Is there a single recipe for maintaining a healthy spine?
Absolutely not! Humans are complex. Each of our bodies have a different history. We come in many shapes and sizes. Some of us are sedentary while others are extreme athletes. Some have desk jobs, others do physical labor. Some have a history of low back problems and some currently suffer from back pain. While we cannot offer one approach that meets everyone’s needs, we can outline some principles for maintaining a healthy back.
Our recipe for a healthy back:
Stay strong, stay long and stay flexible.
Stay Strong:
Develop functional strength. Functional strength helps you to do the activities of your daily life. Functional strength comes from physical activity (walking, running, bicycling, yoga, tai chi) not from lifting weights or working out with machines, which tend to focus on individual muscles. For functional strength, think activity, not exercise.
Functional activities help us to:
Strengthen postural muscles that help to keep us upright.
Increase our aerobic capacity, build stamina and help to strengthen the cardiovascular system.
Strengthen the entire body and enhance our efficiency in work and play.
Stay Long:
Maintain a healthy posture in sitting, standing and in all activities. Keeping your body well stacked vertically helps you to move with ease and efficiency. Vertical posture help you keep your length. When our posture becomes stooped, we loose verticality, we lose mobility.
Good sitting posture is critical to maintaining a healthy back. A few key elements to good sitting posture are:
Feet flat on the floor with knees and hips at right angles.
Firm seat base to support upright sitting
Maintain the lumbar lordosis
Break it up. Walk around every 30 minutes.
Avoid sitting in couches, armchairs and beds. They don’t allow you to sit upright and maintain your lumbar lordosis.
Stay Flexible:
When we are born, our bodies are highly flexible. As we age, we tend to become progressively stiffer. The lumbar spine has three basic movements:
1. Flexion, or the ability to bend forward.
2. Extension or the ability to bend backward.
3. Lateral flexion or side bending (rotation is part of this movement.)
Why is flexibility important to spinal health? Our lives are filled with normal activities that require full mobility in our backs. When you lose spinal mobility (flexion, extension or lateral flexion) and try to perform normal activities, back pain is produced from the overstretch of spinal ligaments.
Here’s what not to do:
Avoid crunches and leg lifts. Both shorten the hip flexor (psoas) and rectus abdominis muscles. The psoas attaches to the lumbar spine. When it shortens, the mechanics of the spine are distorted. Shortening the rectus abdominis shortens the waistline and also distorts the mechanics of the spine.
At Frome Physical Therapy, over half of our patients come to us with a low back or neck problem. Treatment begins with a thorough Physical Therapy evaluation which reveals the history and nature of your particular back problem and how it developed. A custom tailored treatment program that often includes Five Element Acupuncture, Rolfing® and specific exercises that draw from the Physical Therapy, yoga and chi gong traditions.
The contents in this article are not meant to be diagnostic or prescriptive. Back problems are often complex, and a physician should always be consulted before choosing a course of treatment.