Back Care
- Rest doesn’t equal recovery: Resting doesn’t help you recover from low back pain, if anything it will encourage your back to become stiffer and more sore.
- Get up and go, go, go: As 99.5% of physios will tell you, exercise is the most beneficial treatment for low back pain. By keeping your back moving it promotes movement in the joints and reduces muscle stiffness (the other 0.5% of physios think exercise is pretty neat too).
- Walking gets both our back muscles and our glutes (bottom muscles) to become active and help relieve the stress from your back. The recommended goal is 6000 steps, so you can try to park further away from work or find a new local business around your house and walk there to help reach that goal.
- Get “back” to what you love: As restrictions are starting to ease, we’ll able to get back to the activities we love. Whether it’s jogging, cycling or kicking the footy around like your favourite NRL player, any activity is great for low back pain. Keep in mind to ease yourself back into it to avoid overexerting yourself.
- A stiff back calls for a stiff drink: One drink can’t hurt, right?
Normally people will experience episodes of low back pain around twice per year. Due to everyone adopting the lifestyle of a sloth in recent months, many have experienced back pain twice per fortnight rather than a year. Whether you’ve been sitting longer than usual while working from home or watching re-runs of our favourite tv shows, your back can become stiff and sore from the extra pressure on the joints in our back and from tighter and weaker muscles. Never to fear, your physios are here with some wise advice to get those backs feeling brand new.
