Stop hurting your back

Hi!

Recently, I’ve been reading Stuart McGill’s “Low Back Disorders”. If you don’t know Dr. McGill, he’s a lumbar spine specialist. World class. He’s done loads of research on low back pain and is considered a true expert in his field.

I’m only a few chapters in, but I want to touch on some key takeaways while they still lie fresh in my frontal cortex.

To start, let’s acknowledge that back pain is incredibly prevalent in modern day society. My guess is that at least 80% of those reading this newsletter have experienced back pain in their lifetime. While this article won’t rapidly diagnose the pain you may be experiencing or concoct an immediate cure, it might help it make more sense.

McGill cites a study that observed imaging findings in people who had jobs that required them to be sedentary and jobs that required them to be very active (think lifting, loading, twisting). All subjects had back pain. The imaging findings, however, differed in a significant way. Those who spent the majority of their careers in a seated position showed marked disc degeneration in the lumbar spine. The fellows who had more physically demanding jobs had healthier sized lumbar discs, but the MRIs depicted much more arthritic changes.

Now I’m not saying findings on an MRI = back pain, but I do find the variations here to be interesting.

To me, this highlights the fact that it’s crucial to move. And it’s crucial to rest. In my mind, there’s a healthy, wealthy balance that exists between the sedentary worker and the heavy manual laborer. Imagine that the sedentary population had taken a walk around the office building every 30 minutes. Picture a reality where the person who lifts and twists all day had done it in a biomechanically effective way that “spared” the spine. I’m willing to bet that more than a handful of those patients could have avoided a life riddled with low back pain.

The fact is, the spine needs to be loaded. But not too much, and not too little. Our bodies weren’t designed to sit all day in a flexed position, nor do they adequately withstand repeated lifting and bending without rest. Fun fact: the vertebral end plate (part of the anatomy of your spine) responds favorably to moderate loading. By exercising regularly and not being a lazy bum, the vertebral end plate experiences an increase in compressive load capacity. Meaning you can do MORE stuff without hurting your back as much. Pretty cool.

Thanks for reading this. Hope you learned something :)