u/Human-Situation-4303

Hello everyone, I recently noticed that the pain in my lower back has completely subsided, so I thought I'd share my story on how I healed myself! (DISCLAIMER: long post ahead)

First let's start on how I even acquired this pain to begin with. So on my 19th birthday (currently 20) my family planned a trip to the trampoline park to celebrate (yeah red flags already) so there were 3 long rows of trampolines, one row was bordering the hard floors, one was in the center bordering the other two trampolines, and the last one was bordering a foam pit. My sister decided that we should race each other, so I raced along the trampoline row that was bordering the floor, and she raced along the row that was in the center. Long story short I somehow went off course and stepped on my sisters trampoline right as she was lifting her foot up, which somehow projectiled me into the air and into the direction of the hard flooring, and I basically landed 90% of my body weight onto my right knee. After that incident my right knee was sore for about 4 months? maybe less I don't remember. Anyway how is this story relevant you may ask? because it's the only explanation on how I jacked up my back to begin with.

OK now the real story. So one random day in November of 2025, I just woke up with mild pain in my lower back, I thought it was because I was dehydrated so I just drank a lot of water that day. But a few days go by and the pain was just getting worse and worse, and at this point it was becoming unbearable. The pain was mainly located on the right side of my lower back, which radiated to the right side of my hips as well. The pain itself just felt like absolute hell; my lower back would constantly feel this burning sensation because of the pain, every time I got up I was hit with this electric pain that would cause me to collapse, I couldn't bend my back in the slightest, and I also had some sciatic pain down my right leg as well (albeit not that extreme). I had to sleep on the hard ground for about 5 months because my memory foam mattress just made the pain 100x worse.

So when the pain first started I tried doing some low back pain exercises at home because I thought my lack of physical activity was causing my back to act up, and yeah that didn't go too well. I couldn't do any of the exercises because the stiffness and pain was just too much. Anyway in about February of 2026 my dad made me a chiropractor appointment (yes ik bad idea) because he thought something just needed to be "adjusted". So I did about 3 sessions and the chiropractor basically didn't do shit, he "diagnosed" me with SI joint pain but even after all the fancy adjusting there was basically 0 improvement, that's when in March I finally went to the orthopedics. I told the doctor my pain, and he immediately diagnosed me with a pinched nerve, and in the title I say "herniated disc" because I'm not sure if I entirely had a pinched nerve? like most of my pain symptoms aligned with what a herniated disc feels like, whereas the pain symptoms of a pinched lower back are located mainly in the leg. And even when I was telling the doctor my symptoms and how 99% of the pain is in my lower back he just kept talking about my sciatic pain, so yeah I'm not too sure about that. Anyway he prescribed some anti-inflammatory medicine, muscle relaxers, and PT, and while I only went to the PT once, those inflammatory meds did wonders. The inflammation in my hips and back was basically gone and all that was left was the stabbing pain. As for the muscle relaxers, I barely took those because 1. they made me feel high, and 2. they also did absolutely nothing for my pain.

So at home I just did the exercises my PT told me to do, and alongside that I was doing some core strengthening workouts for low back pain and was walking on my treadmill once a day for about 10-30 minutes a day.

Now here's the KICKER, I'm not exactly sure which method healed my back. I feel as though the exercises my PT gave me didn't exactly do much, which is why I'm sorta confused. BUT I do know everything that I did that could probably explain how I recovered so I'll just list them all:

• A HARD, spring mattress. If you currently have a soft or memory foam mattress and you're going through what I did, imma need you to throw that shit away and buy a hard mattress. And if you don't have the money right now which is totally fine, buying secondhand should be cheaper
• Sleeping with a pillow between your knees/thighs. Everyone swears by sleeping on your back with a pillow under your knees but I can't for the life of me sleep on my back so sleeping on my side with a pillow squished between my thighs worked just fine too.
• Prescription anti inflammatory medicine. Advil didn't do shit for me, but that prescription anti inflammatory medication I had was godsent.
• WALKING, not running or sprinting, on a treadmill for as long as my body allowed. And you don't need a treadmill, you can just walk around your house or neighborhood, I just used my treadmill because it was more convenient.
• DO NOTTT lurk on these subreddits. When I was at the peak of my pain I was constantly on reddit looking at stories on how some people never recovered from their back pain, and that got me extremely depressed. That wasn't until I saw a post about someone talking about their healing journey, specifically, they said something along the lines of "you never see people on reddit talk about how they recovered because everyone that recovered doesn't lurk on these subreddits" and that literally opened my third eye. So after reading that I stopped lurking on all the back pain reddits and just focused on my own journey.
• Positive self-talk. This is sort of tied to my last point but I'll explain. Every time I found myself thinking "I'll never recover, I'm gonna have back pain forever, I'm not even improving" I replaced that with sentences that implied my back was already healed (ex: my back is completely fine, I feel no pain in my lower back). And some of y'all might think that's woo woo shit but at least try it before you knock it, and the key is to not go back to the old way of thinking. Yeah sometimes you'll revert back to thinking you'll be stuck like this forever, but you have to snap yourself out of it and continue with the positive self-talk.
• Posture. I just watched some posture vids on YouTube and applied them to my daily life.
• Icing. Icing really made the initial inflammation not as severe, so icing might help you if you're in the earlier stages on pain (or even later stages of pain).

And yeah that's basically everything I did. Today my low back pain and sciatic pain is completely nonexistent, although only if I bend myself in a gnarly position can I feel some tension, but ofc I'm not bending weirdly on a day to day basis so I think I'm good. Recovery took roughly about 6-7 months so don't be too hard on yourself if you still haven't made any progress yourself! things like this need time to heal. Anyway I hope all of you reach 100% recovery as well!!! And if you ever find yourself at a trampoline park, maybe refrain from racing near any hard surfaces 😅

PT exercises that were recommended to me: prone press ups, and Prone Femoral Nerve Glide | Pursuit Physical Therapy (although I wasn't doing the neck movement)

Edit: some people are asking for the name of the anti-inflammatory medicine I took, and while I don't exactly remember, it might've been called Celecoxib! But before I took that the doctor told me to take this 6 day medicine. It was like on day one I had to eat 1 pill, then on day two I had to take 2, etc. But I don't have a single clue what that was called so if anyone in the comments recognizes this, let me know!