health and wellness

BBPT Health Tip: How Not to Mess Up Your Back this Holiday Season

Fiona McMahon DPT

Photo by Ana Paula Nardini on Pexels.com

Chances are doing some traveling over the coming months. The holidays are a time when we haul luggage through airports, Christmas trees and boxes of decorations through your house, or load massive turkeys into the oven. With all this lifting on the docket, I have a pretty good hunch you don’t want to start the new year with a heating pad and lying down in bed, so I am going to share with you, some of my favorite lifting tips. Get close to what you are lifting:

black jurassic figurine Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

I mean really close. Maybe hug it if you can. The reason why we should get close to what we are lifting calls back to high school physics. The force on the spine equals the weight of the object being lifted by the distance it is away from the spine. Therefore, the farther an object is away from you, the harder it is on the spine to lift. My co-workers use the term “T-Rex arms†to describe how close they want their patients to be holding what they are lifting. Squat Don’t lift with your back. You have all heard it a million times, but if you bend forward with your back to pick up what you are lifting, you will end up placing a tremendous strain on the muscles and bones of your spine. Just don’t do it. Instead, bend with your knees to get to what you want to lift, and push through your legs to stand back up. Don’t be a Hero Ask for help if something seems too heavy to lift. In the long run, everyone will be better off. Knowing when to ask for help is sometimes the most challenging part of safe lifting practices. If you feel you are asking for more help than you would like or you have back pain that is not resolving, come see us at Beyond Basics to help you get back into lifting shape. The sooner, the better. You don’t want it to become a chronic problem.

Fiona McMahon PT, DPT practices at our Midtown location

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