Ask HN: How long does it take for chronic programmer back pain to get better?

Depends. How can you get your boss off your back? :-)

When you have a sitting job, the chance of developing a stenose in your L1-L5 vertebrae when getting older is very large. You need to get off your chair at least once an hour walking around a bit, also you need to do low impact sports like walking the park or something like that. For acute back problems you need at least do mobilizing exercises for the lower back and if a vertebrae stays stuck you can opt for a chiropractor to force it to go lose. Most back problems that cause back pains are stuck vertebrae that make muscles working hard to compensate. So deal with your issues and don't wait or rest, that makes it much worse. My experience in acute situations is that mobilizing exercises can take 3-4 weeks to make the pains go completely, after a few days however they already get rid of the worst pains like nerve pains from stuck nerves between vertebrae. After that period I personally start mobilizing exercises immediately when I feel the slightest back pains and then it helps within a few days and keep the pain levels low, so keep exercising. Since doing these exercises, my need for painkillers for back pains went away.

For me, it got better when I stopped eating foods with sugar and refined carbs and reversed insulin resistance. No more pain anywhere at all, ever.

A lot of back pain, regardless of where is is felt, stems from the large Bundling of nerves in the cervical spine and in the sciatic nerve bundles underneath your glute muscles.

Do not stretch your spine, as your structure is likely weak, and you can further damage your disks/vertebrae and the nerves therein by improperly applying changes to where the pain resides most frequently.

I suggest you look into foam rolling, and fasciae work in the glute/hamstring areas first. There are a lot of mobility youtubers that talk all about different techniques.

Also I have been studying the effects of LaJin (Traditional Chinese stretch series) and so far found the prolonged relaxation in the fascia to relieve chronic pain, and uncover structural improprieties that are the root cause.

Here is a long write-up over self healing with paida-lajin (拍打-拉筋 Basically slapping-stretching). http://www.dontow.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/P...

As for how long it takes to get better... growth and entropy are in opposition. It may relieve your pain day 1 but it may come back halfway through the next day, it may take 6 weeks to feel the deep relief. Your structural damage could be well beyond simple tissue degeneration and nerve pain, in which case self treatment is not advised. You should have an MRI taken if you believe yourself to be in later stage deterioration of the affected area.

    Do not stretch your spine

I haven't had it "get better". Most the things I do make it bearable, and help to keep it from being a debilitating, acute pain that puts me out for a few days.

I do have to echo Yaa101 though: mobility exercise and stretching help, and my chiropractor helps counter some of the persistent pains. Stretches that target my legs and especially my hips are critical to helping the lower back relax and not hurt.

Ironically, the least pain I felt was when I played volleyball with some friends for 3-4 hours every weekend for a month or two.

Get an all-33 chair seriously. Every other chair is non-sense. My previous office had 50~ different types of chairs and none of them worked from $100-$15,000. If you don't have the money there are these pieces that come for chairs, and it creates a cup for you to sit on which makes you sit straight.

I assume you ask this question because you suffer from this condition. I had debilitating back pain. I (rather luckily) found an excellent physiotherapist. I followed his advice strictly and got out of that situation. He told me that the problem will never "go away" entirely in the sense that I have to work to keep it from recurring. If I don't stay active, then the pain will eventually return. What I found really helps to keep the problem (and many other musculoskeletal issues) away is doing squats and deadlifts. I learnt to do these from an excellent trainer who I found close to where I live. I am not talking about lifting immense weights like a powerlifter but just doing these with weights that were moderate gave me enough strength to not hurt myself with activities that demanded some strength. I also found that I am able to handle my motorcycle with much more ease as the whole body knows how to generate strength and coordinate itself better than before.

In short: When the problem was extreme - sought the help of an excellent physiotherapist. And once recovered - exercise to keep the problem at bay.

EDIT: Why I don't recommend doing exercises or stretches without consulting a good professional is that a good professional can tell you when you are "ready" for certain stretches, movements or exercises which would otherwise make the situation worse. Also of course s/he can evaluate your condition and tell you which ones are safe at which point of time. I didn't have many exercises for recovery. I had to do a handful but I didn't start with all of them and I had certain restrictions on movements in the beginning until I got a bit better and could do those safely.

EDIT2: Lifting weights also naturally improved my posture. I didn't even have to make conscious effort to maintain good posture when seated at the computer for instance. So, that is another way in which it prevents injury.

From personal experience I would recommend two things:

- a solid core routine. Here's a good example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4988649

- if it persists, reading the book "Healing back Pain" by John Sarno (Countless people seem to have begun the book highly skeptical and finished it pain free)