By Laurel E. Anderson for July/Aug 2005 City Health Magazine
Who has your back? I don’t mean in a crisis situation or on the field or court playing your favourite sport. I mean physically, who is looking out for your back? Are you in tune with your core (torso, lower back, abdomen and hips)? Do you know how to get it strong and keep it strong even if just for daily life and its activities? Statistics indicate probably not and that up to 75 percent of us may be affected by lower back pain at some point in our lives.
Back injury and its accompanying pain can result from a multitude of different things including poor posture, incorrect lifting, falls, stress, repeatedly carrying heavy bags or knapsacks and at this time of year especially, gardening. Equally frustrating as the pain itself is that an exact diagnosis of most back pain is unknown, but according to Johna Ruffo, a physical therapist at Hopkins Bayview in the United States, “we do know that most of the conditions are caused by the way we move our bodies, or the way we are still. The habits we have when we are sitting, standing or sleeping-the basics of living, predispose us to back problems.”
These are important words to remember as we go about our daily lives and the activities that accompany it however, will we always remember and if not, what do we do to prevent back pain and deal with it when, inevitably, we do experience it? Most experts and health care practitioners agree that the best way to maintain a healthy back is by preventing pain with a combination of exercise and educating ourselves about the proper way to use our backs during activity.
Just before starting this article, I was listening to the news and was surprised to learn that more than 88 percent of visits to the chiropractor in the summer are due to back/gardening injuries. With gardening season and all of the outdoor yard projects to tackle during the summer, we need to be more aware of our back than ever as we spend hours with our core bent in unnatural positions in the garden, as well as lifting a lot of things that are heavier than we are normally used to lifting.
So what are we to do to ward off injury when we’re out trying to make a Martha Stewart garden or attempting to copy a pergola from a photo we saw in Home and Garden magazine? Well, according to Dr. Pierre Paradis and Dr. Erin Davis, both Chiropractors at Hazeldean Family Chiropractic Clinic in Kanata, we need to warm up and prepare for the garden. Dr. Davis says that, “we aren’t warmed up or prepared to be bent over for hours at a time. It’s the perfect way to hurt discs.” Dr. Paradis agrees saying, “do not spend long periods of time bent over. Stretch and listen to your body and any subtle changes you feel or any pain that starts.”
Dr. Davis goes on to say that we must take care of our spine and the rest of our body. “Pain is a warning signal. We need to respect our body and listen to it, “adds Dr. Paradis. Both Dr.’s agree that people need to listen to their bodies and take care of them. Sounds simple enough but it isn’t always as we often tend to overdue it in the yard and with other activities and we often don’t listen to our bodies. “It’s not usually one event that causes the pain,” offers Dr. Paradis. Often pain starts a lot earlier than when we think and it can be an accumulation or combination of physical and/or emotional or spiritual stress. The key, according to Dr. Davis is to take care of ourselves before these problems develop.
I asked both doctors how back pain or chronic injury relates to the health of the rest of our body. “The nervous system and any shift in the spine affect everything else in the rest of the spine. One area interferes with another and other areas are compensated,” says Dr. Davis. Dr. Paradis adds “the same nerves that give us low back pain control function of the legs.”
So how can Chiropractic help back pain? Dr. Paradis explains the belief that one system that contributes to everything in the body is the nervous system and that it all starts at the neck. He continues by saying that pain isn’t the only concern of chiropractic care and that what causes the pain is just as significant. He uses the example of a car breaking down as an analogy to how we treat our body. “We treat our bodies like cars and parts. The oil light goes on and we ignore it because the car is still running. We tend to ignore our symptoms.” And like our car, if we continue to ignore the broken parts and don’t look or treat the car as a unit, it will completely break down just like our body could.
But have no fear if your ‘car’ breaks down on the side of the road or, in the case of gardening, on the side of the yard, Dr. Paradis and Dr. Davis want to help patients, not just based on today’s symptoms, but they want to adjust patients for ‘today, tomorrow and 5 years from now.” They call it ‘investing in yourself’ so that you can maintain a relatively injury and pain free lifestyle as you age.
But realistically, at the end of the day, your core health and strength is up to you. Listening to your body, preparing for activities, exercising regularly and seeking professional help when required, can only help to keep you light and nimble on your feet, both in the garden, on the field and on the dance floor!
Stand up straight – keep your body in its midline by distributing weight evenly on both feet.
Stretch – stretch before and after exercise
Squelch the weekend warrior in you – don’t overdo activities on the weekends as overexertion makes you prone to injury