Preventing back pain:
Back pain usually results from our bad posture or our lack of understanding of how to use our back muscles properly. Avoiding these common malpractices will help you avoid back pain and lead a healthier life. Simple measures include:
- Try to sit upright or better still, slightly inclined backward. Our backs are not designed to carry our weight while hunched. This causes increased stress on our lower back and chronic lower back pain.
- When lifting objects from the ground, do not bend your back. Bending your back puts the whole weight of the object on your lower back. Bend your knee to get down while keeping your back straight (squatting position). This allows your thigh muscles to carry the weight instead of your back.
- Sleep on your back or sides, not on your abdomen. Sleeping on your abdomen is a bad habit and puts increased stress on your back for long hours. It also makes breathing harder and can cause chest pain from the effort that your chest muscles were doing.
- Regularly stretch throughout the day. Do not sit for more than one hour without moving your back. Stretching will prevent muscle sprain and keep your spine healthy.
- Stay hydrated. This might seem like strange advice, but our intervertebral discs are made of cartilage, and cartilage is affected by your state of hydration. Dehydration decreases its elasticity and makes it more liable to injury.