Health and Fitness
How to Defeat Back Pain with Three Postural Tips from a Physiotherapist
I explain why ergonomics and good posture are critical for physical and mental health and how we correct postural issues.
My Poignant Experience of Back Pain
Living with pain was not fun when I worked full-time and studied part-time ambitiously for many years.
Fortunately, my private health insurance covered alternative therapies such as physiotherapy, osteopathy, kinesiology, myotherapy, remedial massage, and acupuncture consultation several times a year.
Through referrals from friends who suffered from back pain, I was lucky to find an experienced and well-educated physiotherapist with a Bachelor of Physiotherapy, a Bachelor of Clinical Sciences in Osteopathy, and a Diploma in Kinesiology.
With many years of experience, my physiotherapist has become a catalyst in improving my physical and mental health. He served as a therapist and an educator for me. He helped many patients to heal naturally, with no medication.
In addition, as a holistic medicine practitioner, he referred me to remedial massage, myotherapy, acupuncture, and hypnotherapy practices. These alternative therapies addressed both physical and mental health issues from different angles.
He was the first medical professional who introduced me to the importance of magnesium, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, alpha-lipoic acid, and the most researched fitness supplement, creatine, for my muscle health.
He advised me to consult a naturopath about these nutrients.
Unfortunately, my family doctors did not even mention these beneficial nutrients when severely suffering from muscle and joint pain.
The physiotherapist also suggested reducing extreme running, which caused extra inflammation and pain for my muscles and joints.
Apart from healing dynamics, such as listening to the body’s critical messages and taking corrective actions timely, the best knowledge I gained from the consultation with my physiotherapist was ergonomics. Ergonomics is a workplace practice that can also apply to homeworkers.
The primary purpose of ergonomics is to eliminate discomfort and fatigue and mitigate the risk of injury at work. It was critical in my workplace as I had to use computers and desk phones all the time at work.
An occupational therapist provided some guidelines in earlier years, but I learned the practical details from my physiotherapist.
My problem stemmed from eight hours of office work followed by six hours of research in academic libraries to complete my postgraduate degrees.
In addition, two hours of extra time to enter my notes on a desktop computer at home was exacerbating my muscle pain. Fortunately, an angel-like supervisor taught me to drink from a fire hose and achieve more with less effort.
In the 80s and 90s, we had to use tiny microfiche indices and paper journals in academic libraries to acquire knowledge. There were no online journals, no laptops, and no smartphones to capture information easily as we do nowadays.
I had to find, read, and cite at least ten scholarly papers daily to complete my literature reviews for master's and doctorate theses.
Body and mind are inseparable, as I touched on in an article related to emotional regulations leveraging my learning from the interdisciplinary studies of psychoneuroendocrinology.
The body’s discomfort directly or indirectly affects our mental health and life satisfaction. For example, balancing hormones and neurotransmitters is critical for our mental health.
When I consulted my family doctors about my muscle pain and discomfort in those days, they usually prescribed potent anti-inflammatory and pain-killing medications. They killed the pain but caused me more suffering in the long term.
Fortunately, I discovered alternative physical therapies such as physiotherapy, kinesiology, osteopathy, myotherapy, remedial massage, and acupuncture, improving my mental and emotional health.
As the details of these therapies are beyond the scope of my article, I plan to introduce them in another post.
The critical point is that these alternative therapies improved my posture, reduced my muscle and joint pain, diminished chronic stress causing inflammation, balanced my hormones, increased my energy, and improved my overall health and well-being.
Here are the three key points that I learned from my physiotherapist to improve posture contributing to physical and mental health.
1 — Improve Core Strength
Core strength is essential for maintaining a healthy posture. Working technology field in frenetic and stressful workplaces, spending many hours in front of computers, especially sitting longer than my body could handle, has adversely affected my posture.
I did not have the core strength to cope with physical pressure.
However, neutralizing the effects of prolonged sitting sessions with small breaks and movements has been beneficial for my physical and mental health.
The best investment was an adjustable standup desk at home. It was around $300, which was equivalent to a specialist’s consultation fee. In later years, my workplace also provided this valuable tool for people suffering from back pain.
In addition to advice and therapeutic guidance from my physiotherapist to solve immediate issues, I invested my time in learning Yoga and Pilates as preventative measures per his recommendations. These two practices significantly contributed to developing my core strength.
Yoga and Pilates are excellent tools to improve core strength and reduce back pain, shoulder pain, and neck pain. He also recommended hydrotherapy, swimming, and dry saunas, which became healthy lifestyle habits for me.
Practicing dry saunas introduced me to the lives of centenarians, helped me to initiate autophagy, and contributed to strengthening my mitochondria.
2 — Enhance Blood Circulation
Our organs, including the brain and heart, need blood circulation to keep healthy cells and tissues. Bad posture, unfortunately, reduces blood circulation to various parts of the body.
We experience symptoms like muscle pain, cramps, numbness, and fatigue when we get poor blood circulation. My physiotherapist also had a good sense of humor.
Once, he said he never wore high heels to prevent circulation problems.
I used to cross my legs in meetings, as many people did, to show a confident posture. Ironically, leg-crossing was highly recommended by career advisors in those days. It was causing me unnecessary muscle pain at work.
Later, I learned that it was not healthy for my body and removed this lousy habit by observing my behavior and making a conscious effort not to do it. I didn’t need others’ approval to display my confidence.
One of the best tips I learned from my physiotherapist was to scan my body regularly.
Making this a habit and mindfully addressing the pain points with gentle movements of affected body parts significantly improved blood circulation.
Scanning my body and avoiding wrong positions were remedies to improve blood circulation. I always find mindfulness practices useful for physical and mental health.
3 — Expand Physical and Mental Energy
Energy is essential for survival and well-being. However, the wrong posture can adversely impact energy levels and cause fatigue.
On the other hand, when our joints, bones, and muscles are aligned correctly, we feel more energetic.
Scanning the posture is an invaluable contribution to our health and well-being. For example, learning to keep my shoulders relaxed and my ears lined up over my collarbones significantly reduced my fatigue, increased my energy, and eliminated my previous back and neck pain.
From my experience, long sitting sessions for work or other reasons such as watching TV is the culprit for developing chronic muscle pain.
I keep reading and learning from practitioners. For example, I am grateful to find an informative article by David Liira, Kin. in my reading feed serendipitously. It is titled “The Easiest Hack for Avoiding the Effects of Sitting: You can say goodbye to back pain forever!”
Conclusions and Takeaways
Pain indicates that there is something wrong with the body. Pain is a signal of the body that informs us about the problem to make necessary changes and resolve it.
It communicates with us in the form of feelings that turn into moods. However, when we are in pain, we quickly want to get rid of it and suppress it with painkillers to feel better.
Suppressing pain does not remove the root causes. We only numb the symptoms temporarily.
Ironically, the situation worsens as the body cannot heal when the symptoms are suppressed, and root causes are neglected. It is like shutting the mouth of a crying baby who needs nurturing.
Physical stress can also increase the cortisol hormone, which can cause other issues like sleep deprivation and visceral fat gain. Balancing hormones and neurotransmitters is critical for emotional regulation.
Alternative physical therapies guide us to focus on the root causes of the discomfort and provide us with valuable actions to correct them.
For example, since my screen time was excessive, investing in an adjustable standup desk has been an excellent contributor to my postural health, reducing unnecessary pain and suffering. It also contributed to my metabolic rate by allowing me to use excessive calories.
One of my friends, Audrey, improved her back pain by using planks regularly. Here is her inspiring story.
When my body was inflamed, I felt a lot of back, neck, and joint pain. I documented my experience of defeating arthritis in the attached story.
Here’s How I Tamed Overactive Immune System and Lowered Arthritis Symptoms in 5 Steps.
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Sample Humorous Stories
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