Do you have pain in the middle of your back? Does it feel kind of like a wide band of pain below your shoulder blades?
Or do you have a wide band of pain across your lower back?
You know how I’m always telling you that muscles are the largest cause of pain? Well, this may come as a surprise. It’s still muscles but if your pain pattern looks like the red areas in this picture, the muscle to blame is in the front of your body!
The abdominal muscles right next to the midline of your body (rectus abdominis) can cause referred pain into your back. This happens when the muscle develops trigger points. Trigger points cause referred pain.
Sometimes only one side of the rectus abdominis has a trigger point but it still causes pain on both sides of the back.
How can you get rid of the trigger points that cause your back pain?
You could have someone rub on your back until the cows come home but it won’t help if your back pain is caused by muscles in front of your body. You have to relax the trigger points in that abdominal muscle to relieve your back pain.
See the X‘s on the abdominal muscle? Those indicate the locations of trigger points. Those are the areas to treat.
The easiest way to treat those trigger points is to pick up the muscle where the X is. Pinch it. Lift and pinch. You don’t want to lift only the skin–you want to go deeper and pick up the muscle. It’ll most likely be pretty uncomfortable. And hold the pinch for up to 20 seconds. That helps the trigger point relax and stop referring pain into your back. Search the whole muscle for tender areas to treat.
Remember, you don‘t want to just pick up skin; you want to actually lift muscle. If you do this and it’s really tender, there’s a great chance that you are in the right place or very close to it! Good job!
By treating the trigger points in these muscles you can get rid of the pain in your middle back and lower back.
You may find that lengthening (stretching) the abdominal muscles also helps get rid of your back pain. Stretching doesn’t work as fast as manual/massage therapy but it can still help.
And here’s something else that is very interesting about trigger points in the any of the abdominal muscles:
They can also cause pain in your groin, vomiting or bloating, diarrhea, pain that mimics organ disease or dysfunction, heartburn and other symptoms. These symptoms are often confused with diseases such as appendicitis. Yikes!
What causes these trigger points in the first place?
Well, this is interesting, too.
Just as trigger points in your abdominal muscles can cause pain or other symptoms on the inside of you, the reverse is true, also.
Disease or dysfunction in your organs or gut can cause trigger points in your muscles!
But so can sitting in positions that shorten your abdominal muscles and that’s the most common cause. So the goal is to lengthen the abdominals and to seek and destroy any areas of tight muscles that might be hiding trigger points.
Hopefully, treating your rectus abdominis muscle will get rid of your back pain naturally.
After all, you have a smart body and it wants to be well. It just needs a little bit of help from you to get rid of that wide band of pain in your back.
The symptoms described here are exactly what I have. Besides lifting that trigger point, is there anything else I can do to fix this type of pain?
Thank you for your help.
Scott
Hi Scott, If the trigger point is causing your pain, then getting rid of the trigger point will get rid of the pain. Sometimes it will take more than one treatment or it might take a ‘search and destroy mission’ to find related trigger points.
I hope this helps you get rid of the band of pain across your back.
Kathryn
The Pain Relief Coach
I am curious to how you pick a muscle up that is under the skin?? I could not help but to laugh when i read that. However, this is the same exact pain i have and i cannot get it to let up. Its fine when i first get out of bed, but as soon as i sit down it starts. Going on a month now. UGH so over it.
Good question, Teresa! Imagine that you pinch your underarm or pinch your inner thigh. Those tend to be areas that aren’t too muscular. They are softer, just to practice.
If you pinch the skin, you are only picking up or lifting or squeezing a thin batch of tissue. But if you grab more tissue, you are getting deeper than the skin. If you grab a thicker bunch of tissue by making a wider ‘pinch’ you are grabbing muscle.
Muscle is deeper. Skin is surface. I’m glad I made you laugh. 🙂 From your description, I’m thinking that it’s the muscles on your abdomen. Try lifting areas of your abdomen when you are laying on your back with your knees up and soles of your feet flat on the floor or bed. Areas that are tender are areas of tight muscle and need more attention (pinch and lift.)
I hope this helps. Take good care of you.
Kathryn
The Pain Relief Coach
Before I was diagnosed with degenerative disk disease, bone spurs on the spine, arthritis, fibromyalgia, and Barrett’s esophagus, I had gastric bypass resulting in a loss of 120 pounds. I gained 80 pounds back when the other issues settled in. I had esophageal ablation to end the Barrett’s and ablation of the nerves in my lower right spine. I am also having injections in my sacroiliac joints. I have tried pinching the areas mentioned. They are really tender. The upper area I believe is a hernia, but I still pinched it. I’ll continue, but can it be anything else? All my pain pills and patches don’t help. Any suggestions?
Hi Georgette. On your body, you have a layer of skin. Directly under (deep to) the skin is a layer of muscle. Fat cells may be sandwiched between the skin and muscle, too. Skin isn’t very thick but all of the soft tissues beneath the skin can be pretty thick. Since it’s tender to the ‘pinch”, it sounds like you’ve probably accessed the muscle.
You can lift, pinch, roll and stretch the tender areas. When pinching, you can hold for about 12 seconds or so. If they seem to get less tender as you hold them, that means the muscle is starting to relax.
An abdominal hernia will ‘pop out’ when you do a partial sit-up or forward roll. That may give you a clue as to whether it’s a hernia.
Best long-distance thoughts: You could try stretching and pulling the whole abdominal musculature, like this: In a reclined posture, or flat on your back with a pillow for your head if that’s something you can do, place a hand on your abdomen. Let the palm of your flat hand ‘melt’ into the soft tissues. Allow it to be heavy. Then press and push the palm slightly in any direction, diagonally, sideways, etc. This dragging movement will help all of the soft tissues below your hand to stretch, warm and relax. You can also pull your palm slightly for the same effect.
Massage can have a relaxing effect when the underlying tissues are actually treated. This subtle massage technique may cause you to have less discomfort.
An additional thought is to practice both breathing and stretching. The point of breathing is to bring deep, expansive, thoughtful breath into your lungs and abdomen. This helps relax the muscles around the ribs. The goal of stretching is to thoughtfully lengthen the muscles on the whole front of the body. Those muscles get ‘too tight’ due to day-to-day activities.
Please let me know how you’re doing. Kathryn