Thank you so much for all your feedback on the last podcast we did about cold-water therapy, Wim Hof style. We got some great feedback and a lot of banter, but that is all part of the fun. Thanks for your support and for those of you who are asking as well, the ice tub that we get is from Lumi Therapy.
“Why is it that for the last two years, I’ve been having a problem with my back?”
The start of 2020 was obviously when the coronavirus struck the world, we were forced to be at home for eight weeks on a strict lockdown. We worked from home using our laptops from dining room tables and sofas.
Now there’s very few of us that are back in the office five days a week as we were pre-COVID, and most of us doing some sort of hybrid work. Working from home and working in the office part-time.
If I use my wife as an example, she sits at the dining room table to do her work. This causes issues with her low back and coccyx as she is sitting on a hard chair. She refuses to get a decent ergonomic hair as it won’t ‘look nice in the kitchen’. I have finally convinced her that getting an ergonomic chair will benefit her spine long term and we can tuck it away when guests come over.
The first thing you want to be doing is making sure that you’re not sitting for too long because sitting is the new smoking. It causes a lot of compression on the lower part of your back. It causes the head to round forwards and affects your posture. Not only your posture but your discs and when the head starts to come forward for every 20 degrees of head tilt, it puts an extra 3cm centimetre stretch on your spinal cord.
If you think about those nerves at the base of your spine and how much tension they’re under, it’s not going to take too much to cause them to start becoming symptomatic. It’s important that you have your head in a good position when you’re sitting and when you’re not sitting, I would suggest just trying to walk around as much as you can, take all calls standing.
The second way to avoid sitting is to get a standing desk. I know I talk about this a lot, and I promise I don’t get any commission on standing desks. But they’re so good because they allow your body to be in this normal, natural position with your body upright, your glutes tense, and your shoulders back in a good position. It will take all the stress off the base of the spine.
The third thing that you want to be doing is when you are at home is making sure that when you are sitting, your knees are lower than your hips to avoid putting compression through the base of the spine and also making sure that your shoulders are rolled back, and your keyboard is pulled into your body as much as you can.
If you are sitting on a sofa, STOP DOING THIS. If you’re sitting on your bed, please don’t. It’s going to cause problems with your back and please don’t lie on your front on your beds and use your laptop.
The other thing you want to do is to make sure that your core is stable because we all have to sit at some point, whether we’re traveling, whether we’re working, whether we’re looking after little ones.
Our static hold plank, a plank is an amazing way to build stability through the spine, especially postural stability, holding for 10 to 30 seconds. I repeat three times. I will include some links on a video of how we’re doing these and then you also want to work on something called a dead bug. This is part of McGill’s big three. McGill is one of the founders of core biomechanics and he’s a professor in lower back pain.
Another mistake we’re making when we think of core stability is to do sit ups. Avoid doing sit-ups.
Please don’t do sit-ups. They’ve been taken out of Marine Corps and Army training as they induce too much flexion in the spine and put pressure on the low back.
We’ve had 2.5 years since lockdown. Let’s try and put it behind us. Get your body strong. Make sure when you’re sitting, you’re not worrying about what the house looks like. People don’t care. Tell this to my wife and just make sure that you are sitting at a good position when you are sitting.
If you need any help with this, then please message us on info@westchiropractic.co.uk
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