Well, this is a philosophy piece from me and I want to take a few steps into the wide blue on this one which may challenge some of you and interest others as I start to look at what is really causing all the back pain we encounter.
Firstly, here’s a thought to kick off with: seen any cats with back pain recently? Seen your local herd of cows queuing for anti-inflammatory drugs at your GP? No, didn’t think so but, as I tediously hammer into my kids, the key question is why? Why is this? What are they doing right and what are we doing wrong? (and at this point I accept that some dogs and some horses do see chiropractors but this may well support the point I’m making, so hold on).
The answer lies in what they were designed to do. Cats are designed to be cats and cows, cows and they generally haven’t changed much in what they do – yes, cows have got fatter and bigger and more milky and cats have got more manipulative and cooler but they are essentially what they were designed to be and they are essentailly doing the things they were designed to do.
Now, is this the same with you and me? Well, your design criteria landed on your designers’ desk some 4.5 million years ago, your prototype did its first test-lap 1.5 million years ago you came into full production ˝ a million years ago. The original, glossy, design criteria manual had a load of chapters setting out what you should be able to do, such as run fast for a short distance to dodge sabre-tooth tiger, run long distances to chase down mammoth, throw rocks and whittle sticks. But, and this is a big but, it didn't have an annex called “Future Proofing”. This missing annex should have had chapters such as sitting down for 8 hours a day, moving your arms in a 2 foot by 4 foot square in front of you and eating enormous amounts of calories whilst doing nothing and expecting to survive.
And this is the key. You are designed for one thing - active, upright, hunter-gatherering, and doing another – sedentary, desk-flying, computer operator. So this is similar in its wrongness as using the family car as a 4X4 cross-country thing (which yours may be but then you are morally wrong and must change it). Yes, it’ll do the job but it will eventually go wrong.
The brutal detail and the exceptions to this rule are legion however the essence is here. If you have something going wrong with your back the question you must ask yourself is: “would my Palaeolithic ancestor be doing what I am doing” and if the answer is no you have a feel for why you are failing.
Now, all we need to do is sort it out…
And that’s another hill of beans.
