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Sunday, February 22, 2004
Paquiao: Backaches
By Calixto S. Paquiao
Fitness & you
Despite the many possible causes of backaches, some of them subtle and insidious, the problem in the great majority of backaches lies with muscles.
Muscles in the abdomen as well as the back itself, muscles that are weak, unable to perform properly, easily subject to injury.
Few of us are aware of the vital importance of muscles, both for overall health and for health of the back. Bones, of course, form the framework of the body, joints permit movement and muscles do the moving.
It is largely how much muscles are used and how many calories are burned up in their use that determine whether body weight remains constant and healthy or become excessive. It is muscle use that helps to determine whether healthy blood circulation is maintained for one thing because the use of leg muscles is to prompt blood in the leg veins back toward the heart. And the health of the heart itself is determined to no small extent by muscular activity that trains the heart, itself a muscle to beat more efficiently.
There is evidence too, that physical activity is a factor of importance in helping to maintain normal levels of cholesterol and other fats in the blood and in preventing their accumulation on artery walls with such ultimately crippling or lethal results as strokes and heart attacks.
Muscles are critically important for the back. The spinal column as already noted is an S-shaped column of bones with disks between for cushioning and with ligaments to hold the bones and discs somewhat loosely and flexibly.
Muscles must provide the major support for the column, keeping it erect and bending and turning it. When man assumes an upright posture, muscles — abdominal and hip — as well as those in the back have to take on the job of supporting the spinal column. Muscle tissue is formed before birth and the muscle fiber we are born with is ours for life.
Muscle strength develops as fibers contract. Strength is maintained and muscles remain in good condition only when used. If these fall into some disuse, these may actually atrophy or waste away as demonstrated in paralyzed patients whose muscles waste unless passive exercises are used to keep them moving.
In our increasingly sedentary life, unless we take special precautions, our muscles become victimized by disuse. They have less bulk, become flabby, are not capable of vigorous or sustained activity. Any unusual exertion puts a strain on them with resulting pain. One famed study by Dr. Hardin Jones of the University of California, has shown graphically the effects of sedentary living on muscles. The study found that when muscles are exercised little or not at all, they have less need for blood and nourishment. As a result, many, if not most of the capillaries, the tiniest blood vessels which supply them, collapse — they are unneeded.
The deterioration of muscular fitness in an increasingly sedentary society accounts for a markedly increasing predispostion to back pain nor is it a matter only of back muscle deterioration, a fact that deserves repeated emphasis. Consider a tree or a telephone pole held erect by four wires so it is stable even in high winds. If one of the wires is cut, the tree may fall and it will fall in the direction of an uncut wire. That situation is only partially analogous to what happens in a human with a weak stomach muscle.
Weakness of the abdominal muscles is one of the common causes of back pain. One study at the State University of Iowa College of Medicine found that in chronic backache patients, abdominal muscles often are less than one-third as strong as back muscles.
Very often strengthening of abdominal muscles prove to be all that was necessary to eliminate backaches.
(February 22, 2004 issue)
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