Back pain and listening to body signals - for once?

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We do live in an era of pain relief for everything - and this is usually good. Migraine? Recovering from an operation? Tooth decay and waiting for a dentist appointment? Take some relief and you'll survive. And this is all good and necessary.

But I wanted to share my thoughts on back pain - which is so common these days and with which I'm suffering right now - and for which I have some specific thoughts. You see, pain is the body's way of telling you that something's wrong. It's great to have this warning system in the case of the back and it's multitude of muscles, but unlike with other pain, I firmly believe that pain relief medicines should be a last resort...

In my case, every time I move I'm aware of nagging pains in my lower back, a specific site and probably a specific muscle. The pain is my body telling me 'Be careful'. And so I am. Getting up carefully, sitting down ditto. Rising in the morning slowly and gently, and so forth. 

Injurymap, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Old school advice for back pain was to take to one's bed and not move, but I think most people now acknowledge that gentle movement is needed for the back not to 'seize up'. Gentle though. Move too fast or try to put too much strain on the back and that pain is there to warn. And rightly so.

It would be easy to just reach for the ibuprofen and max out on that and much of the pain would be reduced. But I'd also be tempted to move too fast or at the wrong angle and then, without knowing it, I'd have strained the complaining muscle too far and I'd be in a worse position.

I'm not preaching here, just speaking from experience. Over the last 40 years I've put my back muscles out in various ways a dozen times. Blame a life of desk jobs, writing, perhaps. But in each case, my resolve is to keep moving and not take any pain relief. I want every pain signal my back can give me so that I have maximum information before my brain commands it to make any movement.

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