| Stand Up Medicine // Editorial 20 December 2009 By: Andrew Cassidy Location: Sydney I woke up the other morning at 3:00am with an excruciating pain in the middle of my back. I didn't know what to do. I could hardly move. After three wakeful hours, I tried to get up. I was lying on my stomach so I carefully wriggled my legs off the edge, then slowly spun around a bit and lowered myself down until I was kneeling beside the bed. Then very painfully I pushed up off the bed and tried to stand up using only my arms and legs. Ouch. After about twenty minutes of gingerly walking around the house and having breakfast standing up, my back started feeling better. Within the hour I had no pain at all. Beaudy. It must have just been a bit of a pinched nerve that popped itself free. The next morning, again at 3:00am, the pain was back, just as bad as the previous morning. Same deal, got out of bed very carefully after not sleeping and then kept in an upright position as much as possible. Again, the pain was gone within the hour. The same thing happened on day three so I took myself off to the physiotherapist to see what was going on. It turns out I have a bit of 'stomach-sleeper-itis' which has caused a disc in my spine to bulge and consequently compress my spinal cord. The bad posture I've had while sleeping on my stomach along with extensive driving (trips to Queensland and Merimbula), too much time sitting in front of a computer (for this magazine) and not enough core exercise work (sometimes known as stand up paddling) have all attributed to this pain in the ... back. The intense pain I've been feeling is from the nerves in my spine warning my brain to stop whatever I'm doing before my very important spinal cord is damaged. The physio said I need to improve my posture while lying down and sitting and also that it makes perfect sense that it feels better quickly after straightening my back when I stand up. Keeping my back upright and as straight as possible pushes the herniated disc back into its correct position between my vertebrae, and stops it irritating the sensitive nerves around my spinal cord. He said I should be in this position as much as possible. So basically, from a health perspective, I need to do less activity requiring sitting or lying on my stomach and focus more on activities involving lots of standing up. Hmmm, how about that hey?  | |
