The spine is probably the single most amazing thing about your body. It supports us as we walk upright and helps us to lift objects. Keeping the spine in good shape is vital to a happy, healthy life. As a sufferer of back pain myself, I have learned a few things that may help you to relieve the pain you have or, hopefully, to avoid it altogether.

Living with back pain can be a miserable experience. You cannot do the things you normally would and simple things like tying your shoes or holding your baby are cumbersome. You do not need to live that way. The first step is to understand a little about the back so you can avoid the things that will cause pain.

Your spine consists of a series of bones; the vertebra which are arranged in a vertical row which includes three natural curves: the cervical curve (in the neck), the thoracic curve (in the middle of the back) and the lumbar curve (in the lower back).

Between each vertebra are fluid filled discs to cushion the vertebra so they don’t rub together; very painful! Attached to the vertebra are a myriad of muscles.

So, as you can see, the back is a concert of muscle, bone and cushions all acting together. When you are at rest, a good posture is important to keep the spine in its natural position. A good posture is achieved by having the shoulders aligned with the hips. When sitting, the feet are flat to the floor, the knees at right angles. When standing, the feet should be no more than shoulder width.

It is important to have all three natural curves in the back at all times. The posture tips above will help with that. But what if you already have a problem? How can you relieve that pain?

Stretching and simple exercises are the best ways to relieve back pain. You can reduce any back pain you may already be experiencing as well as preventing more back pain through straining your back. Before you exercise or take part in any other potentially strenuous physical activity, you should warm up with some stretches and bending exercises to make sure that your back muscles are loosened up.

If you are already in pain, there are exercises you can do, like that above, but they need to be done carefully and not overdone. Leg lifts are great for this and so are side bends and forward/backward bends. Remember, though, that if it hurts, STOP IMMEDIATELY!

With good posture and making a habit of warming up before physical activity, you’ll be able to prevent back pain in most cases. Many of those who suffer from back pain find that good posture is able to alleviate their back pain and allow them to resume their normal activities in short order.

If you’re good to your spine, then it will do the same for you, providing you with a lifetime of pain free, flexible mobility.

One last tip to help avoid serious back injury and it is the lifting posture. Always lift with your knees, not your back. Bend the knees, grasp the object and just stand up. Works every time!

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One of the worst things that can happen to the body is having a severe case of lower back pain. Lower back pain can cause you not to be able to do your normal everyday things, and will make it sometimes hard to function because of the tremendous amount of pain.

If you’re worried that your lower back pain will always be with you, there is good news. Unless caused by severe trauma, such as a break, lower back pain can usually be lessened or eliminated entirely by postural adjustment and a specialized exercise regimen.

The one thing that most people do not understand is that lower back pain is from poor posture. Just by sitting up straight and exercising can eliminate a lot of the pain you are suffering from each day.

The back is under an interesting set of contrary demands. It needs to be rigid, capable of supporting lots of weight in an efficient manner. The head, shoulders and even the arms apply constant pressure during every moment we are upright, and how we carry this weight is key. Similarly, the spine must remain flexible enough to promote maneuverability.

Being relied on all the time, the spine maintains the needed stability by its two natural arches. If you are unfamiliar with what an arch is, these are stable structures that are featured heavily in architecture.

With that said, the arch in the spine is maintained by hundreds of muscles and the tension and relaxation in them. Every time you sit with poor posture or lean in a specific direction you are putting the vertebrae out of alignment. What happens is when the vertebrae comes out of alignment; the arches of our spine go away, which will then cause you a tremendous amount of pain.

With that said the posture is the most important thing to keeping yourself in a pain free lifestyle. However, in order for you to get your posture back you need to strengthen the muscles that are back there. Once you start to slouch the muscles are required to work a lot harder in order to hold your back up in a straight position. The harder and harder they work the faster they start to tire out and you go right back to slouching and putting pressure on nerves causing your lower back pain.

The best thing for you to do right upfront is to do some research on the correct ways to sit with good posture. Once you’ve done that, you can do other exercises to strengthen your back so the spine will be taught how to sit up straight again.

It isn’t enough to simply be shown what constitutes good posture, however. Good posture is only effective if used regularly, so it is important to acquire the strength that will enable you to maintain a healthy stance without picking up old habits once more. You must also gain the confidence in your efforts to persist with them, as those first few changes will feel very unnatural.

Just by doing the simple things of sitting up straight not only will help you with your lower back pain but will affect others as well. People see you making changes and see what it is doing to affect your body everyday and they will want to make changes as well. So go out there and get all the knowledge you can about how to sit up straight, and the various exercises you can do to strengthen your back, and you will be on your way to a pain free life.

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If you suffer from lumbar back pain, then you know it can be harrowing and very hard to live with. Much of the activities we do depend on having a strong and healthy lower back, and without one, every activity we do, or every moment spent up right can be excruciating. Since it may not be evident what has caused the pain, we are often left in wonder if it will ever subside.

There is hope, however. Unless due to serious trauma such as a break, most lumbar back pain can be lessened or eliminated completely and naturally by a good postural program and a regular exercise routine.

The lumbar back is the site of many muscles that are key to our maneuverability. The spine alone is packed with hundreds of tiny muscles, each playing an integral role in almost every physical action we perform.

As well as being made up of many muscles, the lumbar back also gives support by curving in toward the body, and forming an arch. The arch is a very sturdy structure and is capable of supporting much weight. This is why you see arches used often in both contemporary and classical architecture.

Unfortunately, we often lose this natural support in ways we aren’t aware of. By adopting poor postural habits for so long that they feel completely normal, we slowly draw this structure out of alignment. Then, when we hurt because of it, we aren’t sure from where the pain originates. After all, how we sit or stand doesn’t seem painful. It may, in fact, seem as if we’re doing nothing demanding at all, so why should that hurt?

Maintaining proper alignment of the spine can be very hard for a someone who is not used to doing so. Frequently the problem involves muscles that have become weak due to disuse, and how to make them stronger is not that evident immediately.

At times, we put too much effort into correcting our postures that we can overdo it and make new tension that makes the process even more difficult. Tension tires out the muscles, and fills them with fatigue toxins that add to aches and pains while supporting bad habits, and therefore continuing this bad cycle. Good posture does not involve strength alone however.

In fact, correct posture includes combining strength and relaxation. If all the muscles in your back become tense, the natural arches straighten into a rod. If all your muscles loosen up, the arches become too extreme. A good program that focuses on improving posture and tones the appropriate muscles while allowing the remainder to relax, and so will naturally re-enforce the supportive arches needed to have a back that is free of pain.

A good posture regimen will help train your body to achieve a comfortable stance that you can hold for long periods, and condition your body to hold it that way. By having good and adequate posture, the pain you have been suffering from will slowly lessen, or vanish completely. What was once tormenting you will begin to feel relaxed and natural.

Good posture is not only imperative for the management of pain. You will gain much confidence when you have good posture as well. People with good posture appear as if they are confident and are treated as such. All these wonderful benefits are easily achievable. In due time, you too can be benefiting from a healthy and pain-free lumbar back.

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Managing chronic back pain is not pleasant. This is because the back makes up much of the body’s core. This means that each time you move, your back muscles be combined into the movement. This can cause horrible pain. Luckily, this pain can be helped with practicing yoga.

Yoga consists of more than just simply stretching and meditating. It benefits the whole body and can significantly improve physical and mental health. People with back problems would certainly benefit from a basic yoga exercise regimen.

These advantages are very important to the well being of the spine. When any part of your body is in pain, the quality of life can change significantly. This is the reason why many famous Yogis say that you are only as young as your spine is flexible. When tension, stressed muscles, and lack of flexibility plague the spine, you will experience many problems with your quality of life.

You may be wondering what is it about yoga that can help improve the health of your back and spine. Well, there are many ways it can improve your health just through the stretching process alone. One of the major reasons that back pain occurs is because there is repeatedly tension in the back. Much of this tension comes from bad posture. When the muscles in the back get very tense, they can put the spine out of alignment. Yoga can help put the spine back into proper alignment, and can help to loosen the tension in the back.

Many people may know of the advantages of stretching and flexibility that yoga exercises promote, however many do not know of the strength that comes with doing these exercises. When the back muscles are strengthened through yoga exercises, the vertebrae of the back become well supported because of the developed muscles. This can drastically lessen your pain because the pressure on the vertebrae is reduced and will in result alleviate pain.

Again, it is imperative to incorporate any stretching exercises that help in improving posture. When you do not stretch, it becomes impossible to completely rid of tension in the body. It is a good idea to add yoga to your exercise program since it heavily focuses on tension relieving and stretching, and will definitely alleviate much tension in the back.

When doing yoga, it is vital for you to focus on the areas where you are experiencing pain. It may hurt at first; however, you need to stretch these painful areas since they are the root of your pain issues.

It is easy to reduce back pain over time by doing yoga. If you participate in yoga workouts, you will see that your back will become more flexible and stronger. This will reduce the pain that you are experiencing and will rebuild the vertebrae in the back. A good yoga program will eliminate pain better than any other method.

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Considering that such a large percentage of the population spends most of the day either bent over a desk or slouched in a chair, is hardly surprising that back pain has become such a popular topic of discussion. Not only can back pain become unbearable, but it can also place numerous limitations on the way we go about our daily lives.

Most people do not realize that as our daily lives change with the way we use our bodies, change must also be made in the way we tend to our bodies. Most back pain can be corrected easily and naturally unless there has been some type of trauma that has caused serious damage. Even then a simple exercise program will be able to reduce pain significantly.

Essentially, your back could be considered the very foundation of your well being, not to mention how important it is with regards to youth and vitality. Remember, it is the lower back which supports the majority of your weight, thus making it possible for you to maneuver your body.

The reason why the lower back carries such a vast amount of weight is because it curves inwards naturally. However, if the vertebrae begin to move and slip out of alignment for one of many reasons such as stress, tension, and poor posture, then you can be sure you’ll be experiencing back pain as a result. You need to bear in mind that if you’re experiencing back pain, it’s because your back his trying to let you know that something is wrong. As such, one should never attempt to cover it up by taking painkillers, or even worse, by going for surgery.

Essentially, you need to confront the root cause which in most cases boils down to correct posture. Many people have difficulty with regards being able to hold their spine in a suitable alignment, while other people tend to tense up due to excessive stress and in that case, the muscles soon become victims of fatigue.

The first step in alleviating your back pain is to find and practice a proper posture program to teach your body the natural, comfortable position in holding your posture for long periods of time then training your body to hold it this way so there is no repeated pain.

Strengthening exercises for example, will help to ensure your back muscles don’t become tired, while stretching exercises on the other hand will help to increase flexibility. Also, relaxation exercises can go a long way in helping to release muscles which have become tense. Ideally, one should have an overall body awareness program in place because with these exercises, one can be guaranteed of maintaining a good alignment.

One cannot really argue that awareness is essentially the key. By following some of the rules mentioned above, one can begin to enjoy good health and a nice strong back. Once you do, you’ll find that you gain a lot of confidence, not to mention the fact that you’ll be free from back pain. However it should be mentioned that you need to use the strengthening exercises, stretching exercises, and the relaxation exercises in conjunction with each other or else your bad habits will simply return. The bottom line is; in order to avoid back pain altogether, one has to change one’s routine in order to match the changing world we live in today.

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A few months ago my doctor informed me that I was suffering from heart disease and high blood pressure. I knew something wasn’t right for sometime. I had been suffering from dizzy spells and chest pains but somehow I was excusing it all to heart burn.

I had recently turned fifty and had often joked that fifty was the new thirty. So what happened to 30, I asked my doctor? According to me, I had many years to go. Not so much according to my doctor if I didn’t do something to change my health.

The standard approach is to prescribe blood pressure medication or beta blockers. I researched the effects of beta blockers and other typical medications but felt uncomfortable going down that road. I really believed that this was something that had been brought on by my behavior and somehow, by modifying my behavior, I could change it.

My first approach was to focus changing my diet to include more fruits and vegetables and less fats. I followed by trying to add some low impact exercise to my routine. Both of these changes went a long way towards helping me feel better about myself and healthier in general. They didn’t however, lower my blood pressure.

I heard about a nearby workshop on meditation. I had also heard about the possible benefit of meditation to blood pressure. I decided to give meditation a try before giving up and going the beta blockers my doctor had suggested.

I have to say, that results I experienced were amazing. I learned in the workshops that the first stage in learning to meditate is to stop the distractions and try to clear our minds. At first, it was really difficult to clear my mind of those everyday distractions but after a while I got the hang of it and entered into a wonderful place of calmness.

Because of the meditation, I am happy to say that my blood pressure is currently under control. Granted, I needed to take a global approach to tackle my overall health issues but the most important step I took was to begin meditating. I can’t say enough about the overall health benefits of this timeless and simple approach to healthy and conscious living.

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It wasn’t that long ago that my doctor informed me that suffered from heart disease and high blood pressure. I knew that I dealt with a lot of stress in my life but I always thought that I could handle it. It seems that the stress was handling me instead.

I had recently turned fifty and had often joked that fifty was the new thirty. So what happened to 30, I asked my doctor? According to me, I had many years to go. Not so much according to my doctor if I didn’t do something to change my health.

The standard approach is to prescribe blood pressure medication or beta blockers. I researched the effects of beta blockers and other typical medications but felt uncomfortable going down that road. I really believed that this was something that had been brought on by my behavior and somehow, by modifying my behavior, I could change it.

My initial focus was on lifestyle changes such as diet and exercise. I worked on eating the right foods and slowing increasing the amount of walking I was doing. While I felt better in general, the effect on my blood pressure was minimal.

Then I found out about meditation. There was a workshop being held in my neighborhood and I decided to give it a try. I had tried everything else after all. I did some research and read how meditation is proven to improve ones health in a variety of aspects. One of the most important ways in which meditation helps is in relieving stress. That sounded right for me!

The results of meditation were astounding. As soon as I began working on calming my mind and body and focusing on my breath I could literally feel my pressure lower. It took some work on my part and many times as I began learning to meditate I suffered from, what is referred to as, monkey mind or those endless distracting thoughts of a busy mind that tends to swing from one place to another without any apparent direction or destination. I was encouraged to continue trying however and as I did I found it easier and easier to enter into that place of calm and tranquility.

Because of the meditation, I am happy to say that my blood pressure is currently under control. Granted, I needed to take a global approach to tackle my overall health issues but the most important step I took was to begin meditating. I can’t say enough about the overall health benefits of this timeless and simple approach to healthy and conscious living.

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Are you having knee problems? Knee pain is one of the most common injuries in runners and cyclists. The IT syndrome or Iliotibial band friction syndrome as it is also called, is the most common knee problem. IT-Band syndrome causes a diffuse pain in the knee and sometimes also a painful, sharp localized discomfort nearby the knee joint.

The tough tissue band running along the knee bone, from the hip to the shinbone, called IT band was until recently rubbing against the thigh bone, nearby the knee joint, according to researchers. Flexing and extending the leg would cause this rubbing phenomena and that would cause friction. The friction would make the Iliotibial band sore and this soreness was the cause of the pain.

Today the researcher know, that the IT band is not rubbing at all (Fairclough et al.). The cause for the pain is pressure from the Iliotibial band on a fatty tissue, placed between the Iliotibial band and the knee joint. This tissue consists of a lot of nerves, which when stressed will give a feeling of pain. Flexuring and extending the leg build up the pressure on the fatty tissue.

With this new understanding of the biomechanics of the Iliotibial band syndrome it has become clear that to reduce the tension on the Iliotibial band you have to reduce the tension in the muscles connecting to it. That is primarily the gluteus maximus, the biggest muscle of the buttocks, and the tensor fasciae latae which is a muscle of the thigh.

You can reduce the tension through stretching and strengthening them. The stretching exercises I proposed in my last post 8 Yoga poses for removing or preventing knee pain (IT band) could help you with that.

Typical symptoms of Iliotibial band syndrome are:

* Pain just above the knee joint

* Swelling or thickening of the IT band over the lateral femoral epicondyle

* Pain at the hip

* Diffuse pain in knee area

* Sharp localized pain at the lateral femoral epicondyle

* Clicking - as if the IT band tightens and snaps across the joint

Typical causes for Iliotibial band syndrome are:

* Increasing distance in training too fast

* Running downhill

* Cycling with the feet in an excessive angle

* Running on a crowned surface

* Uneven leg length

* Bowlegs

* Weak hip abductor muscles

Typical treatment of Iliotibial band syndrome are:

* Putting ice on the sore spot

* Stretching

* Massage

* Rest

* Hip abductor strengthening

For those of you who havent got a problem with the IT band, the following methods could help preventing it:

* Stretching

* Strengthening of hamstrings, quadriceps, calf muscles and hip abductors

* Slowly increasing training volume

* No downhill running

* Rest

* Shorten your stride

* Using a correct sit position on the bike

References:

Cosca DD, et al.; Common problems in endurance athletes; Am Fam Physician. 2007 Jul 15;76(2):237-44

Devan MR, et al.; A prospective study of overuse knee injuries among female athletes with muscle imbalances and structural abnormalities; J Athl Train. 2004 Jul-Sep; 39(3): 263-267

Ellis R, et al.; Iliotibial band friction syndrome ” a systematic review; Man Ther. 2007 Aug;12(3):200-8

Fairclough J, et al.;Is iliotibial band syndrome really a friction syndrome?; J Sci Med Sport. 2007 Apr;10(2):74-6

Fairclough J, et al.; The functional anatomy of the iliotibial band during flexion and extension of the knee: implications for understanding iliotibial band syndrome; J Anat. 2006 Mar;208(3):309-16

Farrell KC, et al.; Force and repetition in cycling: possible implications for iliotibial band friction syndrome; Knee. 2003 Mar;10(1):103-9

Fredericson M, et al.;Practical management of iliotibial band friction syndrome in runners; Clin J Sport Med. 2006 May;16(3):261-8

Fredricson M, et al.; Iliotibial band syndrome in runners: innovations in treatment; Sports Med. 2005;35(5):451-9

Grau S, et al.; Hip abductor weakness is not the cause for iliotibial band syndrome; Int J Sports Med. 2008 Jul;29(7):579-83

Hamill J, et al.; A prospective study of iliotibial band strain in runners; Clin Biomech (Bristol, Avon). 2008 Oct;23(8):1018-25

Khaund R, et al.; Iliotibial band syndrome: a common source of knee pain; Am Fam Physician. 2005 Apr 15;71(8):1545-50

Miller RH, et al.; Lower extremity mechanics of iliotibial band syndrome during an exhaustive run; Gait Posture. 2007 Sep;26(3):407-13

Paluska SA; An overview of hip injuries in running; Sports Med. 2005;35(11):991-1014

Tibor LM, et al.; Differential diagnosis of pain around the hip joint; Arthroscopy. 2008 Dec;24(12):1407-21

Wanich T, et al.; Cycling injuries of the lower extremity; J Am Acad Orthop Surg. 2007 Dec;15(12):748-56

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