Take Breaks to Prevent Injuries.

If you're like many people who rush to get jobs or tasks achieved, there is a likelihood you are enhancing the threat for an injury. These jobs can consist of everything from work associated tasks at your location of employment, lawn work, household chores or perhaps driving on your family getaway. This is particularly real if you have chronic musculoskeletal conditions such as low pain in the back, shoulder pain, neck pain or knee pain.

One of the simplest things we can do to assist avoid an injury is to take a short break. Without taking a time-out, we are typically pushing our bodies to the limitation. Keep in mind, there's a great line between discomfort for an activity or task verses pain from overdoing it. Typically we don't understand where that great line is between discomfort and pain. When we cross over to the discomfort side, the discomfort generally sticks around for a while.

Consider example somebody with chronic low back or neck concerns who drives a lot. This could be a sales person who commonly drives for extended distances or amount of times or a household that is driving to their next trip. For individuals who drive often or long distances, an excellent guideline of thumb is to stop and stretch around every one and a half hours. The large bulk of individuals neglect this simple guideline because they simply desire to reach their destination. They will certainly state something to the impact; "If I stopped each and a half hours, the journey will take me permanently and we will certainly never arrive.".

This same idea holds real for activities such as weeding the garden or flower beds, raking leaves or cleaning out the garage or basement. Most times people get on a roll and wish to complete all at as soon as since if they stop, they might not wish to start once more. They stay hunched over or in a crouched position for extended durations of time and can't get up from that position and then have a difficult time getting out of bed the next morning.

Basically, by not taking a short break to stretch or stroll around from our work or jobs, enhances our threat of straining our muscles and/or over stretching our joints. This is specifically important for individuals that carry out repetitive motion type tasks. Individuals with degeneration or arthritis (specifically osteoarthritis) in their joints can become aggravate their condition by carrying out jobs without taking a break

Dr. Mike Swierczynski DC, MS.