Hi there! Welcome back! I’m writing to you from my porch in Aurora, Oregon…
on a sunny and warm morning! I just love waking up and having the sun shine its rays as I do my morning stretching routine, especially after the darkness of winter retreats …I’m Heather Alison Cook, Licensed Massage Therapist of Yarrow and You Therapeutic Bodywork and I have been practicing bodywork for 11 years now. I’d like to discuss how human backs evolved to be susceptible to injury and why many people have back pain.
So… we humans evolved to walk upright (bipedalism) over millions of years.
This freed us up to use our hands for things other than walking– like using tools, making fire, hunting, carrying an umbrella…you get the picture… But becoming upright, instead of walking on all fours, as all other mammals do, had some consequences. Can you guess what they might be? Back pain, you say? Hmm… you guessed correctly!
Shifting the weight-bearing function of the spine from horizontal to vertical. The curvature of the spine changed to accommodate not only the weight of our heads but the rest of our skeleton, muscles and organs with the ultimate goal of more stability on two legs/feet. Over time other advantageous genetic traits were passed on, like changes in pelvic or vertebral structure…
Understanding how the human body can differ so drastically is part of what makes being a bodyworker so interesting but also challenging. Some people seem to have a predisposition for back pain. It could be that the anatomy of their pelvis, sacrum, or hip socket has some less efficient architecture to it–meaning there could be an area prone to impingement, or less room for nerves or shorter muscle attachment sites. Variations in genes related to cartilage integrity, skeletal formation, and pain perception also play a role in someone having, say a degenerative disease or more inflammation, or flexibility, etc. So what I do to help one person reduce the pain in their body does not mean it will work on another.
When someone “throws their back out,”
the majority of the time this is “the straw that broke the camel’s back…” Clients (and myself included) usually have had a maladapted situation in the back/hip/pelvis brewing for some time. Perhaps we sit a lot for our desk jobs or drive long hours in a car, bus, plane, (or train)! Over and over again mechanical loads presented by merely sitting in a chair over our lifetime do not do the human body any favors. The repetitiveness of the sitting position can cause muscles to become weak, undertoned, and shortened. Discs and ligaments of the spine can become compressed, and then when we go to stand up we aren’t quite fully stretched out…then BAM!…we bend over to put our shoes on and our “back goes out.” This could mean we strained or pulled a ligament, a disc or joint has become injured, muscles went into spasm or many other things could have happened…
Human spines were already susceptible to injury just from the fact that…
…we evolved from using all four limbs to using two–everything had to change and still is. The ways our ancestors moved their bodies actually “told” their bodies how to adapt. DNA responds to mechanical forces. The spine, now vertical, adapted over time to the effect of gravity on the rest of the body but the discs and nerves of the spine are particularly vulnerable to compression and damage.
Keeping the skeleton aligned and the muscles and fascia of the entire body at the right length and tone can help tremendously, in my opinion, in keeping our backs supported and less susceptible to injury.
For myself, it is whenever I fall off my routine of doing all of these things that I do injure myself…
I recently “threw my back out,” because I hadn’t been stretching and strengthening how I normally do. I bent over to put socks on one day and BAM(!) something wrenched and I was immediately in pain! It took weeks for me to recover with the help of a chiropractor, a structural bodyworker, and doing some corrective exercises on my own. I always recommend Precision Movement (YouTube)–Coach E and his app ROM for at-home PT (physical therapy).
In summary, just because we are human, our backs are quite vulnerable to being injured! Adding to this is the fact that we/modern humans live in the most sedentary time of all of human history (crazy I know!) which makes our backs a bit extra inclined to trauma. Having a regular strengthening and stretching regimen and getting regular bodywork will aid you in avoiding injury. So book a session today at Yarrow and You Therapeutic Bodywork, in Aurora, Oregon. I can help with that! Thanks for reading and see you soon!