Back pain is the second most common reason that patients see their doctors.  Most back pain lasts less than 6 weeks and is caused by pain from the muscles that support our spine. 

Modern society is much more sedentary than our ancestors.  Many of our jobs involve working at a computer; therefore we spend majority of our time sitting.  Many of our hobbies now involve computers or television.  Therefore we spend a lot of our nonworking hours sitting.  

Please refer to my slide presentation entitled low back pain for complete details.

Briefly, we have many muscles that connect from our thighs to our pelvis and from our pelvis to our low back and vice versa.  When we are in a position for a prolonged period, e.g. sitting, muscles that cross the front of our hips and back of our knees tend to shorten.  When this happens, it alters the rhythmic biomechanics of our hips/thighs and low back.  This altered mechanics can cause pain.  To help counter prolonged positions, it it useful to do some stretches aimed at lengthening the affected muscles: such as the iliopsoas (hip flexor), hamstrings (back of thigh), gluteal group (butt muscles) as well as muscles that control the motion of the spine (bending forward, back, side to side and rotation)

See slide show for demonstration of the stretches.