This week is the annual Back Care Awareness week, a week brought to us by the BackCare organisation to highlight and open discussions on back pain.
Back pain is one of the major disabling health conditions among older adults aged 60 years and older. Many causes of lower back pain are age-related with physical and psychosocial changes. There is a distinct lack of awareness, especially in older adults to the causes and effects of back pain and pain management.
Existing evidence suggests that prevalence rates of severe and chronic low back pain increase with older age. As compared to working-age adults, older adults are more likely to develop lower back pain like osteoporotic vertebral fractures, tumors, spinal infection, and lumbar spinal stenosis. NCBI (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
There are many pro-active ways to both help prevent you developing back pain or tackling back pain if you do start to experience it. Here are 3 of our top tips to help you be back care aware!
- Live actively – leading an active life is one of the key ways to help make sure you minimise your risk of developing back pain. If you do develop back pain, keeping moving and active will help give you the best chance of a speedy recovery. You don’t have to do sport or organised exercise, walking, cycling, shopping, housework – anything that get’s you moving is great!
- Don’t be afraid of using your back – despite all the messages you may hear “Don’t bend like that, you’ll hurt your back!”, “Be careful of your back!”, “Don’t life that, it’s too heavy and dangerous for your back!” – your back is an extremely strong part of your body, designed to move and support you.
- Pain doesn’t always mean harm – it can be very scary experiencing back pain, but the pain you feel doesn’t always mean that you are doing harm or that there is anything serious going on. A serious underlying condition causing pain in your back is very rare. Obviously, if you are worried, seek professional advice to put your mind at ease. But back pain is often nothing to worry about and can be overcome quickly and effectively by doing the right things.
If you’re worried about how back pain is limiting your life, please do get in touch. It can feel like nothing will help and that you have to learn to live with back pain, but that is absolutely not the case. Our team helps 100s of people every year with back pain and we have a range of ways to help you, so please call 023 8025 3317 to find out more.
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Back pain myth 1 – Moving will make my back pain worse
Back pain myth 2 – I should avoid exercising, especially weight training
Back pain myth 3 – A scan will tell me exactly what’s wrong
Help, I’ve got back pain! What should I do?
10 things you should know about your back
