Back Pain vs. Good Posture

 Back Pain vs. Good Posture, and 

          Healthy Way Of  Walking

       ADDRESS THE CAUSE OF YOUR BACK PAIN

 

                                        2

 

What Healthy Way of Walking Do We Need?

 

     Now (after a glance at the human erect walking legacy in the previous chapter) let’s see how up and how erect contemporary and “civilized” people are (quotation marks mean that walking technique has been degraded, resulting in poor back health) millions of years later.

     It is remarkable that in our day there are so many faulty postures, but only one is an example of good posture, as shown in Fig. 1. Most people do not maintain good posture in their daily lives, and consequently they have squeezed chests, hanging shoulders, and protruded stomachs. How did we get to this?

 

A: Relaxed Poor Posture, B: Kyphosis Lordosis, C: Sway Back, D: Flat Back, E: Round Back.

Fig. 1

  

     I observed number of babies to determine how they learn to sit and to walk. Most of them sit straight from the very beginning, even though they do not have fully developed vertebrae curves yet. It seems that they learn to slouch later on. In the same way, most babies start to step landing toes first right from the very beginning. They learn to step in an unhealthy way landing heels first also later on—unleashing most of the primary causes of back pain and other health related problems, as it is explained in following chapters.

     “Sit upright” and “stay upright”; usually these two bits of advice were all we were told about good posture during our childhoods. The same is true regarding ways of walking. Accordingly, most people think that good posture and ways of walking just have some aesthetic values, and that they are not really important for our health. As a result, most people do not pay close attention to their posture or to the directly connected subject of the way they walk.  Consequently, they lose all related health benefits, and many of them experience back pain.

     Multiple books and articles have been written on the subject of back pain, and the influence poor posture has on it. However, back pain still exists on such a large scale. Why? The following questions help to narrow down the problem:

 

1.     If the primary back pain cause (weak back muscles) and the complementary remedy (using good posture for natural back muscle training) are known, why do so many people still experience back pain? The technique seems to be simple; just keeping good posture while sitting, walking, and standing will do the job. However, most people are not able to successfully apply these concepts and do not achieve the desired results.

2.   Do people (even those who are not familiar with good and poor posture concepts) intentionally slouch while walking?

3.    Why is back pain so prevalent in our population (as high as 80 percent of the world population)?

 

     The answer is that a large part of the problem is that the walking technique most people use is physically incompatible with good posture; it in fact, facilitates only poor posture. As a result, most people maintain slouch posture and consequently have weak back muscles that are unable to secure the vertebrae. This good posture incompatibility concept is confirmed by tests described in Chapter 5. Preliminary information and the technique details are provided in the following chapters.

 

     Some time ago I came across a book published in 1909 named The Hostess Friend, by Sophia Voskresenskaya. It described a walking technique landing toes first as the best way of walking for aesthetic reasons. However, in our day, most people apparently don’t care much about aesthetics as it pertains to walking. People typically land heels first without thinking about how they look when they walk.  Aesthetics is therefore not a reason that will likely persuade most people to walk differently.  

     It was a dilemma for me at first. Why does the way most people walk does not look best aesthetically? At the same time, I continued researching back pain and conducted many tests. At some point everything started to make sense; all parts of the puzzle came together. I discovered that walking landing toes first is the part we are all missing, because it promotes good posture and strengthens back muscles naturally.  It added a back health benefit to the way of walking landing toes first aesthetic benefit as follows:

 

(1) The way of walking landing toes first looks best aesthetically.  

(2) It promotes back health because it is based on good posture.

 

     This way of walking and related health and aesthetic benefits were described in detail in the first edition of this book. Later on, while preparing the second edition of this book, I came across Thomas Ellis’s medical monograph, The Human Foot, published in April 1890. The author completed medical research on the subject of how different ways of walking influence foot health. He proved that walking by landing toes first promotes foot health. This discovery added one more health benefit to the way of walking landing toes first (making three of them altogether):

 

(1) The way of walking landing toes first looks best aesthetically.  

(2) It promotes back health because it is based on good posture.

(3) Also, it promotes foot health.

 

     While the unique objective of this book is to encourage people to change the way they walk in order to promote back health, recommendations provided here also promote healthy feet as proved by Thomas Ellis, and improve walking aesthetics as described by Sophia Voskresenskaya. These benefits all come together, because what is aesthetically best is also healthiest for your back and feet. These recommendations are based on the human body’s biological integrity.

     It is critical to define these three benefits, because most good posture publications are focused on the posture and back pain connection only. They do not focus on thorough research of healthy walking techniques. At most they state something like this: “Walk maintaining good posture.” However, this statement is inadequate, because the way of walking most people use is physically not compatible with good posture. As a result, they cannot follow through with these recommendations, and do not gain much health benefit.

     Similarly, most foot health researchers are focused on ways of walking in connection with foot pain. They do not provide much information about good posture or back health. It leads to serious misconceptions because, for instance, they do not make the connection between walking techniques and back health. Similarly, why would somebody care about foot health advice if the person does not experience foot pain? For these critical reasons, this book pulls the three benefits together to consider the human body as a whole system. Following up with this point of view, the book is composed in the following order:

 

·        Outline of back pain problems

·        Basics of good posture

·        Healthy walking technique