This is how i fixed my chronic lower back pain

tl;dr : Got very mild lower back pain, tried changing chairs,memory foam cushion. Made some changes in routine and it is good now.

Back story first, I got my first computer in 2007. It was an Intel Pentium P4 with 256MB of ram(good old days). At that time I only used it for like 2-3 hours a day playing Grand Theft Auto Vice City, orkut and blah blah 😛 . But i didn’t used it from 2009 to August 2012 since I was in preparation school.

In 2012, I got into university. My parents got me a laptop, but I decided, first thing, that I will only play games on it. Slowly, after some months, I got interested in programming and this kind of stuff and dumped games completely. From 2013 to 2016, I was using my laptop for about 5-6 hours a day.

After university, I started to do some Freelancing, personal projects and other stuff because of which I kept on sitting in front of my desktop for more than 10 hours a day. Even if I wanted to watch a movie, I watched it on my desktop, so in total, I was sitting more than 12 hours a day. Slowly, I started gaining weight and started to feel some problem in my lower back. It was back in July 2017 that the very mild pain remained for more than 2 weeks and I consulted a doctor, got my x-ray and other tests, and everything was perfectly fine according to reports. He said it will go away, but it didn’t.

At first, I thought it was because of the chair. I bought a good chair I could get locally.

Even after a month of using this chair, my situation was the same. Although the pain was not that bad, I mean it was a very very mild pain. I could still work, lift anything, do anything possible.

I bought premium chair which i can get from other city. 

This also didn’t worked. I searched more on the internet. Someone suggested using a Memory Foam cushion, so I bought it.

But sadly this was also not working. 

Well, there is one thing I was hiding until now in this post: the doctor suggested that I have a MRI of my lower back to understand if there were any muscles which were damaged or anything, as with X-ray it was clear that there was a problem with bones. I didn’t do that MRI test. I know, I know, it was a stupid move but I was claustrophobic (I no longer am) of those MRI machines and after learning about those MRI death stories. I was quite anxious about it. Also, I was not ready to accept the fact that 22 year old me can have such problems. Also, the thing was that the pain wasn’t there if I was not sitting in front of my dekstop, so I knew it was because of me sitting for long hours.

I got treadmill for myself.

But keeping up with daily running routine was not possible for me. I was keeping that routine for like 2 weeks or so and then not doing any running for 3-4 weeks. So overall I was in the same situation for long time.

Now after all these failures, I was bit broken inside, mainly because of that everyday feeling of very mild pain in my lower back.

I started researching some more on this and found out that it is because of my big tummy and weak core muscles.

So I got myself an ab roller to develop my core muscles.

Now coming to things which helped me.

  • I started running everyday for 15 minutes at 9km/hr no matter what. 
  • I started using Ab roller to develop my core muscles. With that i am going to have 6 pack abs soon as well 😉 
  • Yoga everyday for atleast 20 minutes. 
  • Taking multivitamins everyday(I’m a vegetarian and do not go out much in sun).
  • Having 40g of Whey protein everyday after workout in morning. 
  • Having walnuts and almonds everyday.
  • Keep changing sitting posture. Like after 3-4 hours of work on Desktop, work on laptop while sitting on bean bag. 
  • I use Strechtly app, it reminds me after every 25 minutes to take a break for 5 minutes. I try to follow it most of times and get up from chair and give rest to my body. 
  • Ergonomic chair do play a role but it  is not the only thing as it is sold on internet. 

As people often says that “Consistency is the key to success” and it definetly is. Within a month, my back pain was gone and I am now perfectly normal as I was before 2017. From this experience, I have learned that not to ignore any health related problem for a long time and to try to solve it as soon as possible.

I wish that no one goes through any kind of suffering but maybe if someone is going through it, then this post can be useful to them. This is the reason I thought I should document this.

As one of the vedas in Hinduism says 

ॐसर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः
सर्वे सन्तु निरामयाः ।
सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यन्तु
मा कश्चिद्दुः खभाग्भवेत् ।
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥

Meaning:
1: Om, May All become Happy,
2: May All be Free from Illness.
3: May All See what is Auspicious,
4: May no one Suffer.
5: Om Peace, Peace, Peace.