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Preventing Back Injuries
In many cases, back injuries can be prevented by following steps such as exercising regularly, maintaining a healthy diet, and practicing good back care. Exercising regularly and keeping your back muscles strong is extremely important in keeping your back safe, because exercises that increase balance and strength can decrease your risk of falling and injuring your back or breaking bones.
There are a number of ways in which you can prevent back injuries, including:
- Exercise
- Diet
- Back care.
One of the best things you can do for back injury prevention is to exercise regularly and keep your back muscles strong. Exercises that increase balance and strength can decrease your risk of falling and injuring your back or breaking bones. Exercises such as tai chi and yoga -- or any weight-bearing exercise that challenges your balance -- are good exercises to increase balance and strength.
Maintaining a healthy diet is important in preventing back injuries, because maintaining a healthy weight will help you to avoid putting unnecessary and injury-causing stress and strain on your back. In order to keep your spine strong, you will need to get enough calcium and vitamin D in your diet, which will help prevent osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is responsible for a lot of the bone fractures that lead to back pain. Calcium can be found in products such as:
- Dairy products
- Green, leafy vegetables
- Fortified products, like orange juice.
Although your skin makes vitamin D when you are in the sun, you can obtain vitamin D from your diet. Vitamin D is found in milk and foods that are fortified with this nutrient. However, most adults do not get enough calcium and vitamin D in their diet. Therefore, you should talk to your doctor about how much calcium and vitamin D you need per day, and consider taking a nutritional supplement or a multivitamin.
Written by/reviewed by: Arthur Schoenstadt, MD
Last reviewed by: Arthur Schoenstadt, MD