If you stand up from your chair, or maybe you wake up one morning & stand up to get out of bed, and you feel a pain in your lower back or maybe you went to bed over to pick up your grandbaby or your baby for that matter, and all of a sudden you feel a pain in your lower back, and you grab your back & say, “What the…”!!!  It’s a possibility it could be your SI joint acting up. Don’t let it get the best of you that’s for sure!  Take it from one who knows… you all know me, and I DO have Spinal Stenosis, but I didn’t always have it…  When I was young I had four children and raised my beautiful two boy and two girls all by myself… well, I had gramma’s help too (of course)!  I also worked three jobs.  I was a waitress (oh my, talk about hard on the back), and I was a bar tender (those beer cases was very heavy especially carrying them upstairs from the basement by myself), and I cleaned houses with four of my friends on my off – time.  When I turned 40 I could feel the aches & pains in my back, my muscles & joints and I used ointment, creams and heating pads, but kept going.  My babies had to eat and have a roof over their head.  Then I went back to school and became a legal secretary first and kept at school until I became a paralegal, which only meant sitting 8 hours a day and when I became the paralegal it was walking at a hurried pace most of the time back & forth from the office to the court house (approx. three (3) blocks at a hurried pace) almost every day.  By this time my back was killing me, and then it happened.  BOOM!  I fell off my brother’s porch, and my back got worse & worse.  I had to take charge with a treatment plan that brought relief right now.

         Sacroiliac Belt for Women and Men

What Is the SI Joint you ask?

Its full name is the SACROILIAC JOINT!  There are two (2) of them in your lower back, and they sit on each side of your spine. Their main job is to carry the weight of your upper body when you stand or walk and shift that load to your legs.  Taking care of the kids, shopping, even just standing washing dishes or cooking.

What Does the Pain Feel Like?

It could be a dull or sharp or it could be a nagging pain such as a constant pressure that hurts.  It starts at your SI joint, but it can move to your buttocks, and or go the other way like into your shoulder blade area (my gramma use to call them your wings he-he), thighs, groin, or upper back.   It’s positively, definitely no fun.  It can even go further than that & you may develop Spinal Stenosis for example.  Do have it checked out.  Sometimes a simple exercise can give you relief or maybe the belt I’m about to tell you about can too.  Sometimes standing up triggers the pain, and a lot of times you feel it only on one side of your lower back. You may notice that it bothers you more in the morning and gets better during the day.  It’s definitely more common than you might think. About 15%-30% of people who hurt like this have a problem with the SI joint.