In this post we wanted delve a little bit deeper into the science of posture, and share with you the mechanism behind your back pain. But first let’s take a look at a few statistics:
- 80% of the World population are experiencing back-pain at some point in their life
- 10% of the population is constantly suffering from back-pain
- 1st cause of employee sick-leave for companies in Europe
Those numbers show the huge impact of back pain and how it has become one of the scourges of the modern age; affecting people daily at work and at home.
Using our muscles the wrong way
Now, more than any other time, many of us are experiencing back pain because of working from home and the lack of adapted working conditions. In our everyday lives we continually put our backs under some kind of pressure. Using our lumbar muscles in this way should not be a problem. However, it’s when we are using them the wrong way that we run the risk of back pain.
So we have created this post, with Percko the posture experts, to help us all better understand why we experience back pain and how we can fix it, or at the very least avoid the worst. We only have one back, let’s take care of it!
The back and more specifically your spine is the main structure to which many ligaments and muscles are connected. These enable you to move, but also to straighten up and thus to maintain your body’s natural balance.
In less than 100 years, we moved from a mostly standing position to a sitting one and the problem is that our spine did not get enough time to adapt. This change in the direction of the body’s axle led to a change in the centre of gravity and to an increased flexibility of the body through the development of curvatures on the spine. It is fundamental to preserve those curvatures to maintain maximum shock absorption.
But, what is necessary to keep a strong back and prevent chronic back pain?
The modern human spine has two main characteristics: it is at the same time a static organ and a dynamic organ. Static as it supports your body weight and dynamic as the vertebrae are articulated to enable a high level of mobility. To keep the efficiency of the static organ it is fundamental to maintain strong deep muscles as they must maintain constant efforts to keep a good posture.
To preserve the dynamic organ, you have to make sure you remain flexible to avoid hurting your joints and discs. This flexibility is possible only if you keep stretching and moving your spine (see our previous post on stretching techniques). This is why remaining in a static position for a long period can trigger muscle pain and back pain.
So what can we learn?
To relieve lumbar muscles pain and general back pain you have to keep a correct posture and move regularly (minimum five minutes every hour and a half). During a long day in front of a computer, your spine loses its flexibility and learns bad postural habits.
When your back muscles get tired at the end of the day, you begin to slouch and to reposition your back, which has the immediate consequence of redistributing the weight towards painless nearby muscles, but also of increasing the torsion forces and shearing on intervertebral disks.
In one day, the variation on intervertebral discs can shrink your total spine height by 3cm. If you carry a load it is even worse as it sweeps the water away from the discs which increases the risk of damage.
Those adaptations place you in high-risks situations, due to an unconscious compensatory posture, that can lead to accidents or chronic pain.
How do I know that I am adopting the correct posture?
You may have colleagues, family or friends that (pre-lockdown) visit a physiotherapist or an osteopath, which will help them but a physiotherapist can’t be there every minute of the day giving you advice for your back.
There are also some really effective new technological solutions available to train your back (rather than trying to replace the support it provides). And here’s the salesy bit, because one of the leading solutions is the patented Percko Lyne Technology.
The Solution
Incorporating innovative fabrics that integrate elastic tensors within the fibre. The Percko system has been developed as an “intelligent second skin”. The light and comfortable fibres allow Lyne garments to be worn very discreetly under your clothes and fit in with you everyday activities.
The garment’s strength comes from the ingenious system of tensors, embedded in the textile along the spine shoulders and the thorax. Acting as a physical reminder, the Lyne garment encourages you to correct your posture. Over the long-term it makes you (re)learn how to stand straight, maintain posture and preserve your back!