Back Pain—How to Prevent the Aches and Pains
In part one of this article, we went over the mechanics of back pain. Let’s get busy now and start learning about a variety of things we can do to help prevent back pain from striking. First, it’s important to have a strong back, and certain specific exercises can really help achieve this. Specifically, we need to focus on strengthening the muscles that support the back. Doing exercises that stretch the back are also important. If you visit the bigbackpain.com link listed below, there is a whole section on back exercises that you might want to try. Or your doctor can suggest some exercises you can do at home.
Second, your posture is really important to the health of your back. Remember how your Mom would fuss at you to sit up straight? As is the case with most of the things Mom told us growing up, she was right on with this one too. When we sit properly with good posture, our spines will be aligned correctly and our heads will be supported. If we are slouching on the couch playing video games, the muscles in our back will have to work even harder keeping our head up correctly.
Now, let’s talk candidly about your weight. If you weigh more than you probably should, your risk of developing back pain increases big time. It really makes sense if you think about it—having extra weight on your bones stresses out the areas of your body that are supporting the extra pounds. Because the lower back supports so much weight, being heavy is more likely to lead to problems. Believe me, I know from personal experience that losing weight is hard. It’s something that most of us with weight issues know all too well that we have to do, and we even know how to do it. But for one reason or another it’s hard to get started. For me, what finally got me going in successful weight loss was to give myself permission to do it very slowly. Eat a little less, and move around a little more, and the weight will begin to fall off. With it, lower back pain should also start to fall off as well.
Choosing back-friendly shoes is also important to preventing back pain. Shoes must be supportive and be comfortable.
We value and respect the experiences of all of our HERWriters, but everyone is different. Many of our writers are speaking from personal experience, and what's worked for them may not work for you. Their articles are not a substitute for medical advice although we hope you can gain knowledge from their insight.
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