The best way to address back problems is to avoid them altogether. Here are 10 tips for maintaining a healthy back.
1. Keep Moving & Build a Strong Core: Muscles are made to move, and the muscles in your core and surrounding your back are no exception. And keeping your muscles strong allow the muscles in your core to maintain your balance, prevent injury and reduce strain on your back.
2. Stand or Sit Up Straight: Posture matters with your back. Whether you are sitting at a desk and computer or standing in warehouse, maintaining an upright posture reduces strain on your back and the muscles surrounding your spine.
3. Maintain a Healthy weight: Your weight impacts your center of gravity. So, additional pounds – especially around your belly – change your center of gravity and cause strain on your back. Achieving and maintaining a healthy weight can reduce the stress on the muscles supporting your back.
4. Take Breaks & Pace Yourself: It is important to take breaks throughout the day. Whether you are sitting at a desk and need to take breaks to move around, or if you are active all day and need to take breaks to rest, both will help keep your back happy. Additionally, drastic changes in activity level can make your back susceptible to injury. If you aren’t usually active, jumping into a full day of yard work with no breaks will put stress on your back. Ease into such changes and take breaks.
5. Don’t Let your Accessories Drag you Down: We aren’t always aware of how the things we wear or items we affect our backs. But little things can make a huge difference. Carrying a heavy bag or purse on one shoulder, sitting on a lumpy wallet in one back pocket or wearing stiletto heels are all accessories that change our posture and impact our back.
6. Don’t Smoke: While smoking doesn’t cause back pain, it can make someone more susceptible to injury and will make any injury take longer to heal. Smoking and vaping impacts blood vessels and limits the nutrients going to both muscles, bones and the ligaments in the back and spine. Also, smokers are usually not candidates to receive the most life-changing treatments that involve implants or neurostimulators due to their increased risk of infection following surgery.
7. Manage Stress: It is no secret that people carry stress in their backs and necks. But, the problem goes deeper than having tense muscles when stressed. Stress can impact back pain in other ways as well. In fact, stress is known to cause an increased sensitivity to pain, reduced blood flow and inflammation in the body, all of which can make back pain worse and make it harder to recover from an injury. Additionally, stress contributes to poor posture and lack of sleep, which also impact back pain. Relaxation practices like meditation, yoga, and tai chi can help.
8. Lift From your Knees: Just as proper posture while sitting at a desk or standing for work, proper lifting technique is just as important for a healthy back. While it may seem easier to bend at the waist to pick up an item on the floor or to tie your shoes, that motion puts great strain on your back. Instead, by squatting to lift something, the movement shifts the strain from your back to your legs, protecting your back muscles and spine.
9. Prevent Falls: Often times the first time someone notices a back injury is after a “slip and fall” injury. In those kinds of situations, people often twist and fall unevenly, tweaking the back and hitting the ground or other object in an awkward manner. No one means to fall, but by taking a few precaution we can all reduce our risk of unexpectedly ending up on the floor in pain. Simple changes in our environment or routines can help us stay safe. Activities like walking on an icy sidewalk or driveway or standing on a chair to reach a high shelf or paint a wall are risky. Take smart precautions such as using ladders and walking safely in icy conditions to help avoid injuries. This is even more important as we get older, as our balance and muscle strength naturally lessens with age.
10. Avoid activities you know have irritated your back in the past: While it may sound obvious, if an activity has contributed to a prior back injury people need to avoid it. Whether it is lifting bags of mulch, long car trips with no breaks or twisting and bending to lift a toddler, activities that irritate a back can cause greater injury if continually repeated.