Don’t Let Spring Clean-up Lead to a Messed up Back

As we move into warmer weather and start our spring cleaning projects whether inside the house or in our yards, we want to ensure that we minimize our risk of injuries.  Two of the main injury potentials we want to watch for are our overuse injuries and bending and twisting injuries.

When we come out of the winter months, where we have been a little more sedentary, we want to slowly increase our activities and should avoid an all day clean up and should start with just a few hours at a time.  After even a couple of weeks of reduced activity and movement we lose some of our strength and endurance so if we have several months of reduced activity, it becomes important not to think we can resume our activities at the same level.  My recommendation is to start with a couple of hours of activity followed by at least a 30-minute break to see how your body feels.  If you start to feel a lot of muscle stiffness, give your body more time to recover because you will not be able to recruit as many muscles to your task and you may increase your likelihood of injury.  This is your overuse injury where you have pushed your body too hard and strained your muscles.  

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The other common injury we see at this time of year is the bending and twisting injury.  A lot of times this can be linked to activities such as pulling weeds or bad body mechanics when moving furniture.  As we rotate or bend the spine the force that is applied in the areas can focus on a smaller area which increases the likelihood that we can strain the area.  When we are doing these activities try to keep our hips and low back in-line with each other as this more evenly distributes the forces being applied in the body and reduces the likelihood of injury.  It is also very common that we get a combination of the two different injuries at the same time as a lot of our spring cleaning activities involve a lot of movements that can cause us to twist and bend as well as doing more work than we would typically be doing.
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No matter the reason for the acute pain flare up the combination of chiropractic and massage therapy are very helpful with recovery as they promote better movement, blood flow and circulation, and can help promote the parasympathetic nervous system (the rest, digest, and repair system).  At home heat can help to relieve muscle tension as well as increase circulation in and out of the tissue by getting reparative compounds in and getting waste metabolic by-products out.  Epsom salt soaks are another great way to help the body with recovery as the warm/hot water can be soothing to the aching muscles and the magnesium in the Epsom salt also helps to relax muscles and is one of the three minerals involved in normal muscle activity (the other two being calcium and magnesium).