If you have had a back problem before, chances are you are prone to another, and perhaps another and another. Maybe not right now, maybe not next month but maybe next year or the year after. Follow these tips to minimize your chances of ending up flat on the floor just trying to find a position of comfort, or worse yet finding yourself giving in to surgery.
1. No long sitting. Sitting rocks your pelvis backwards and makes the weight of the entire upper part of your body come directly onto the disc. Within twenty minutes your body will begin to adapt to this position. The added force pushes your discs backwards and may contribute to weakness and disc bulging. People who sit for a living have increased incidence of lower back problems. Get up and move around every twenty minutes or so.
2. Good arch support in your shoes. Your feet are the bottom of your spine. All the weight of your body pounds through your feet into the ground. The shock from this can shoot up your spine and focuses on any weak area. Proper arch in your foot helps absorb the shock and can protect your back.
3. Good nutrition for healthy bones and ligaments and muscles. The strength of the tissues that hold you upright comes from protein. A regular intake is essential to your cells the raw material they need to keep muscle fibers, ligaments and bones strong. Not necessarily high protein but three to five ounces of protein food at each of your three meals per day. Protein foods include dairy, poultry and eggs, meat and fish. Grains and beans have protein also but are higher in carbohydrates so don't overdo them.
4. Keep moving. Life is motion. Dead things don't move. Immobility leads to stiffness and stiffness leads to injury. The less you move, the stiffer you get. The discs in your spine need to be moved to flush the fluid in and out.
5. Keep your body on top of itself. Head on top of your rib cage. Rib cage on top of your pelvis and pelvis on top of your feet. That means your nose should be facing the same direction as your toes and there should be no twisting of your shoulders or hips, and your eyes, shoulders and hips should be level. Too much out of line and your spine suffers.
6. Show your curves. From the front and back your spine should be straight up and down as possible. But from the side you should have curves. The curves let your muscles move your spine easily and also help absorb shock from your body weight being pulled into the ground by gravity. You need to have a forward curve in your neck, a backward one in your rib cage and another forward one in your lower back. Watch your posture.
7. Remember BLT. Like the sandwich. Minimize Bending, Lifting and Twisting and any combination of those. These are the activities that are guaranteed to put the most stress on your spine. If you wanted to hurt your back the best way to do it is to combine B,L and T.
You will have this back for the rest of your life. Learn how to fix your back so you can avoid a lifetime of misery. It's little things like these tips, that when done repeatedly, make a difference in the long run. Get the skills to keep it healthy, treat your back better than you do your teeth. You get two sets of teeth and if needed you can buy a third, but you only get one spine.
0 comments:
Post a Comment