Most people at some point battle back pain at some point, whether it’s for a short period of time or something chronic. Back pain makes people miserable. It makes work less fun, and even worse, it can make play less fun!
Maybe you’ve tried taking pain killers or anti-inflammatories with little to no results, and you’re wondering if getting an injection will help. Maybe it’s even so bad you’re actually considering surgery. I get it. We just want the pain to go away.
The problem, which I’ve written about before, is that medicine and injections only serve to numb pain
from problematic sites in the back. The really, really great news is that there are simple, (relatively) easy ways to actually get rid of your back pain… without medicine. Without injections. Without surgery.
1. Stand more, sit less.
If you’re battling back pain, I dare you to try this for one week. Just quit sitting so much. Being sedentary puts enormous amounts of stress on your back which you were not designed to bear. Thousands of years ago our ancestors would have rarely sat the way we do. They would have walked most of the time, and they likely squatted when they ate their meals. Now, I am not suggesting you necessarily take up squatting at your next dinner function! But think about it: How much of your day do you spend sitting? Most people sit after waking up, enjoying their breakfast or coffee. Then they get in their car and sit while they head to work or school. Then they sit behind a desk or in front of a screen all day. Then they sit in their car on the way home. Then they come home and do what? Sit.
If a good portion of your day is done sitting, take a minute to think about how you might be able to change those patterns. Could you walk during your lunch break instead of sitting the whole hour? Could you get a cordless phone for work and walk while you talk, if your work allows that? If not, could you take more frequent “standing breaks” right at your desk? Our bodies were not meant to be sedentary. We were made to move! If you’ll resolve to become a person who stands and moves and walks more, you’ll be amazed at how your back will begin to say, “Thank you!”
2. Stop drinking soda.
What does soda have to do with back pain? Do those fuzzy bubbles get lodged in there somehow? Well, no, not really. It’s not the bubbles that are the problem. It’s the chemicals. Back pain happens
because there is stress on your back. But there are all sorts of stressors that affect our body. One way to give your body a chance to heal and repair itself so you’ll feel less back pain is by removing unneeded stress from your life. Have you ever had just a bad, emotionally stressful day? Ever felt back pain because of it? Because stress is stress. Mental and emotional stress can cause physical stress on the system.
When you eat or drink stuff that let’s be honest more than likely came from a chemical lab than from the good earth, you are putting stuff in your body that your body was not designed to process. So when you consume lots of chemicals, that is a form of stress on your body which your body then has to deal with. If you’re hurting bad enough to read this far, wouldn’t it be worth it to give your body a break? Maybe you can’t just make the stress from your family or your job go away overnight, but you know what you can do? You can start drinking more water and less stuff with chemicals in it. We live in one of the most stressed out cultures in human history.
If you’re going to get better, you have got to be your body’s best friend and start removing chemical stressors from your system. A wonderful side benefit to cutting out soda or other artificial food and drink is that you will likely lose some weight which will also help your back pain tremendously! I was going to make this post FIVE things you can do to help back pain and make one of them “Lose Weight,” but none of us wants to be told to lose weight, right? So forget about losing weight for now. Just cut out the soda and see what happens.