It’s a problem Stacey McConnell, a physical therapist with St. Elizabeth Sports Medicine, has seen for the past 20 years, and it’s not getting any better.
Fewer and fewer people are taking responsibility for their own health. Instead of maintaining their stress levels, fitting in regular exercise, hydrating and getting enough sleep, they’re relying on clinicians to fix them, McConnell said, spending way too much money on co-pays and overburdening the healthcare system.
And nowhere does McConnell see the problem more than with neck and back pain.
How to prevent neck and back pain
Prevention is huge, he said, when it comes to avoiding injury to these highly sophisticated areas of the body that, when injured, are very hard to repair.
And prevention isn’t difficult.
- Avoid anything that regularly produces pain in these areas
- Strengthen your core, back, abs and legs
- Make sure you have good posture, whether you’re sitting or standing
- Ask for help lifting something if it’s too heavy
- Try to keep your head up and back straight when you can
What to do if you already have pain
If you do start to have pain in your neck and back, do something about it early. Don’t wait for it to get worse.
And always start medical care for neck and back pain with a primary care doctor.
“Start with a medically approved and accepted person who can refer you to someone who can help you,” McConnell said.
That way, you and your primary care doctor can work as partners until your pain goes away. That means, if the clinician you’re referred to isn’t helping you to reduce pain and improve function, don’t keep going. Instead, go back to your primary care doctor and tell him or her what isn’t working then determine the next step.
How do I know treatment is working?
You’ll know if a clinician is helping your pain by paying attention to three indicators:
- Are your parameters of pain lessening, or moving toward zero on a zero-to-10 scale?
- Is your frequency of pain decreasing throughout the day and night?
- Is the location of your pain centralizing and then disappearing?
Finally, when you leave a clinician visit, always make sure you leave with a plan for prevention.
“Truly getting better is more than just feeling better when you’re there,” McConnell said. “Truly getting better is feeling better after you’ve left, during the week. It involves doing something to get yourself better, owning your own health through exercise and taking care of yourself, to decrease your visits to the clinician or, even better, eliminate them completely.”
