You might not know it, but you may well be suffering from gluteal amnesia if your lower back is very stiff and sore after a long day in an office chair or a car or van seat. Now refered to as Dead Butt Syndrome, it can occur when one of your biggest muscles in the body forgets how to operate properly due to a lack of activity.
Dr Kenneth Monaghan is a Clinical Musculosletal Specialist Physiotherapist, and Lecturer in Health Science and Physiology at the Atlantic Technological University and he joined Drivetime on RTÉ Radio 1 to talk about this (this piece includes excerpts from the conversation which have been edited for length and clarity).
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, could you be suffering from Dead Butt Syndrome?
So what is it?
"People in this part of the world probably would be familiar with gluteal deactivation or gluteal tendinopathy. Sometimes you'd be more familiar with that particular condition in sports people rather than non sporting population.
"The gluteal muscles consist of three muscles in your bum and they shock absorb you when you take a step or when you're walking or running. They're also responsible for keeping your pelvis control and controlling some of your back movements so they're working all the time, especially when you're standing or doing activities sitting down
"Where there seems to be problems is when people sit down for quite a long time. We're not talking about sitting for just one day for a few hours; we're talking about where people sit down continuously at desks and computer screens for days and weeks and months over the period of their life."
From TEDxCapeMay, personal trainer Nicole Simonin on how to offset Dead Butt Syndrome with a few exercises
How do you know if you have it and what does it do to you?
"People would come to people like myself in clinics and they would report that they have some pain in their gluteal areas or they have some low back pain and people think it's maybe around the sacroiliac area. When you sit down, your sitting muscles work in pairs so when you're sitting there at your desk at this moment, the muscles on the front of your hip are slightly shortened a little bit and the muscles on the back of your hip they're going to be slightly lengthened.
"If you're only doing that for short lengths of time, it doesn't really make so much difference. But if you're going for a long time, it actually can lead to a little bit of micro trauma and the muscles at the back don't work as well as they should. Of course, if a big muscle like the gluteals don't work perfectly then other muscles around it are going to compensate a little bit and that's what eventually leads to other types of injuries.
"There's a lot of research that says it exacerbates disc problems and makes people a little bit more vulnerable to getting disc problems. The other thing is sports injuries like hamstring tears and shin splints and things like that have been associated with this particular lack of activity so it's common now. If somebody's a very good sports person but they're at a desk all day then they need to be a little bit careful before they engage in their activities that evening. We commonly see sportspeople do gluteal activation exercises before they begin exercise so that they're ready to go when they're activated.
That expression comes from the United States, but the term is really gluteal amnesia
"I suppose it's people who aren't sports people and who wouldn't usually think about this injury that we need to talk about. They may want to go for their walks in the evening time - or should be going for their walks – so it is very useful for them to learn about this."
Why is it called Dead Butt Syndrome?
"That expression comes from the United States, but the term is really gluteal amnesia. It's just a term that has been thrown out there, I suppose, to highlight the issue but it's not an actual desensitisation or lack of electricity that's going to the muscles per se. It's just that the muscle over a period of time can become a little bit injured and you can get a little bit of microtrauma."
Follow RTÉ Brainstorm on WhatsApp and Instagram for more stories and updates
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
