FitPTwithJess

Hmm…if you are a Nigerian and you travel a lot using public transport I am sure you can relate.
I am a student (as you all know) and my school is located in Oyo state but, the issue is I live in Abuja. Whenever I tell people this, their first reaction is always “ah, so you travel that far? Why didn’t you pick a school close to home?” and so on. The truth Is I actually enjoy travelling long distances, the only issue I have with it is how I feel after travelling such distances. From Abuja to Oyo state is roughly 12 hours plus the roads are very bad emphasis on “bad”, so that means that for those 12 hours I am seated (trying to shift from one side to another) with about a break period of 10-15 minutes to stretch when the driver stops to eat. Usually, when I travel to or from school I experience serious back pain for like a week before I gain myself back. It’s really crazy!
We have all heard the saying “NO PAIN, NO GAIN!” but, I don’t believe it should apply to the back. Back pain is one of the most common pains experienced by people today. Why? It could be caused by our stressful day-to-day activities including our jobs, our sedentary lifestyles, overworking ourselves, bad posture or an underlying condition. Like any other kind of pain, back pain has the ability to interfere in all your activities. That is why it is important to have the right knowledge and also apply it appropriately, so today we will be understanding more about back pain.

WHAT IS BACK PAIN?
In simply terms, Back pain is pain that occurs along the spine or back region. This pain could be at the entire back or just a particular part of the back. Back pain could be acute or chronic.

WHAT CAUSES BACK PAIN?
As I stated earlier, back pain can be caused a number of things such as your job for example, let’s say I work in office from 9-5 and I am always at my desk typing out documents, sending out emails and so on. At first, there might be no issue but after a while doing the same thing over and over I will start to experience low back pain because I am constantly seated and I don’t take the necessary precautions like taking a break every 10 minutes to stretch and work around a bit.
Other things like not exercising, overworking ourselves (people that gym a lot, please take it easy), bad posture (I am guilty of this one), and even some underlying conditions like spondylosis, arthritis, osteoporosis and also child birth.

DOs AND DON’Ts OF BACK PAIN.
Dos.
If you can cope, try and stay as active as possible. Continue with your daily activities.

If you must treat yourself at home, then use an ice pack or ice wrapped in a clean towel on the region for about 10-15 minutes to reduce pain and swelling. Swelling is usually a sign of an acute injury so it is advised to use ice on swellings and acute pain not hot water or aboniki please.

Use a hot pack (or hot water bottle, aboniki and the likes) to relieve muscle spasms or if you feel stiffness around the area.
To add to this, hot pack and the likes work better when used on sub- acute and chronic pain.

Try doing some exercises and stretches for back pain.
DON’Ts.
Do not stay in bed for too long. I know it is quite tempting to especially when lying in bed gives you some relief but, the longer you do this the more likely whatever is causing the back pain will worsen.

If you notice some relief but the pain keeps coming back or the pain does not improve after resting and is worse at night or the shape of your back is changing or you have been experiencing this pain for a long time please see a physiotherapist.

WHAT CAN PHYSIOTHERAPY DO FOR ME?
Physiotherapy focuses a lot on the use of exercise amongst other things in treating patients and exercise is the foundation of back pain treatment, especially if it is chronic. The thing is with or without surgery, physiotherapy will always have a role to play in treating back pain so why not just go the route where your body doesn’t have to be sliced open.
Physiotherapy Management for back pain treatment may include to mention a few;
Retraining of posture (educating you on the right way to stand, sit and also lift heavy things without hurting your spine and muscles.
Stretching and flexibility exercises.
Core strengthening exercises
Lifestyle modifications etc.

N.B Things like the kinds of food we eat and excess weight can contribute to low back pain. So we need to be careful with all those refined sugars and processed food that we eat, and we need to try and incorporate some form of exercise into our daily routines.
Also, people prone to anxiety and depression have a greater risk of back pain (your emotional health affects your physical health). The same thing applies to smokers and older people (starting from 30 years upwards) so please be aware of this and live as healthy as possible.

Feel free to share your thoughts and contributions in the comment section below, I really hope you learnt something from this. See you in the next post.
Ciao!