What's the Best Way To Avoid Back Pain?
Bad posture when lifting weights or even sleeping, can have some detrimental consequences for our backs. This article will focus on the many ways to avoid back pain, by just simply changing a few of your daily habits.
Tips to avoid back pain
Back pain and neck pain are fairly common aches to suffer in today’s society. Long and stressful work hours may not help the matter. Some causes also include using the wrong techniques at the gym or even sleeping in a bad position.
1. Yoga and Pilates
Both yoga and pilates are great disciplines to keep a healthy body and a sound mind. These two types of exercises strengthen and stretch the muscles in the back and help to maintain a correct posture. Additionally, they reduce stress and anxiety.
2. Lose weight
Being overweight has many negative consequences for our bodies, including back pain. What happens is that when we carry extra pounds, our backs must do more work to support our weight. Thus, start losing weight in a healthy way and contact nutritionists and specialists for help.
3. Sitting correctly
Most of us make the mistake of sitting in a bad posture, especially when we are at the office. We recommend that you sit up straight with your thighs firmly rested on the chair. And so, with this posture, you will avoid back pain, by reducing tension.
Men, usually carry their wallets in their back pockets and we recommend that you start keeping it elsewhere. When you sit, if your wallet is in your back pocket, one side will be higher than the other, causing the sciatic nerve to work incorrectly.
4. Don’t wear heels all day
This advice is generally for women: we recommend not wearing heels all day long. Heels will cause you to launch your weight forward, putting stress on your lumbar area to keep you up straight.
If you like to wear heels for your job, try to wear the lowest ones possible or remove them whenever you can. Also, avoid wearing them at the weekends.
5. Exercise regularly
Aside from yoga and Pilates, as we saw in tip number one, try to do other exercises regularly. Walking, jogging, swimming, biking, and even walking up the stairs are some good activities to avoid back pain. And so, try a home routine if you don’t have enough time for a gym.
6. Picking things up carefully
Believe it or not, one of the most common causes of back pain is using the wrong technique to pick things up from the floor. However, there are certain steps to follow for picking objects up from the floor or even picking up your kids.
Stand in front of the object, spread your legs shoulder-width apart, bend your knees and lower your body. Then, extend the arms and grab the object. Once you have it secure, you can start raising your body with your back straight and pressing from the legs. However, ask for help if the object is too heavy, don’t risk your wellbeing.
7. Improve your posture
Pay close attention to the distance between the computer screen and your head when you are at work. Make sure that the neck is straight and your arms are in a comfortable position.
8. Stretch
Finally, to reduce and avoid back pain, it’s imperative to perform stretching exercises daily. You can do them in the morning when you wake up, or at any other time, that’s more convenient for you.
Some of these stretching exercises may be to bend over with your back straight and stretch your arms over your head forward. Another good one is to lay down on your back and bring your knees to your chest and rock from one side to the other.
And so, make sure you take care of your back, you only get one, and a healthy spine is a happy life.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
González Montesinos JL, Martínez González J, Mora Vicente J, Salto Chamorro G, Á. F. E. (2004). El dolor de espalda y los desequilibrios musculares. Rev Int Med Cienc Act Fís Deporte.