By : Dr Qandeel Akbar
In recent times, office workers, house wives, students and elderly people specifically complains about mild to moderate intensity low back pain to an alarming extent. One of the many reasons can be their adapted sedentary lifestyles, involving minimal physical activities along with bad eating habits.
Before discussing the causes of low back pain, we must understand what basically sedentary lifestyle is. In plain words it is prolong sitting, both at work and during leisure time with minimum energy expenditure. In other words, it means highly inactive lifestyle with little or no physical activity. It is mainly observed among majority of office workers and bankers who work nine hours a day sitting in front of their computers or other electronic devices of that nature. And after office hours, they are so drained out that they choose not to get involved in any sort of physical games or other activities such as walking or jogging. Similarly as mentioned above about many of the students also complains about low back pain because now a days the educational systems are over pressuring students regarding their academics due to which students spend long hours sitting, studying and binge eating. Also the excess use of social media has expanded and has taken over every teeny tiny bit of our lives to such extent that one has very less time to get involved in any physical activity. In the name of studying and searching for study material, students often get distracted by socializing applications such as facebook, Instagram and snapchat and hence end up wasting their precious time. Apart from their academic loss, they experience the loss of their health which is declining at an alarming speed due to complications caused by their adapted sedentary lifestyle. Their inactive lifestyles leads to abnormal health conditions like obesity.
Obesity, known as mother of many diseases is an abnormal body condition defined as a state of being over-weight, having abnormal fat deposits in various parts of the body. Obesity is the most common outcome of being lazy and least physically active. The individuals practicing sedentary lifestyle are also binge eating simultaneously. These bad eating habits of youngsters are mostly contributing in becoming obese.
So, now the real question which may arise is what is the relation between having low back pain and sedentary lifestyle? The answer to this is, it does not directly cause low back pain but contribute in causing back pain by triggering factors which generate pain and discomfort among individuals. As explained above that how obesity is caused due to sedentary lifestyle and by many such issues discussed previously, an obese person is prone to many disorders like diabetes and hypertension.
Diabetes, commonly known as high blood glucose levels and hypertension defined as high blood pressure are the metabolic disorders which occurs as a result of obesity and other factors among mostly inactive individuals. Other common diseases include heart issues and high blood cholesterol levels. These cascade of disorders collectively known as metabolic disorders result in low health condition of an individual suffering from these and hence damage body organs and bone weakening. The most commonly effected bones are the vertebrae specifically lower lumbar vertebral bones. As this part of the spine bear most of the body weight and due to constant wear and tear may lead to degeneration of bones.
Talking about degeneration of vertebral bones, many metabolic disorders mentioned above are one of the causes of it. As lumbar vertebrae are responsible of bearing most of the body weight during sitting and standing postures, degeneration of these bones may cause abnormal pressure distribution over the discs present between the two vertebrae and hence causing compression of intervertebral discs. These compressed discs bulge out from between the vertebrae and starts irritating the spinal nerves passing behind the intervertebral discs. As these spinal nerves are impinge by the bulging out of the discs posteriorly, these cause severe sharp shoot current like pain sensation emerging from the site of compression as in low back and radiates towards the back of the thigh and even towards calf muscles and foot.
This type of pain generated due to the reasons discussed above is called non-specific low back pain as it is caused not due to any specific reason such as spine fracture of any infection in spine or tumor. Non-specific low pain has a strong connection with sedentary lifestyle as explained in above paragraphs. Degeneration of vertebrae may be hereditary which means it runs in the family or due to low calcium levels in body and most commonly the metabolic disorders.
The conclusion to this whole topic in a nutshell is, low back pain is not directly but indirectly caused due to sedentary lifestyle adapted by individuals of age groups most commonly the adults and elderly populations. Also poor posture and bad body biomechanics while performing different tasks also contribute in the occurrence of back pain. Neglecting the minor symptoms over a longer period of time may lead to major health related issues and permanent damage to vertebrae.
Awareness about this topic should be spread among all the individuals having a sedentary lifestyle or are least concerned about their posture while performing their tasks. Precautions such as avoid prolong sitting, binge eating of un-healthy foods, being in inactive state are very helpful in maintaining a healthy and physically active lifestyle. This can also decrease the occurrence of many metabolic disorders. Students should participate in extra circular activities in school and outdoor games after. Adults should take out time from their busy schedules for walking or for low intensity cardio exercises. All these steps may lead to a healthy and physically active lifestyle and a less chance of having low back pain.