All work and no play makes Ram Naresh a dull, scarcely muscular, boring, badly groomed boy with poor vocabulary and ancient dancing skills. It is very important to spend some time on oneself. When you work on improving yourself everything around you gets better. You learn about carpets and that helps you buy a great piece for your living room. You learn to dance and girls/boys want to dance with you at a club or a party.
What does all this have to do with Back-pain?
Let me go all ‘science student’ on you and explain through some bullet points. :)
- Spending time on oneself develops a lot of confidence and a confident person gets less stressed out because they know they can handle the toughest situations. A stressed out person increases his chances of contracting back pain and off course the longer the stress periods the more vulnerable you become. I have covered the reasons in one of my previous blogs. Do check.
- I am assuming that spending some time on oneself does include some form of exercise be it swimming, outdoor sports, dance or hitting the gym. Exercise in all its forms helps you loosen up your muscles and strengthen them. A muscle which is strong in any part of your body will help you deal with back pain. This has really worked for me. I have observed myself go through a process of regular exercises. I can say that, for instance, strong legs are also quite helpful in combating back pain. They are not as helpful as maybe your abdominal muscles or your back muscles which directly affect your back but they do affect posture, walk and act as buffer for absorbing some stress in situations when you have sudden jerk or a back and forth motion.
- Doing something you love will always force you to spend your calories. Unless what you like is an activity in which you need to be stationary like watching a movie or reading a book. Burning your calories will help you shed some of that extra weight. It will help you deal with my unwanted friend Suresh-the belly. And I like to believe that a lighter body implies that the stress on that vertebra is lesser. Just in the same way that a thinner person will have a benefit while dealing with his/her knee pain as compared to a person who is, let’s say, 10-20 kgs heavier.
So, take that well deserved Time-out and help yourself have a healthier back.
-Out
