Blogpost: Back Pain and Walking

Everyday.  Everyday. Why not practice moving everyday?  Your knees don’t wear out from walking.  They wear out from muscle loss and imbalance that leads to wear and tear on the joints.  Inflammation causes pain.  Take inflammatory foods out of your diet and those bad knees will not hurt so much.  Back pain is one of the reasons people seek medical advice.  Most of the time, the get an imaging study of some type followed by muscle relaxers and or pain medication.  When it continues to hurt, they are sent for injections.  Surgery then follows and the process repeats because more often than not the root cause is not fixed with the surgery. The end result of Impingement of the nerve may be addressed but not the root cause.  Sometimes surgery is necessary, but far less often than it is done.  Chronic back pain that limits activity most often does not need to be chronic at all.  I have experience nerve pain and it is relentless making one more likely to agree to anything that gives them pain relief.

Walking is one of the safest and most effective ways to improve back pain.  Add walking to a mobility and posture assessment program and most pain resolves.  If you stop practicing the  walking and mobility, it will return.  No fancy gimmicks are needed for improvement.  If there were as many people out walking in the morning as there are in the medical offices being imaged and medicated for back pain, we would probablyhave congested sidewalks.  

I am speaking from personal experience.  I have had back pain and sciatica from running.  It results from muscle imbalances and a lack of attention on my part to mobility exercises.  It is kind of like getting a burn from touching something hot.  You know not to do it, but occasionally we get careless and it happens.  It is time then to take a step back and address the imbalances, and not stop all movement.  Walking is always a part of recovery.  Go get some walking in today.  If you would like to learn the steps to pain free walking, check out our website and see if our program is for you.