What You Need to Know About Lumbar Support in Cars

We had it all in the 1980s: The Goonies, the Ferrari F40, Top Gun, the Rubik’s Cube, and daily reminders from TV and radio to “Stop, Drop and Roll” if we ever found ourselves on fire.

If you remember any of the above, you’re probably at an age where you’re already experiencing some back pain, so buckle up as we learn all about what the lumbar adjustment on your car’s seat is for and why you should probably start using it. If you don’t have back pain, stay with us because adjusting your car’s seat correctly could save you from debilitating back pain and injury.

My First Experience of Sciatica

It’s New Year's Eve, 2023. I’m celebrating with friends, introducing a new puppy to the world, socializing at various parties, watching fireworks, and enjoying the evening with high hopes for a strong kickoff to some 2024 fitness goals in the weeks ahead.

Fast forward three days, and I can’t put my pants on. Physical movements of virtually any sort cause a searing flash of dense, rich, throbbing pain from my tailbone to my left foot. Any activity beyond lying still on my back causes enough sustained pain to make me, an athletic 210-pound man, scream and see stars.

The culprit was sciatica, perhaps summoned from the depths of hell and into my lower back by the extra lifting of the holiday season (new puppy, nieces, and nephews), as well as the tens of thousands of kilometres I spent test driving cars and SUVs over the past year or so.

When you have sciatica, sitting upright or standing can be excruciating. Switching between the two is even worse. Driving? Impossible. Getting dressed? Nope. Using the washroom or taking a shower became the worst part of my day.

Recovery is slow. After a few weeks of immense pain, a major victory came when I could finally walk down the hallway and get myself something to drink from the fridge.

To summarize my experience with sciatica: zero out of 10, do not recommend.

I don’t want this to happen to you – and if you’re a high-mileage driver like me, you could be at elevated risk of such an injury.

The Design of Your Spine

Your spine is made of discs and resembles a delicious stack of jam-filled donuts. Like the donuts, each of your spinal discs has a soft and gooey inside contained within a harder outer casing, one stacked above the next. Everything is fine when the jam filling stays inside the donut, but with pressure and workload, one or more of your spinal discs can be squashed, and the gooey insides can leak out. That’s a herniated donut, er, disc.

A deluxe version of this recipe is sciatica, which happens when the gooey jam leaks out of the disc and punches into the nearby sciatic nerve. Not appreciating this, the sciatic nerve (which runs from buttcheek to foot with numerous branches) responds by screaming and lighting itself on fire.

Why Driving Sucks for Your Spine and What You Can Do About It

“The spine undergoes its greatest compressive load while we are seated, meaning that it is technically under more pressure in a seated position than in any other position like standing or walking,” says Dr. Samuel Merotto, a chiropractor in Chelmsford, Ont.

If you spend a lot of time in a seated position (driving or at a desk), you’re already at a disadvantage when it comes to fending off back pain and back injuries. Spending a lot of time in a seated position can aggravate smaller disc issues and disc pain into much larger problems.

“Any individual suffering from any kind of pain related to the discs in their spine – such as a herniated disc that you may see resulting in sciatica-type symptoms like pain shooting into the buttock or down the leg – will most likely be aggravated while sitting for long periods of time,” Dr. Merotto adds.

Powering through a full day of driving while you have existing lower back pain or disc issues, especially multiple times, is, therefore, a risky proposition.

“Another issue some patients get from extended periods of sitting is what’s known as Femoral Acetabular Impingement, or hip impingement. This is a congenital condition, meaning it has been present since birth,” Dr. Merotto explains.

“Most often in this condition, the head of the femur is too big for the socket (the acetabulum) and can cause excessive aching pain into the hips, groin, and lower back. Often, patients with this condition will get a very stiff and sore lower back within an hour or two of a drive and it can only be relieved by getting up and walking around to unload the spine. I’ve also had patients with acute back injuries that cause excruciating pain over every pothole or bump in the road.”

How to Activate Your Natural Defenses

Your spine has built-in shock-absorbing capabilities and a design to keep things stable and aligned. You’ll make the best use of these built-in features of your spine if you pay attention to how you adjust the lumbar support in your car’s seat.

“Our spines have natural curves to them, and the lower back/lumbar spine has what is called a normal lordosis, which is where the spine curves toward the front of the body,” Dr. Merotto says, adding that it’s important to maintain this natural curve while driving to stabilize the spine and keep it as supported as possible.

“The ability to adjust the lower spine with lumbar support in a car is monumental.”

Dr. Merotto says that when the spine is supported, it helps “absorb any bumps in the road and to withstand the compressive forces that come with sitting.”

“If a car has no lumbar adjustment or the seat is badly worn, the spine may be forced into a flat or even kyphotic position, where the lumbar spine bends backwards instead of forwards. This causes excessive shear loading on the discs, which, in turn, could harm those spinal structures,” Dr. Merotto says.

“Too much of a seated position, whether in a good neutral spine position or a bad one, will eventually be detrimental to the spine. If you set your spine up with good lumbar support, however, it will help reduce the risk factors of spinal injuries.”

To help keep your spine as happy and healthy as possible (while fending off future injuries and problems), shoppers considering a vehicle should note the lumbar support offered on the model they’re choosing. Some cars have no lumbar support at all, others can be adjusted two ways (in or out), while others can be adjusted in four ways (in or out, and up or down). With a four-way lumbar adjustment, drivers can set both the intensity and position of their seat’s lumbar support for the optimal fit with their seating position.

“My best advice is to apply the lumbar support to a condition that feels comfortable. It should feel like a bit of relief to your lower back when it is applied,” Dr. Merotto says. “The most important thing is to apply an amount that feels comfortable to you and that should be adequate support.”

Don’t Forget the Seat Pan

Though proper lumbar adjustment in the seat is important, it’s not the only factor to consider when finding a good seat in your next car to make life at the wheel easier on your body.

“When considering seating in a new car or truck, be sure to look at the depth of what is called the seat pan, the part of the seat that we sit on,” Dr. Merotto explains.

“A good seat pan is one that is long enough to support our full buttock and most of the back of the thigh. If a seat pan is too long, it may end too far into the hamstrings and cause too much pressure behind the back of the thigh closer to the knee. If a seat pan is too short, it may add too much pressure just underneath the buttock and pelvis and that may cause excessive strain on the sciatic nerve.”

Dr. Merotto recalls car shopping. His options were a vehicle from a brand well known for reliability but with an uncomfortable seat and a vehicle from another brand, not known as much for reliability but with far more comfortable seats. His decision was easy.

“Being a chiropractor, I’d rather fix my car than fix my spine,” he says. “It’s much easier to fix a car.”

He urges drivers to listen to their bodies when driving and to take regular breaks.

“If you are driving and your back becomes stiff or achy or your legs are falling asleep, your body is telling you it does not like that position. It is a warning system letting you know to get out of that seated position and to start standing and walking soon,” he says. “Our bodies will tell us when the tissues are starting to undergo changes that are harmful. If we listen to them, we will offload these tissues and keep them healthy. If we ignore them, we run the risk of injuring ourselves as we ask those tissues to do too much and cause an injury to occur down the road.”

Don’t Push Your Luck

Dr. Merotto says in some cases, he advises patients to avoid driving altogether to prevent injuries or to keep existing injuries from worsening.

“A patient should avoid driving for long periods when they have any kind of disc injury to the spine, especially an acute disc injury,” he says, adding that an acute injury is one that just happened or has happened within the past few weeks. “A patient with unbearable lower back pain, or severe buttock or leg pain arising from the lower back should likely avoid long drives.”

He says that he’s treated patients with sciatica who live an hour away from his office, and the long drive home would reaggravate their condition, causing them to be sore again by the time they got home.

“In my office, we are pouring water on a fire to help put that fire out. When someone does something that puts the spine in a compromising position, such as sitting and driving for a long distance, it’s like that patient is pouring gasoline on the fire that we are pouring water on. The gasoline will overpower the water and will reignite that flame, maybe even worse than it was before,” he says.

“The best advice I can give is for a patient to listen to the advice from their primary health practitioner and to avoid any types of excessive strain or aggravation on their spine, especially when it comes to driving for long distances with disc-related pain.”