When You Think ‘Back Pain’, What Comes up in Your Mind?

When you think ‘back pain’, what comes up in your mind?

Is it the time you struggled to move with pain, the way you ended up walking like quazi modo? Or when you see someone else struggle, do you think they may be over exaggerating their discomfort to potentially avoid doing something they just don’t want to do?!

Whatever you may think, is right. Because it affects us all in such a different way. However, what is true across the board whether we have back pain or not, is just how important it is to look after our back health.

Why is that the case? Well let’s substitute the word ‘back’ for ‘spine’. Do you think it is important to look after your spine? What about those unfortunate enough to have had a spinal or spinal cord injury… we all know how serious that can be.

Here are my top 3 reasons to look after your spine and my top 5 tips to help improve the health of your spine.

Why look after the spine?

1. It protects your spinal cord (that which controls all other functions of the body)

2. Poor spinal health can lead to poor general health in the future

3. Poor spine health can reduce mobility and independence long term

So, what can you do?

1. Move, move, move.
Sitting for a sustained period is very harmful for the spine. Walk daily and stand up and move regularly.

2. Stretch.
In particular pay attention to stretching the leg muscles, not the back. This will take pressure off the back while keeping it strong.

3. Water.
In between each bone of the spine is a disc. Dehydration can lead to compression and poor healing within these discs.

4. Alignment.
Try not to sit twisted or sleep on your front. This will twist the spine, leading to uneven wearing and may cause long term problems.

5. Get it checked proactively.
So much can be done for your spine before you have pain. Why wait for the problem, prevent it and have the best spine health possible by seeing your chiropractor.

Remember, just because it is behind you doesn’t mean it’s not important…

Look after your spine today and it will look after you long term.

Yours in health

Tom