Which is most important: Your teeth, Your Car … Or Your Back?

You brush your teeth and see a dentist; you check you oil and have your car serviced – but when it comes to backs, almost two-thirds people in the South-West have been suffering for up to 10 years and most haven’t done anything about it. 

Suffering in silence is not only causing untold misery to thousands of Somerset residents – it’s also costing business a fortune.  According to research from the British Chiropractic Association, a third of us have had to take time off work because of back or neck pain.

There is a myth that back pain gets better by itself; unfortunately, on the occasions that it does, it nearly always comes back again – and the problems tend to get more serious with time.

Home cures – used by over 90% of sufferers – are often ineffective: the traditional hot water bottle can actually make many types of back pain worse; bed rest also tends to hinder rather than help recovery and recent research has shown paracetamol of no help for back pain … yet these remain the treatment of choice for most people.

There are, of course, things you can do to help your back: our own #5stepping campaign, featured elsewhere on this site, is there to help your back as well as improve your waistline but, if your spine is groaning under the increasing stress of modern life here are our top tips for easing the load:

• Stand up: Sitting for more than 4 hours a day is not just a recipe for spinal suicide, it’s going to damage your general health too. So take regular, short breaks every half an hour and stand and walk whenever you can.

 

• Walk on: All 5-steppers already know the health benefits of walking – it’s simple to add extra steps to your everyday routine.

• Stop slouching: When you are sitting, relax and make sure you have your bottom against the seat back with your shoulder blades touching the back rest of the chair.

• Drive right: Given that we’re all going to be spending longer in our cars for the next few weeks, make sure the seat leans slightly backwards with your elbows at a comfortable angle for driving.

• Drink up: Like the rest of us, backs are 70% water – try replacing one caffeinated drink a day with a glass of water.

The final tip is pure common sense – you don’t wait for your car to break down or your teeth to rot; if your back’s been hurting for more than a few weeks, or if the pain keeps coming back see a chiropractor: managing back pain is how we make our living!

Early to Bed…

So far, #5stepping shouldn’t have proved to onerous – drink more water, walk a little more; drink less caffeine and alcohol, sit a little less … but then that’s the whole point of #5stepping: it isn’t meant to be hard, it’s all about those little incremental changes that stack up to make a big difference.

The third step you can take to make your life healthier is even easier … it involves doing absolutely nothing, and doing it for at least seven-and-a-half hours a day!

That’s the minimum amount of sleep the average person needs to stay healthy yet more than half of us aren’t getting more than around six hours per night – and not enough zeds doesn’t just make you feel a bit slower, it could kill you!

Gardening without the pain

The gardening season has started and, all over Britain, hundreds of chiropractors are rubbing their hands in glee as thousands of gardeners beat a hasty path to their doors to remove the pain from their shoulders, the ache from their backs and the cricks in their necks… but it needn’t be like that.

There is a myth that things need to hurt after a day in the garden, so accepted by gardeners and physicians alike that nobody bothers to do anything about it other than suffer in silence, reach for the pain killers or give up gardening – which is a shame because gardening is not just good for the soul but can be an excellence source of exercise, fresh air and sunlight, if done right.

#5Stepping Part 2: Stepping Out!

The second step to a healthier, wealthier you is almost as simple as the first: keep drinking the water… and start taking some steps – and more than just five of them!

Once upon a time when, if you wanted to get somewhere, walking was most likely the only option.  As hunter-gatherers, most days would have probably involved walking ten to twelve miles, presumably with days off if a mammoth had been bagged recently.  Then someone invented the wheel, domesticated oxen to pull them, bred horses to pull them faster and discovered how crude oil could be refined to make them go with a bang.  These days, few people even manage ten miles per week.

Are you getting Cold Dehydration?

Another good reason for drinking water is that it stops you getting dehydrated.

Obvious?  The average adult is made up of about 40 litres of water – that’s 60% of your body mass.  Lose as little as half a litre, and symptoms start appearing; by the time you’ve lost a litre, you’ll be suffering from impaired cognitive function, reduced physical performance, headaches and symptoms of fatigue.

In the long-term, there is evidence to suggest that chronic mild dehydration is associated with increased risk of a number of conditions, including constipation, urinary tract infections, hypertension (high blood pressure), coronary heart disease (CHD) and strokes.

But you won’t get dehydrated in Winter because it’s cold … WRONG!

It’s actually easier to become dehydrated in winter.  In summer, it’s hot (well, sometimes) and you sweat, both of which trigger thirst – which makes to want to drink.

Why #5stepping

So, why #5stepping?

I got the idea earlier this year, when listening to the Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Radio 2.  He was talking about ‘Blue Monday’, apparently the most depressing day of the year … it’s late January, Christmas is over, Easter is miles away and the New Year’s Resolutions have gone to pot – “As they always do,” I added mentally, which is why I gave up making them decades ago (in fact, ‘I will never make another New Year’s Resolution’ is the only New Year’s Resolution that I have ever managed to keep).“

Of course they always fail: they involve giving up the things we like the most – so how would it be if, instead of giving up stuff, we did something positive, something small but effective … or several small but effective things that would make little difference to out every day activities but, together, could turn our lives around.