Hi This is Dr. Nidhi Sharma, a Women’s Health Physical Therapist.
The lower back pain during pregnancy is very common.
During pregnancy, there are many changes happening in your body even first a couple weeks of it.
One of the major changes is the hormonal change. When the hormone change, it affects your collagen fiber in your ligaments.
The function of ligaments is to connect the bones together. With the hormonal changes during pregnancy, the ligaments get loose.
This looseness or laxity of ligaments is important to open up your pelvis and your tummy in order to make space for a baby.
However, the looseness of ligaments and expansion of joints will increase the demand on your body, especially your musculature because your muscles have to work harder to keep your joint in place.
Your posture, also, becomes more important to stabilize the hypermobile joint as well.
Let me talks about what happens to your posture during pregnancy. When your a baby grow and your tummy gets bigger, your center of mass shift forward.
The body’s tendency to compensate with it is to arch your back because your lumbar spine and pelvis have more mobility.
But, when your back gets more arched and your pelvis goes more forward, your back joint gets more compression and the ligaments are stressed. This is why you develop lower back pain.
Furthermore, often you may try to compensate this lumbar arch with the rounded upper back. This change stresses your upper back, the neck, as well as your hands. That’s why pregnant female often has upper back pain, neck pain, as well as hand pain (tendinitis) .
Treatment of lower back pain during pregnancy has to be not only to treat your back, but also to treat your upper back and neck. We need to correct your pelvis position and your back position. We also need to strengthen your core musculature. Therefore you can hold your posture.
Also, it is important to adjust your center of mass to hold your posture every week because a baby will keep growing and your system keep changing during pregnancy.
Nidhi Sharma PT, DPT, WCS, OCS
Please visit our website at www.funcphysio.com
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