How Stress Could Be Causing Your Back Pain

When you experience back pain, you always think about what it was that you did that caused it.  But have you ever thought about how stress could be contributing or causing your back pain?

According to research by the Mental Health Foundation, 74% of us confess that at some point throughout the last year, stress has negatively affected our lives.  Emotions in our body like stress and anxiety can cause different physical responses in the body.  

The link between our minds and body is stronger than we think.  When we are stressed, our brain activity changes which can cause different hormones, like adrenaline, to be release around our body.  These hormones act on all our muscles and can cause different aches and pains in our body.

How Could Stress Be Causing My Back Pain?

When we are stressed, our body enters the “fight or flight” response.  This is the response our body goes into when we feel under threat.  When we perceive we are in danger, we have to decide if we are going to fight the danger or escape from the threat.  Being in this state causes a lot of tension in our muscles.  Normally, this would not affect us negatively, but when we are in a perpetually stressed stage, prolonged muscle tension can cause chronic pain, ache or soreness in our bodies.

Could Stress Be Causing My Neck And Shoulder Pain?

When we are stressed, we often adopt a bad posture.  Poor posture can affect you even when you are standing or sitting throughout your daily life.  The most common change in posture that can affect your neck and possibly cause you pain, is the forward head position.  With this, rather than having an upright posture where the ears are in line with the shoulders, the head travels forward so the ears sit a lot further forward than the shoulders.  When this happens, we compress and shorten the muscles in our neck which can cause pain. 

Could Stress Be Causing My Upper Back Pain?

Following on from how stress can cause neck pain, your upper and mid back can also be affected.  Being stressed can result in us adopting a different hunched up position.  We often end up rounding our backs and become hunched over as we try and tackle the reason we are stressed.  Being hunched over, the muscles and joints in our back become over stretched.  When this happens over a long period of time, the muscles become fatigued as they cannot maintain this non-neutral position. It is common to feel a lot of aches, stiffness and the need to stretch.

Could Stress Be Causing My Low Back Pain?

Feeling stressed or tense can cause the muscles in your body to tighten in response.  If this occurs in the big muscles of your body, such as your glutes or muscles either side of your spine, you can really notice the change of tone.  When they become tight they can feel like you have a knot in the muscles or that they are spasming.  As muscles react like this, they can pull on the areas of your spine where they attach onto. 

If you adopt these bad postures over long periods of time, your body can also start to move using faulty movement patterns.  Over time, this may cause more irritation or damage to your discs or nerves in your low back. 

If you are experiencing neck, shoulder, upper or lower back pain, it can cause more stress in itself.  It is common for people to find themselves in a cycle of stress, pain, stress!