How To Relieve Spinal Stenosis With Exercise

hey guys dr christie ennis today we are going to go over how to get rid of your spinal stenosis with exercise yay get rid of some of that back pain now we're going to start with some exercises on the ground and progress to some seated and some standing so there's a little bit of everything one of these things should work really well for you so stay tuned all the way through to the end in case there's something there that maybe didn't work in the beginning there will be something at the end that does now spinal stenosis you can be pretty confident that you have that if you have pain with walking you have pain and you're over 55 and the pain gets relieved when you sit down it's about 90 percent accurate that actually that's what's going on in the spine obviously there's other things going on but just keep that in mind spinal stenosis is actually a narrowing in the canal of the spine here and that's what causes the pain and the numbness and all those funny funky things that happen into the leg so that actually can change and this is why exercise can help because we can open up that space by different movements and then put a little less pressure on the nerve so some things that spinal stenosis hates are going to be extending so we want to make sure that we avoid that side bending to the same side so if your stenosis is only on the right side and you bend to the right side you're going to make that worse and then actually rotation to the other side so our goal today is to open up that spine and using those hips in that trunk to do that work so first one you do not have to do these on the floor you can do these right in bed so that makes it a little bit easier too you're going to lie right on your back get comfy there and you're going to start usually with one leg staying bent and the foot on the floor but you're going to grab and bring one knee right up towards your chest if that hurts your knee you can obviously put your hands right under that thigh and then bring that knee into the chest and you're holding it here 10 or 20 seconds at a time and then you're going to switch and do the other side same idea either holding here or if that bothers the knee then right behind the thigh again opening up that space these should all feel good okay so be careful if they don't feel good make sure you don't do them also if it's a disc problem these will not feel good so that's another way to know that you want to be careful with that if you're doing well with that and it feels okay you can even do both knees into the chest but this takes a lot more work so be really careful of that okay from there if we want to try to engage those abdominal muscles too it's like a green leafy vegetable you can never go wrong by activating your abdominal muscles think about actually tilting that pelvis and i don't say this very often but because we want to open up that spine it usually actually feels better to tilt that pelvis back so that we're flattening that back a little if that doesn't feel good please don't go into that position but starting there pulling in on those lower abdominals and now not only are we going to open up the spine but we're working on trying to use those abdominal muscles to help us stabilize too so as i'm marching i'm making sure that my trunk is nice and steady and i'm not tilting back and forth here if that's easy same ideas like the other one you can add a little toe tap down but this is a lot more advanced so you need to be very careful that you're not moving through the spine and you're not pushing your abs out okay it's okay to stick with this one there's not a problem with that from here i'm going to grab my handy folding chair you do not have to have a folding chair any chair will do but remember what i said we want to open up that space so the way to do that is to get a little bit of flexion into the spine and one that usually feels really good is if we bring our feet a little bit wider you can either clasp your elbows or even just let your hands kind of dangle and then my hip just snapped you're going to come up and down okay so you want to make sure that we're getting a little bit of mobility with this as we go to help loosen to help get blood flow going after you do a few repetitions if it feels like oh i can go a little bit further and it's again it's okay if you don't go all the way to the floor if you do about five or six and you feel oh that feels good then you can go ahead and kind of hang out there a little bit but not until you do a few moving ones that are a little bit of blood flow going okay and then you're going to come right on up now these last ones you need to make sure that you are okay and comfortable and safe standing to do some exercise we're going to use the chair again you can use a step or a stair or even just something a little lower this is kind of high sometimes i know but again remember what i said we want to try to open up that space and sometimes that involves the hip some of these hip muscles actually come all the way up to the belly button and then attach into the spine so if they're not working well they're going to pull and tug on that spine too and cause kind of this arch you often times see with people with stenosis that they even get a little bit more arch because it's getting pulled and tugged so one foot is going to go up on the chair this is the left side that we're working on think about squeezing into that butt a little bit and then you're actually kind of pushing that hip forward i'm not arching my back remember i said you don't want to arch your back with stenosis you want to think about push that hip forward a little and come back so same ideas like when we were sitting you want to make sure that you're adding a little bit of movement with this right especially if you've been tight and uncomfortable to just try a static stretch usually makes things a little bit worse too now not only do we want to go in this direction we want to try to have a little bit of shift side to side too so we're going to lean a little bit forward and we're going to shift that hip i'm not shifting my spine all over right i'm shifting that hip side to side and then if that feels okay this one looks really pretty then you can go ahead and do a little bit of a hip circle again trying not to arch through that spine just pushing that hip forward a little you'll feel that all through here if you start to feel it in your back you're probably arching so really think about squeeze that butt make sure you're nice and upright you want to do that on both sides because yes we tend to be tight on both sides make sure like i said though you can do it on a lower surface if you need to you can even do it without a chair to start with right and just add that little press forward and then again you can get that little kind of side shift side to side so we're getting that whole hip moving one more in this position very similar we want to get in through that 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