Improve Your Spine Health to Avoid Back Pain
Do you suffer from back pain?
Back pain can range in severity from minor discomfort or aches to sharp stabbing pains. You may be experiencing pain when you first wake up in the morning, bending forward, sitting or standing for more than 10 minutes, or walking long distances. If that sounds like you, we’re here to help.
Low back pain is the most common and most expensive musculoskeletal problem in the world. According to studies:
- It is the leading cause of disability worldwide
- Approximately 80% of the population will experience low-back pain in their lifetime.
- Over 600 million people at any given time are experiencing it.
- Is heavily influenced by lifestyle and other external factors like physical activity, healthy or unhealthy habits, sleep, and stress management.
Fortunately, our practitioners at Leaps and Bounds: Performance Rehabilitation can help you navigate any episode of back pain, big or small. We have physiotherapists, athletic therapists, chiropractors, and massage therapists who are experienced in helping you manage your pain and improve your spinal health. If you’re in Oakville, ON, or the surrounding areas, call us today.
The significance of spine health
When we think of health, we usually think of nutrition, exercise, and heart health. But spine health is also important for your overall health and normal daily functioning.
Your spine serves many functions in your body. It gives your body structure and it provides support both when you want to maintain certain positions or when you want to move around freely. It also protects your spinal cord, and together with your rib cage, the vital organs of your body.
How can I improve my spine’s health?
If you have back pain, you understand how limiting it can be. To ensure your spine’s optimal health, consider the following:
- Strength training – Your spine needs to be able to have the capacity to support the things you do in a day. The best programs include both compound exercises, like squats and lifts, and stabilization exercises, like side-planks and bird dogs. The amount of resistance used can range from just your body weight, to some external amount provided by bands and bells (dumb-, bar-, and kettle-). It all depends on what you need.
- Full mobility in each of the spinal movement planes – i.e., bending forward and backward, side bending right and left, and rotation right and left. Pay close attention to which plane you mostly move or spend time in (ex. forward bending), as you’re likely to lose the movement in the opposite direction (ex. extending backward) if you’re not regularly working on it. This imbalance could pre-dispose you to low back pain.
- Limit prolonged posture and positions. The great debate of good vs bad posture continues. What we currently know is that any prolonged relaxed posture or prolonged erect posture has the potential to cause discomfort or pain.
- Employ good habits for eating, sleeping, physical activity, and maintaining a healthy body weight.
- Limit or refrain from smoking and recreational drug use.
- Learning how to best manage your stress levels. This can include some of these things already discussed like exercise, proper eating, and employing healthy habits. Or, it can be about mental health strategies like practicing mindfulness, losing yourself in a book, or speaking to a professional.
How can we help you improve the health of your spine?
Our physiotherapists, chiropractors, and athletic therapists at Leaps and Bounds: Performance Rehabilitation specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of spinal and neuromusculoskeletal disorders. They employ a variety of techniques to improve spinal health in order to improve your overall health and well-being. Although differing in approaches, each discipline will try to achieve the same things: help you understand what is going on, provide pain relief, improve your mobility and strength, and teach you about preventing future episodes.
Make an appointment with us today!
If you are in Oakville, ON, or the surrounding areas, and you have been experiencing back pain, contact Leaps and Bounds: Performance Rehabilitation today to schedule an appointment with one of our skilled practitioners. By detecting back pain early, we can better help you manage it, and teach you how to help prevent it from happening again in the future.