Seven Tips To Handle Back Pain When On A Road Trip

Riding a car for an hour or more can be difficult when you’re suffering from back pain. Factors like prolonged sitting, low-frequency vibrations throughout the body and constrained positions all lead to back pain during a road trip, for which you may need to consult the top chiropractors in Denver. Though a few tips might help ease the ache during the trip.

Adjust Your Seat And Headrest

Adjusting your seat is one of the first steps to take to alleviate pain during a road trip. Sit fairly close to the steering wheel without compromising your safety to reduce the stress on your wrists, neck, lumbar region and shoulders. 

Adjust your seat’s angle to ensure that your back is at a 100 to 110-degree angle. Put the back of your head against the headrest at their centers.

Get Out And Move

Staying seated in the car in the same position can make your back stiff, leading to achiness and muscle spasms. Ideally, you should take a 15-minute break after every 2 hours of driving. You might want to take breaks more often (like every hour or half an hour) if you are prone to backaches. So plan your stops for the trip in advance.

During the breaks, get out of the car and move around and stretch to stimulate blood circulation, thus bringing nutrients and oxygen to the lower back.

Shift Your Position Periodically

Speaking of staying still in the same pose, even ten seconds of movement is better than that. You should try to move a little in your seat when possible, at the very least adjusting the seat and changing your position slightly every 15 to 20 minutes. Pump your ankles to give your hamstring muscles a slight stretch while keeping the blood flowing.

Don’t Put Anything In Back Pockets

Sitting with your pant’s back pockets full can put your spine out of alignment by tilting one side of the pelvis. It may be unnoticeable at first but can cause or aggravate your lower back pain. So, make sure that these pockets are empty before you go on a road trip.

Use Your Feet To Support Your Back

The bottom-up leverage from your feet is really needed to support your spine. Placing your feet on a firm surface is important to prevent transferring the stress to the lower back. Ideally, your knees should be at a right angle and you should use a footrest if your feet are high. It’s why cruise control is a great feature to have in cars.

With cruise control, you can place your feet on the floor for a long time, gently pushing them into the floor to stabilize and support the back.

Create Lumbar Support

Maximize the back support for your car by ensuring that the back is centered against the seat. You can use a lumbar support accessory for additional support, even a rolled-up sweatshirt behind the small of your back can help. Bend your knees slightly higher than the hips to take the pressure off of the lower back and hamstring.

Apply Cold And Hot Therapy

Cold and heat therapies are good ways to alleviate pain on a long trip. Cold therapy can reduce inflammation and swelling while heat therapy can increase the blood flow and relax the muscles. You can bring an ice pack in a cooler or bring a heat pad or heat wrap. Some people place a moist heat pack in the microwave before the trip so that it’s warm when they leave.

Either therapy should be applied to the affected area for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time with a few hours of rest for your skin in between before the next application. When driving, you’ll want to use the therapy during the breaks since you need to prevent damage to the skin during the application.

Some cars come with heated seats that offer continuous low-level heat for relief and comfort.

These are a few things you can do to ease your backache during road trips. You can also consult a chiropractic specialist for back pain relief in Denver.