Back to the Back
It has to shoulder quite a lot, most of our life actually. It is one of the most indispensable parts of our body, one of its hardest working parts, and surely the one we pay the least attention to. We never see it with our own eyes, we hardly ever see it in the mirror, and we hardly ever care about it. Until it hurts, of course.
But even then we tend to neglect it. If a tooth starts aching, we mostly make to the dentist rather soon. If our kidneys are revolting, here we end up in the emergency room. If there is a pinching in the breast, it could be cancer or the announcement of an infarct, and off to the specialist we take. But our back?
It had some pain yesterday, has some pain today, will most likely be painful tomorrow, and we just do nothing. “Can’t be that bad”, we say, “will be gone and forgotten next week”, we think. We never heard of somebody dying from back failure, we never saw somebody collapsing on back pain, there is no such thing as “back cancer”, so why care?
And indeed our back is one of the hardiest parts of our body. It takes a lot of damage before it starts complaining. But consider this: there are millions of people living happily after bypass surgery or kidney transplants, and you can live on with a new heart without really feeling much of a difference. But you never heard of “back transplants”, and once your back is messed up, so will be your life:
Your back carries and protects all your vital organs, and almost all your vital nerves run through your back. So once your back is having problems, most likely your whole body will be severely affected – whether you realize and feel it or not.
So what about taking a little back care?