Often, after fruitless searches for a single magic bullet to eradicate chronic back pain, people decide that living with discomfort is a normal fact of life. But living with back pain is not normal, nor is it necessary.
This last installment of our back pain series will allow you to create your own personalized long-term strategy for maintaining back health and living a pain-free, active lifestyle.
If you’ve been following along, you’ll remember that in the first article, we covered how back pain is a very personal experience with varied causes and equally diverse treatment options, but this research has shown that exercise is the most effective means of achieving lasting relief. .
I also explained the importance of establishing a mind-body connection and leveraging the power of the breath to not only quell your pain response, but also restore proper rib cage, pelvic, and spinal alignment to relieve pressure on your back.
In the second article, we looked at why your body needs movement to heal and outlined a variety of exercises to try to determine which ones work for you. For those suffering with sciatica symptoms, in part three we specifically look at exercises to relieve sciatica.
Finally, it’s time to put together a long-term exercise-based plan to keep you pain-free.
Trust in yourself
In the articles, I’ve shared more than a dozen exercise options, leading you to try them all while listening carefully to your body to determine which ones helped you get relief and start regaining strength and mobility.
To build your long-term back care strategy, you will need to continue to trust and develop your instincts.
Don’t be afraid to trust your mind-body connection to guide you in selecting the right exercises to incorporate into daily life and to meet specific needs, as your back occasionally sends signals that it requires extra attention or slightly different approaches.
These signs can be as strong as the temporary return of sciatic symptoms or as mild as a whisper of a muscle in your back feeling a little disjointed.
Since you’ve now invested the time and energy into learning how your body responds to different exercises and techniques, in each case you’ll simply need to get back to what worked before.
You should feel empowered to be proactive and confident in your own self-care!
do daily exercises
There is no passive approach that will keep your back healthy. Because your body is designed for movement, daily exercise will serve as your most effective preventative medicine. In fact, in addition to keeping you pain-free, just 11 minutes of moderate exercise daily can also help you live longer, according to research.
There are many ways to reach your 11 minutes or more of daily exercise. As we are focused on the health of your back, you should choose three of the exercises from the previous articles in the series that have helped you find relief and incorporate them into your daily routine.
Because of the role your breathing pattern plays in maintaining posture and alignment, I strongly recommend including the breathing bridge exercise as one of three.
Your three back care exercises should only take a few minutes to complete, so you’ll need to incorporate some other daily exercise to help you hit that low end. Consider this 10-minute bodyweight workout routine, or if you’re new to exercise, my restart your workout set might help.
Practice mindful walking
Whether like or beyond your daily exercise quota, I recommend at least eight to 10 minutes of mindful walking a day. As you take each step, be aware of the synchronicity of the movements involved and your ability to breathe well as you walk.
Walking is an alternating and reciprocal pattern, which simply means that while one side of the body is doing one thing, the other is doing the opposite to create a complete movement. This includes the upper and lower halves of your body and incorporates all of the supporting spinal muscles.
Proper foot position and heel support allow you to absorb shock and move your body weight with balance and control. O
Arm swing is essential to a functional walking pattern because it creates healthy rib cage movement in coordination with each step, facilitating necessary core, hip, and trunk strength that helps prevent stress on the spine.
Maybe walking has been painful for you in the past — but it’s likely that the muscles that contributed to your back pain were to blame.
By consciously training your gait to be a symphony in motion, you will be able to initiate and maintain healthy movement to prevent future pain.
Be responsible
Living pain free doesn’t mean limiting your activities or numbing your pain with medication. It’s important to keep moving proactively!
Take note when you’ve been sitting for an hour or more and proactively stand up, stretch and move to neutralize the impact of sitting on your back muscles and posture.
Once you figure out the right daily exercises to keep you out of pain and start to experience consistent benefits, you’ll find that you’re more and more motivated to exercise. That’s because your body is designed to reward you for giving it what it needs to be healthy and strong.
Exercise affects our physiology, increasing the production of feel-good hormones and decreasing our stress response. And just like anything that’s good and produces positive results, you’re going to want more.
I encourage you to work through every article in the series and find exercises that work for you to create an effective self-care program that takes you out of pain — and helps prevent pain in the future. My goal with this series is to empower you with education and resources to proactively care for your back and live better.
Source: CNN Brasil
I am an experienced journalist and writer with a career in the news industry. My focus is on covering Top News stories for World Stock Market, where I provide comprehensive analysis and commentary on markets around the world. I have expertise in writing both long-form articles and shorter pieces that deliver timely, relevant updates to readers.
