In recent weeks I have had several discussions with people regarding the things they should do to prevent Osteoporosis. Some of these people had witnessed their parents succumb to this and were concerned that it would happen to them so they wanted to ensure they did everything they could to prevent it. Osteoporosis is a disease of the bone that makes a person’s bones weak and more likely to break and is often called a “silent disease” because you cannot feel your bones getting weaker.  Many people do not even know they have osteoporosis until after they break a bone. Once you have Osteoporosis you cannot reverse it so it is vital you do everything you can to prevent it from happening by making important lifestyle choices. If you do already have it you can still do things to prevent any further bone loss and also drastically reduce the likelihood of any future bone fractures. The sooner you start the better, for research shows that how likely you are to develop osteoporosis depends partly on how much bone mass you attained in your youth. The higher your peak bone mass, the more bone you have "in the bank" and the less likely you are to develop osteoporosis as you age. In this article, I will discuss what they key factors you need to start doing now to avoid this becoming a problem later in life.

In my recent article about how manual handling instructions in the workplace may be contributing to back problems instead of correcting them I made a reference to an interesting book by Esther Gokhale called 8 steps to pain free back. In this book she provides some fascinating insights into how people in Africa and India move in daily life with much different posture in comparison to people in the Western world. She notes how these people are almost completely free of back pain and musculoskeletal problems that are rampant in modern industrialized society. These observations are the basis for her 8 steps in the book and provide some great ideas to treating back problems at the source. As opposed to most injury rehabilitation methods that focus mostly on the exercise corrections this method concentrates on adjusting the way we move with sitting, lying, walking, and bending. In this article, I discuss how this book helped me personally with a hip and back problem and the key parts that relate to all of us.

This article was inspired by conversations I held with several people over the last few months who came to see me for help with a chronic back problem that was hindering their job. During their assessment I could see in each case how poorly they would complete a bending action, also known as a Romanian Deadlift. This is not unusual and a very common problem to most back pain sufferers, especially those with a bulging disc. However, as I got to know these people I discovered this was not their natural way to move. They told me that they had spent considerable time learning how to lift a certain way at work where they use their knees and keep their back straight. It was this poor method that they had been taught that was to blame for their pain. Unfortunately, it was not a simple task to reset their movement to a more efficient and safer technique as their body had developed a lot of compensation and stiffness in the meantime. If they had been shown a better way in the beginning I believe they would have avoided a lot of pain and suffering.