Sitting and Slouching Our Way to Back Pain

The Back Pain Epidemic

Eighty percent of Americans will suffer from back pain in their lifetime, but what we are observing here at Oakland Spine & Physical Therapy is that people are experiencing this all-too common aggravation at younger ages. It’s an ordeal that may lead to lack of mobility and disability at an age when you should be enjoying life at its fullest.

“Cases that we are used to seeing in people in their thirties and forties, we are seeing in teenagers,” reports Dr. Brad Butler, Chief of Staff at the Oakland Spine & Rehabilitation Centers in Oakland and Wayne, NJ. “Cases that we are used to seeing in sixty year olds, we are seeing in thirty and forty year olds.”

Why are we experiencing what might be described as an epidemic of back pain at a time when our challenges are supposedly being eased by technology. Our ancestors, after all, labored long hours every day in agrarian pursuits or working at industrial jobs. Their more physically demanding lives started at an earlier age, as adolescents and even young children, and chronic back injury would seem virtually inevitable.

There even seems to be a marked increase in back pain since the 1970’s and 1980’s when early technology were easing the load on farms and in factories and an increasing number were earning their pay as white-collar employees.

The reason back pain is worse than ever, affecting people younger than ever, is that the world in which we live and work today is so different from the decades before computers, cell phones, and various technologies constantly available to us.

We spend an inordinate amount of our time squinting at laptop screens and scrolling through our cell phones. We’re sitting more and moving less, consuming hours every day huddling over digital devices with stress and strain moving down the body and into the neck and back.

Poor posture can exert extraordinary stress on your spine and even change its shape over time, impacting blood vessels and nerves. From there the stress can move to joints, muscles and the discs. Unchecked it will inevitable lead to back pain.

So if the effects of poor posture will inevitably lead to back pain and decreased mobility, is it possible that correcting your posture before it’s too late reverse the deterioration and save you from years of back pain?

The good news is yes. If there is no relief in sight, mobility will continue to worsen. That relief is up to you, and we’re here to help at Oakland Spine & physical therapy.

—Call us today at (201) 651-9100 for an appointment at Oakland Spine & Physical Therapy…