As mums of young kids we are always on the move. Add to this the mix a highly stressful job that involves long work hours, back to back meetings, extensive travels. Its no wonder that mums of younger kids or toddlers develop back pain. In this blog we will discuss some common scenarios that can lead to back pain, followed by some tips to avoid back pain in these situations. These are simple tips that you can implement starting today. If you are one of the lucky few mums who have never had back pain this blog is still relevant to you as the tips in here will help prevent back pain in the future.
There is a lot of talk about how we should sit and not slouch but the first tip here is in a situation when you are taking something out of the higher shelves and cabinets in your house or putting away luggage into an overhead compartment of the plane when travelling. Most people will overarch the lower back when they these overhead activities, i.e. activities above the level of their heads. A simple way of not overarching your lower back is to stand up straight and then take 2 or 3 steps backwards and do the overhead activity. This helps your back to come out of that arch position into a more neutral position, thus preventing back pain.
The second tip is when you have a job where you're sitting for long hours or if you are a mom of younger kids sitting for long hours rocking your little ones to sleep. When we sit for more than 20 minutes in these prolonged static (without moving) positions the stresses on the disc (present between the vertebra that make up our spine) goes up quite a fair bit and when you continue to sit longer than 20 minutes this can lead to back pain in the long run or aggravate your existing back pain. So try and move every 15 to 20 minutes. An easy way to move every 15 to 20 minutes is to take a walk around your office, fetch a drink of water (you get to hydrate as well… not a bad situation, eh?) However when you are stuck in a meeting or watching a movie or any situation when you cant get up to walk around, you can shuffle around in your chair or shift your weight from one side of your bottom to the other or cross and uncross your legs.
There are some simple desk based exercises that you can do to prevent back pains specially when sitting for long hours. You can do these exercises in under 2 to 3 minutes depending on how many repetitions you're doing. I have made a video for these exercises which you can get HERE. (This will ask you for an email but that’s only because I send it to you over email).
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