BodySense Blog

Back Pain Prevention: 5 Harmful Habits

Breaking yourself of certain bad habits can help protect your spine.

We all have bad habits some of the time. But now is a good time to fix the bad habits that can be harmful to your spine and cause back pain. Here are the top 5 bad habits that can be harmful to your spine:

#1 – Twisting when Lifting
So many people make this mistake! We forget to check our body mechanics while lifting, yet too much of this type of movement can be very damaging to your back. When lifting, follow these steps:

• Get close to the object
• Bend your knees and grasp the object firmly
• Lift straight up (don't twist!) in one fluid motion
• Hold the object close to your body
• Move close to where you want to place the object
• Bend your knees when lowering the object

#2 – Bad Posture
How often to you think about your posture? If you're like most people, not often enough. But bad posture — slouched shoulders, head down, knees locked — places an enormous amount of stress on the spine. Good posture keeps your body in balance and helps avoid that stress. Here's what good posture looks like when standing:

• Feet slightly apart
• Knees straight
• Chin slightly tucked in
• Shoulders back

Be sure to check and correct your posture during your everyday activities. Soon you will find that you are actually more comfortable when your spine is in balance!

#3 – Too Little Exercise, Too Much Weight
A sedentary lifestyle has become all too common in our society today. Eventually our spines will pay the price. In fact, research shows that people who do not exercise regularly and are overweight are more likely to suffer from back injures and pain. To keep that from happening to you, get up and get moving! Find a way to put exercise into your daily activities. Not only will it help keep your spine healthy, it will help you to shed those unwanted pounds and feel great, too!

#4 – Ignoring the Pain
None of us like going to the doctor, but persistent back pain should not be ignored. If you suffer from persistent, chronic, or recurring back pain, see your doctor. In most cases there is an easy, non-surgical treatment that can return you to a pain free life. However, if left untreated or allowed to progress, back pain can lead to serious and severe disability.

#5 – Smoking Tobacco
Among the many harmful effects of cigarette smoking on the body, early and more severe degeneration of the back is getting more and more attention. Nicotine — in any form — blocks the transport of oxygen and important nutrients to the spine's discs. Starved of oxygen, the discs are much less able to repair themselves and tend to collapse at a much earlier age than is seen in non-smokers. This painful collapse — degenerative disc disease — can lead to chronic back pain. Moreover, should any surgery be needed, smokers have been found to have much slower healing times and a high rate of failure to heal.

By Eeric Truumees, MD, for Spine Universe

Back Pain Ruining Your Day?

Chronic back pain is often due to poor posture, injuries, or muscle tension, and can profoundly impact your quality of life. Instead of using medications to dull the pain, try yoga. It is a proactive approach that can help prevent further injury and lessen the symptoms of current back pain. Yoga can:

• Engage your body, mind and spirit, which may lead to a feeling of self-reliance and control over your pain.
• Provide long-term preventive relief, through improved posture, breathing techniques, and stress reduction.
• Make you more aware of your body - balance, posture and proper alignment will be a renewed focus in your life.
• Strengthen your abdominal and leg muscles and increase blood flow - all of which can be beneficial for the back.
• Soothe your mind, which in turn can produce a relaxed, calm and meditative state that can lessen pain.

DrWeil.com

Back Pain Prevention: 5 Harmful Habits

Breaking yourself of certain bad habits can help protect your spine.

We all have bad habits some of the time. But now is a good time to fix the bad habits that can be harmful to your spine and cause back pain. Here are the top 5 bad habits that can be harmful to your spine:

#1 – Twisting when Lifting
So many people make this mistake! We forget to check our body mechanics while lifting, yet too much of this type of movement can be very damaging to your back. When lifting, follow these steps:

• Get close to the object
• Bend your knees and grasp the object firmly
• Lift straight up (don't twist!) in one fluid motion
• Hold the object close to your body
• Move close to where you want to place the object
• Bend your knees when lowering the object

#2 – Bad Posture
How often to you think about your posture? If you're like most people, not often enough. But bad posture — slouched shoulders, head down, knees locked — places an enormous amount of stress on the spine. Good posture keeps your body in balance and helps avoid that stress. Here's what good posture looks like when standing:

• Feet slightly apart
• Knees straight
• Chin slightly tucked in
• Shoulders back

Be sure to check and correct your posture during your everyday activities. Soon you will find that you are actually more comfortable when your spine is in balance!

#3 – Too Little Exercise, Too Much Weight
A sedentary lifestyle has become all too common in our society today. Eventually our spines will pay the price. In fact, research shows that people who do not exercise regularly and are overweight are more likely to suffer from back injures and pain. To keep that from happening to you, get up and get moving! Find a way to put exercise into your daily activities. Not only will it help keep your spine healthy, it will help you to shed those unwanted pounds and feel great, too!

#4 – Ignoring the Pain
None of us like going to the doctor, but persistent back pain should not be ignored. If you suffer from persistent, chronic, or recurring back pain, see your doctor. In most cases there is an easy, non-surgical treatment that can return you to a pain free life. However, if left untreated or allowed to progress, back pain can lead to serious and severe disability.

#5 – Smoking Tobacco
Among the many harmful effects of cigarette smoking on the body, early and more severe degeneration of the back is getting more and more attention. Nicotine — in any form — blocks the transport of oxygen and important nutrients to the spine's discs. Starved of oxygen, the discs are much less able to repair themselves and tend to collapse at a much earlier age than is seen in non-smokers. This painful collapse — degenerative disc disease — can lead to chronic back pain. Moreover, should any surgery be needed, smokers have been found to have much slower healing times and a high rate of failure to heal.

Last Updated: 11/24/2008

Content provided by Spine Universe.

3 Tips to Zap Stress Before It Strikes

The symptoms of stress usually sneak up on us — building slowly, then culminating in physical discomfort, like headaches, back pains, or stiff necks. Why not stop stress in its tracks? There's no one-size-fits-all approach, but a combination of stress management techniques can keep everyday tensions and anxieties from getting the best of you.

Take one minute per hour each day to just breathe and do nothing — no phones, no lists, no responsibilities. Just as your cell phone needs recharging, so do you.

Get better organized. Many people spend 20 percent of their time looking for things. Label your belongings, alphabetize files. It may sound mundane, but order will help you save time and energy.

Laugh at yourself and try to make others laugh. Playfulness and a sense of humor can take the edge off some of life's situations.

Everyday Health - Healthy Living on 12/30/2008

Study shows yoga can help back pain

In the confounding debate over how to best relieve chronic back pain, a study published in a top-tier medical journal gives a nod to a gentle form of yoga. But it also acknowledges the benefits of general exercise in alleviating back discomfort and tightness.

So, you ask (shaking those ibuprofen like dice), what strategy is best? First, the recent research:

The study, published in December 2005 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, randomly assigned 101 adults (ages 20 to 64) with chronic low back pain to 12 weeks of yoga classes, general exercise classes or self-treatment guided by the book The Back Pain Helpbook (HarperCollins, 1999).

Those in the yoga and exercise groups attended a 75-minute class weekly and were free to practice their assigned disciplines at home. Most did so a few days per week. The book group did exercises — some of them back-specific — at home, but most did not accumulate as much activity as the other participants.

The yoga and exercise teachers crafted the classes specifically to address back pain. Yoga poses included the cobra, bridge, warrior, lunge and lying twist. Each class comprised 5 to 12 postures, each repeated 3 to 6 times, plus a period of deep relaxation.

The exercise class included 7 aerobic exercises and 10 strengthening moves focusing on leg, hip, abdominal and back muscles.

All participants reported improved back-related function at 12 weeks, but only the yogis showed sustained improvement at 26 weeks: 78% of that group improved significantly, compared with 63% of exercisers and 47% of book readers.

The findings carry significant caveats: Researchers could not "blind" the study, meaning that all participants knew what intervention they were getting, a factor that can influence the outcome. There was also no control group to demonstrate the widely observed phenomenon that most people with back pain get better even if they do nothing. Results were based on self-reports.

"OK," you're saying, "research seems to support yoga and exercise. But my sister solved her back problem with a chiropractor, our dad used basic stretches and my boss' uncle swears by gravity boots. What gives?"

"There are a lot of structures in the back," explains Karen J. Sherman, Ph.D., M.P.H., associate scientific investigator at the Group Health Cooperative's Center for Health Studies in Seattle, who was the lead author of the study. "It's not like the heart, where you can take a picture and see what’s wrong. For most people, it is very hard to figure out what's causing the [back] pain."

Thus, Sherman acknowledges, different treatments will work for different people in ways that are hard to predict. But “yoga offers some things — like the [focus on] breathing and relaxation,” that could make the difference. But the study did not determine what aspects of yoga practice made it beneficial.

A British study published last year hailed the benefits of exercise that were not back-specific — like walking — for back pain.

This leads Sherman to conclude: Unless you have acute back pain, "moving your body is always a good thing to do. The [scientific] literature supports that." And taking a class properly designed to relieve back pain may help more than making a go of it yourself. If you like yoga or just want to try it, you may do well.

Revolution Health Group