What Colorado Springs Professionals Need to Know, the Physical Cost of Caregiving
If you work at UCHealth Briargate, UCHealth Memorial, Centura Health, or Penrose-St. Francis, you already know your job is physically demanding in ways that most people cannot fully comprehend. Transferring patients. Sustained bending over beds to care for patients. Rapid position changes between errands. Hours of standing on cold, hard hospital floors. Charting in awkward positions at established workstations that were designed for hospital productiveness, not your ergonomics.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics consistently ranks nursing and healthcare providers among the top occupations for musculoskeletal injury. And in a city like Colorado Springs, where the healthcare sector is a major employer in the 80920 corridor and surrounding areas, this is not a small issue.
Why Healthcare Workers’ Low Back Pain Is Different
While the low back pain most desk workers deal with comes primarily from prolonged static posture, sitting in one position for too long is far different from what hospital staff workers endure, even on the days where you are mostly sitting. Healthcare providers deal with something more, intricate to put it bluntly: a combination of static loading during charting, high-demand dynamic loading during patient transfers, and unpredictable positional demands throughout the shift.
This sporadic change of pace means the lumbar spine and surrounding soft tissue never get a consistent chance to recover. The muscles guarding that develops is adaptive learning, this comes from the sympathetic nervous system, not the parasympathetic. We want the majority of our days spent in the parasympathetic state of being. We want relaxation to be where we are for the majority of our days. When you are on the job that constant reflex is the body trying to protect an area that is repeatedly stressed. Over time, that guarding becomes the source of your pain itself.
The piriformis and QL muscles, the two muscles most directly involved in healthcare worker low back pain – become chronically hypertonic. They are guarding against th healing mechanisms. The thoracolumbar fascia loses elasticity. From here, the body starts favoring one side or adjusting its gait to compensate, which creates secondary pain patterns in the SI joint, hip, and sometimes down the leg as sciatic irritation or other nerve irritation.
What Ashiatsu Massage Addresses Specifically
For healthcare workers dealing with this pattern, ashiatsu massage is particularly well-matched because of its ability to apply sustained, broad pressure to the lumbar erectors and deep gluteal muscles without the sharp, poking quality of elbow-based deep tissue work. The pressure in ashiatsu is firm and specific and much broader than anything we can apply with our hands as LMT’s. The contact surface is large enough to be received without the guarding reflex that sometimes occurs with very focused pressure. The cupping also helps to bring the tension closer to the surface level AND does it in less time than we humans can ever achieve. Humans fatigue, cups do not tire.
When we combine cupping therapy with ashiatsu massage, the cupping along the upper and mid back addresses the full chain from the thoracic junction down through the sacrum and into the piriformis, which very well may be the source of health care workers tension.
This could very well be the territory of healthcare worker low back pain, and it takes the full session to address it properly.
Scheduling That Works for Shift Workers
Inspire Movements is open Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday from 9am to 7:30pm in the Briargate area of Colorado Springs at 1295 Kelly Johnson Blvd, Suite 250. Evening appointments are available on those days to accommodate shift schedules at the nearby hospital systems. Just a heads up, these are high priority spots and many of our existing regulars are competing for these exact same spots each week. Booking is online and by appointment only.
Many people from the UCHealth and Centura communities book biweekly appointments and treat it as a non-negotiable part of managing their pain and the physical demands of their careers. The investment in consistent therapeutic care is meaningfully less than the long-term cost of chronic pain that gets left unaddressed.
Ready to get started? Book your appointment online at springslowbackpainrelief.com or call/text 719-459-0780. Inspire Movements Massage Therapy is located at 1295 Kelly Johnson Blvd, Suite 250 in Briargate, Colorado Springs 80920. Open Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday 9am-7:30pm. By appointment only.