GET BACK TO BASICS

Sedentary lifestyles, bad posture and high-output exercise can take a toll on your spine. Here, Michael Fatica, from the Back in Shape Program, explains how to prevent back pain – or recover from it!

- Michael Fatica

Back pain can easily derail a fitness routine, and yet about 60-70 per cent of the population suffer with back issues. Indeed, the number of procedures for back pain has increased significantly since 2000. While this can be put down to a variety of issues, the impact of today’s society – in particular our increasingly sedentary lifestyles and our excessive use of electronic devices – cannot be underestimated.

Whether it’s working from home on a laptop, keeping up-to-date on socials or streaming films on a tablet in bed in the evenings, many of us spend hours on end hunched over a device, with little need or incentive to get up and walk around. It’s perhaps no surprise then that statistics from the British Heart Foundation suggest the average working-age adult spends around 9.5 hours a day sitting. Understanding our posture takes the brunt of this and is compromised. Bad posture greatly weakens the structures in the lower back, and can (in worse case scenarios) result in long-term, chronic back pain.

HEALTH CONCERNS

So, where does back pain start? Looking at the lower back in more detail, it is the tissues that are susceptible to injury. Just like in the knee or ankle, the ligaments and structures provide the integrity to the joint, so most back pain is related to the discs, ligaments and facet joints in the lower back. Back pain nearly always manifests early on as muscular pain – stiffness or aches – and is usually dismissed as just ‘muscle pain’. However, often it’s a result of a repetitive strain type of injury, which will only get worse with time.