[caption id="attachment_655" align="alignright" width="210" caption="Daily Back Pain"][/caption] I have lower left back pain almost every day, although it seems to ease up more if I sleep on the sofa or in a recliner. Every time I sleep in a bed, I'm sore and stiff the following morning and have a hard time getting rid of all of the knots in my back.

Occasionally, I'll bend or twist just a certain way, and I believe it's my sciatic nerve that causes this, but all of a sudden I'll feel a severe pain in my lower left back, right above my buttocks. Sometimes it takes a couple of days of hot showers, eating ibuprofen, and just taking it easy to make it go away.

The most severe case I've had lasted about two weeks, and if I moved certain ways, I would feel this jolt, like a sudden shock from that area, and my entire body would spasm. Of course, then it hurt even worse because that spasm would make me jolt again. It was really awful, but I managed it with half of a Vicodin every 8 hours, or as needed. That time was caused by me bending over to unplug my alarm clock from behind a dresser.

Another time, I was carrying two baskets of laundry (one on top of the other) and bent over to set them down. I must have been stuck standing like that for a good 10 minutes; I couldn't straighten out and the pain was pretty intense. The pain that time peaked the same night. I couldn't get off the sofa, but an EMT friend of mine was trying to help me get on the floor on my hands and knees.

He thought it might help to sort of rock back and forth, like when a woman has back labor pains. That didn't really work out too well, so we just struggled over to a recliner and I took two Tylenol PM's to help fall asleep.

I haven't gone to a doctor for any of my back pains because I am afraid that it's going to be due to something major and I have a pretty irrational fear of all that stuff. I know part of it is probably my weight - for my height, I'm at least 80 lbs. overweight. I don't know if my diet can affect my back at all, but if it can, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that's part of it. After having 3 kids and retaining a good deal of that extra weight, my bust size has increased a lot, so I'm sure that doesn't help the situation either. Maybe there is a specific reason for lower left back pain in women, or maybe I should just take better care of myself, I don't know.