There are many household tasks which can lead to severe back pain issues as they put you at risk of strain and injury.
Have you ever noticed that there are many activities in your daily routine that could be causing you lower back pain? Sometimes we don’t realize but activities like cleaning, doing laundry, taking the stairs and pushing the strollers can lead to excessive stress on the lower back.
Common Household Chores That Leave You with Lower Back Pain
Vacuum cleaning is one of the household chores that may leave us with pain. That is because while using a vacuum cleaner, weight is transferred back and forth between the back and the front lower limbs. Vacuum cleaning also involves bending which indirectly puts pressure on the lower back.
A similar activity in which parents are usually involved is the pushing of a stroller. The posture we adopt while pushing the little one in the stroller can affect the spinal curvature as the parent tends to bend slightly forward of centre.
Cleaning and doing laundry can also be harmful and often leads to lower back pain. The critical activities in laundry involve taking the clothes out from the laundry basket then bending down to put said clothes in the washing machine.
All these movements performed while doing laundry put stress and strain on the lumbar region that can seriously disturb your sciatic nerve, because it requires you to stay in stooped positions for arguably large amounts of time, especially when you are sorting out the laundry.
In a lot of cases, it is because many people make the mistake of distributing the weight onto their backs, rather than focusing to use their legs to carry the weight. In other words, when handling laundry, lift with your legs rather than your back, so that the weight is not placing stress on your spine.
Climbing up and stepping down the stairs is another activity that requires our spine to work harder. People usually consider it a good habit but climbing the stairs quickly can put a great deal of stress on your lower back and can cause injury. It doesn’t only affect the back but also the knees.
Keeping the pace slow and maintaining a good posture while climbing the stairs is very important.
How to Address These Issues
Understanding the importance of maintaining the correct posture while performing daily chores, especially if you have to lift heavy, is very important. Housewives as well as occupational drivers are more exposed to the risk of developing a lower back pain, but they are not the only ones that can be affected by it.
It is recommended that you take a break every now and then while doing chores, to allow your back to rest in-between each activity, even though it might take longer to finish the housework. Alternatively, you can wear a lumbar support belt to help your spine better withstand the physical stress placed on it while performing housework.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for a way to alleviate the pain and prevent it from returning (whether it was caused by doing chores around the house or something else), it may be beneficial that you engage in spinal decompression therapy, preferably with an orthopaedic device such as the Backrack.
Spinal Backrack helps you treat and prevent all forms of back pain with a drug-free approach.
Other Treatment Options
If your back pain persists despite making changes, taking breaks in between chores and trying self-help methods to relieve pain, it may be worth seeking medical advice for proper diagnosis or treatment. That is because even though your back or neck pain is triggered during housework, it may be caused by other underlying issues such as a disc herniation, sciatica, spinal stenosis, or other spinal problems.
As such, a doctor, or medical specialist may provide you with other pain management and treatment options such as:
- Pain-relieving medication or injections
- Recommend you physical therapy
- Surgical intervention, if a serious spinal problem is discovered, that cannot be fixed by less invasive methods
Author: Spinal Backrack
