the corrections on this. Here in Rockford, Meiborg brother truck, hired us to take care of all their employees. They understood what I was talking about in this talk that when you sit too long. You have problems then when you sit behind a computer too long, doing the logistics of where all the trucks are going. So whether you're driving the truck or whether you're doing this or doing that, it's all the same thing. It's all the same stress, not the same exact stress, but the same amount of stress. So they have different stressors, but the same issues. So they hired us to take care of all their employees. So now whether you're the mechanic that fixes the trucks, whether you're the guys that load the trucks, whether you're the guy driving the truck, whether you're the person behind the desk doing the logistics of the trucks, or whether you're the salesman going to do the calls to get more clients for them, they all come here now and they have noticed a dramatic change and the amount of time off of work. They've noticed dramatic change in the overall health of their employees and how their employees are doing. Their employees are happy. Never. They're actually getting people to come work for them. Like they're in between two or three different jobs, but they're like, I could work here, but this one actually has a Rockford chiropractor. I can go see and get my chiropractic care. So they're back related. Excuse me. The work related back injuries are down to a minimum. They're having back pain at work's been reduced, and more and more people are enjoying their weekends now because after work, my back pain, is gone because they're doing that. So we've had a unique opportunity to work with the company. Not the only company we've worked with, but it's the one of the companies we're working with right now. One could argue the ICE hogs fall in that category too. Another company that we work with. So if you're having a lot of back pain when you're at work, you know it's, or when you're doing the same work at your house all the time, , there's a bigger clue something's going on and you can ask your family doctor about it. You can ask your physical therapist about it. But the idea that they're gonna know what the chiropractor knows is remote. Only your chiropractors tried to look at your spine this way. So if you have questions about chiropractic or chiropractic care, the only qualified person to answer, that's a chiropractor. Now, wherever you're watching or listening to this, there's links to my website. Go on my website, look at my previous podcasts that we've done here. The odds are I've already talked about this topic or whatever question you might have. I might have already addressed it, but if I have not. Go ahead and leave a comment wherever you're watching or listening to this, and maybe next week you'll be the question of the week. If you wanna do a deeper dive, you can go to chiropractic.org. That's our national association. You can find lots of cool links and counselors there, even more of a deeper dive. Otherwise, like I said, just go ahead and leave a comment and I'll get to your question next week. Thank you for tuning in.