6 Ways To Look After Your Back

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Back To Back

When people think about looking after their back, often thought does not go much further than sitting with good posture, and perhaps even standing with good posture. And those things are important, but:

1) People’s efforts to have good posture often result in overcorrecting creating an anterior pelvic tilt that causes lower back problems.

Quick tip: if you’re sticking your butt out, you’re doing it wrong (no matter how great your butt is). Instead, to find the correct posture, go up on your tip-toes for a moment, then imagine a plumb-line down the center of your body, thus perpendicular to the floor, going all the way down to the ground. Now, slowly return your heels to the ground, but as you do so, keep your spine aligned to the plumb-line, so you’re not moving backwards as you drop, just directly down. This will land you in perfect posture.

Unless you have scoliosis. In which case, it’ll get you as close to good posture as is likely attainable from any quick tip.

2) There’s a lot more to looking after our back than just good posture!

Here are 5 other important things to do:

Be strong

Do strength-training for your back. How to do that is beyond the scope of today’s feature, but there are many good guides and also personal trainers that can be found.

Start off easy and work up, but do start. The stronger your back is, the less likely a momentary lapse in concentration is to throw out your back because you picked something up with imperfect form.

See also: Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

Stretch intentionally

Many back injuries occur as a result of stretching and/or twisting awkwardly, so if you ensure your basic mobility and range of motion is good, the less likely it is that unthinkingly twisting around 270° to see where that wasp was going will slip a disk.

The more you stretch intentionally (carefully, please), the more you will be able to stretch unintentionally without injury.

See also: Building & Maintaining Mobility

Stand when you can, walk when you can

We humans have outrun our evolution in a lot of ways, and/but one thing our bodies are definitely not well-adapted for is sitting. Unless we are sitting in a low squat the way you might often see an orang-utan sitting, sitting is not a good way of being for us. Even sitting seiza-style or cross-legged is passable for a short while, not for too long.

So, while there sure are times we need to sit (especially if you’re driving!) minimizing those times is ideal. There are a lot of activities that are traditionally done sitting, where there’s no need for it to be so. For example, your writer here sits for the day’s main meal, but takes any smaller meal standing (and when guests visit for a coffee or such, I’ll offer them the couch while I myself prop up the fireplace). Standing desks are also great if you spend a lot of time at the computer for any reason.

See also: The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less & Move More

Rest when you need to

You can’t stand all the time! But know this: if you want to rest your legs, lying down is a lot better for your back (and internal organs) than sitting.

Taking a 5 minute break lying on your couch, or bed, or floor, is a perfectly good option and only social convention says otherwise.

If you want a compromise option, though? A recliner chair, in the reclined position, is a better for your back than being scrunched up in the Economy Class Flight position.

PS: About that bed situation…

What Mattress Is Best, By Science?

Kill pain before it kills you

Painkillers aren’t great for the health per se, but pain (or rather, our bodily responses to such) can be worse. Half the time, when it comes to musculoskeletal problems, things get a lot worse a lot more quickly because of how we overcompensate due to the pain. So, take your pain seriously, and remember, the right amount of pain is zero.

If you’re thinking “but pain relief option xyz isn’t good for me”, we strongly recommend checking out:

The 7 Approaches To Pain Management

Take care!

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  • Lacking Motivation? Science Has The Answer

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The Science Of Motivation (And How To Use It To Your Advantage)

    When we do something rewarding, our brain gets a little (or big!) spike of dopamine. Dopamine is popularly associated with pleasure—which is fair— but there’s more to it than this.

    Dopamine is also responsible for motivation itself, as a prime mover before we do the thing that we find rewarding. If we eat a banana, and enjoy it, perhaps because our body needed the nutrients from it, our brain gets a hit of dopamine.

    (and not because bananas contain dopamine; that dopamine is useful for the body, but can’t pass the blood-brain barrier to have an effect on the brain)

    So where does the dopamine in our brain come from? That dopamine is made in the brain itself.

    Key Important Fact: the brain produces dopamine when it expects an activity to be rewarding.

    If you take nothing else away from today’s newsletter, let it be this!

    It makes no difference if the activity is then not rewarding. And, it will keep on motivating you to do something it anticipated being rewarding, no matter how many times the activity disappoints, because it’ll remember the very dopamine that it created, as having been the reward.

    To put this into an example:

    • How often have you spent time aimlessly scrolling social media, flitting between the same three apps, or sifting through TV channels when “there’s nothing good on to watch”?
    • And how often did you think afterwards “that was a good and rewarding use of my time; I’m glad I did that”?

    In reality, whatever you felt like you were in search of, you were really in search of dopamine. And you didn’t find it, but your brain did make some, just enough to keep you going.

    Don’t try to “dopamine detox”, though.

    While taking a break from social media / doomscrolling the news / mindless TV-watching can be a great and healthful idea, you can’t actually “detox” from a substance your body makes inside itself.

    Which is fortunate, because if you could, you’d die, horribly and miserably.

    If you could “detox” completely from dopamine, you’d lose all motivation, and also other things that dopamine is responsible for, including motor control, language faculties, and critical task analysis (i.e. planning).

    This doesn’t just mean that you’d not be able to plan a wedding; it also means:

    • you wouldn’t be able to plan how to get a drink of water
    • you wouldn’t have any motivation to get water even if you were literally dying of thirst
    • you wouldn’t have the motor control to be able to physically drink it anyway

    Read: Dopamine and Reward: The Anhedonia Hypothesis 30 years on

    (this article is deep and covers a lot of ground, but is a fascinating read if you have time)

    Note: if you’re wondering why that article mentions schizophrenia so much, it’s because schizophrenia is in large part a disease of having too much dopamine.

    Consequently, antipsychotic drugs (and similar) used in the treatment of schizophrenia are generally dopamine antagonists, and scientists have been working on how to treat schizophrenia without also crippling the patient’s ability to function.

    Do be clever about how you get your dopamine fix

    Since we are hardwired to crave dopamine, and the only way to outright quash that craving is by inducing anhedonic depression, we have to leverage what we can’t change.

    The trick is: question how much your motivation aligns with your goals (or doesn’t).

    So if you feel like checking Facebook for the eleventieth time today, ask yourself: “am I really looking for new exciting events that surely happened in the past 60 seconds since I last checked, or am I just looking for dopamine?”

    You might then realize: “Hmm, I’m actually just looking for dopamine, and I’m not going to find it there”

    Then, pick something else to do that will actually be more rewarding. It helps if you make a sort of dopa-menu in advance, of things to pick from. You can keep this as a list on your phone, or printed and pinned up near your computer.

    Examples might be: Working on that passion project of yours, or engaging in your preferred hobby. Or spending quality time with a loved one. Or doing housework (surprisingly not something we’re commonly motivated-by-default to do, but actually is rewarding when done). Or exercising (same deal). Or learning that language on Duolingo (all those bells and whistles the app has are very much intentional dopamine-triggers to make it addictive, but it’s not a terrible outcome to be addicted to learning!).

    Basically… Let your brain’s tendency to get led astray work in your favor, by putting things in front of it that will lead you in good directions.

    Things for your health and/or education are almost always great things to allow yourself the “ooh, shiny” reaction and pick them up, try something new, etc.

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  • Older people’s risk of abuse is rising. Can an ad campaign protect them?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Elder abuse is an emerging public health and safety issue for communities of high-income countries.

    The most recent data from Australia’s National Elder Abuse Prevalence Study, which surveyed 7,000 older people living in the community, found one in six self-reported being a victim of some form of abuse. But this did not include older people living in residential aged care or those with cognitive impairment, such as dementia – so is likely an underestimate.

    This week the Australian government announced a multi-million dollar advertising campaign it hopes will address this serious and abhorrent abuse.

    But is investing in community awareness of elder abuse the best use of scarce resources?

    Nuttapong punna/Shutterstock

    What is elder abuse?

    The World Health Organization (WHO) defines elder abuse as

    […] a single, or repeated act, or lack of appropriate action, occurring within any relationship where there is an expectation of trust which causes harm or distress to an older person.

    Australia usually defines older people as those over 65. The exact age varies between countries depending on the overall health status of a nation and its vulnerable population groups. The WHO definitions of an older adult for sub-Saharan Africa, for example, is over 50. And there are communities with poorer health status and shorter lifespans within country borders, including our First Nations people.

    Elder abuse can take on many different forms including physical, sexual, psychological, emotional, or financial abuse and neglect.

    Living longer and wealthier

    The number of older people in our society is greater than it has ever been. Around 17% Australians are aged 65 and over. By 2071, older Australians will make up between 25% and 27% of the total population.

    People are living longer, accumulating substantial wealth and are vulnerable to abuse due to cognitive, physical or functional limitations.

    Longer lifespans increase the time of possible exposure to abuse. Australian men aged 65 can expect to live another 20.2 years, while women aged 65 are likely to live another 22.8 years. (Life expectancy for First Nations men and women remains significantly shorter.)

    Australian men are now 143 times more likely to reach the age of 100 than they were in 1901. Women are 82 times more likely.

    Older people hold a large proportion of our nation’s wealth, making them vulnerable to financial abuse. Recent research by the Australian Council of Social Service and UNSW Sydney reveals older households (with people over 65) are 25% wealthier than the average middle-aged household and almost four times as wealthy as the average under-35 household.

    Finally, older people have higher levels of impairment in their thinking, reasoning and physical function. Cognitive impairment, especially dementia, increases from one in 67 Australians under 60 to almost one in two people aged over 90.

    Over half of Australians aged 65 years and over have disability. A particularly vulnerable group are the 258,374 older Australians who receive government-funded home care.

    Who perpetrates elder abuse?

    Sadly, most of the perpetrators of elder abuse are known to their victims. They are usually a member of the family, such as a life partner, child or grandchild.

    Elder abuse causes significant illness and even early death. Financial abuse (across all ages) costs the community billions of dollars. Specific data for financial elder abuse is limited but indicates massive costs to individual survivors and the community.

    Despite this, the level of awareness of elder abuse is likely to be much lower than for family violence or child abuse. This is partly due to the comparatively recent concept of elder abuse, with global awareness campaigns only developed over the past two decades.

    Is an advertising campaign the answer?

    The federal government has allocated A$4.8 million to an advertising campaign on television, online and in health-care clinics to reach the broader community. For context, last year the government spent $131.4 million on all media campaigns, including $32.6 million on the COVID vaccination program, $2 million on Japanese encephalitis and $3.2 million on hearing health awareness.

    The campaign will likely benefit a small number of people who may be victims and have the capacity to report their perpetrators to authorities. It will generate some heartbreaking anecdotes. But it is unlikely to achieve broad community or systemic change.

    There is little research evidence to show media campaigns alter the behaviour of perpetrators of elder abuse. And suggesting the campaign raises awareness of the issue for older people who are survivors of abuse sounds more like blaming victims than empowering them.

    We don’t know how the government will judge the success of the campaign, so taxpayers won’t know whether a reasonable return on this investment was achieved. There may also be opportunity costs associated with the initiative – that is, lost opportunities for other actions and strategies. It could be more effective and efficient to target high-risk subgroups or to allocate funding to policy, practice reform or research that has direct tangible benefits for survivors. https://www.youtube.com/embed/DeK2kaqplTI?wmode=transparent&start=0 The Australian Human Rights Commission’s campaign from last year.

    But the campaign can’t hurt, right?

    Actually, the dangers that could come with an advertising campaign are two-fold.

    First it may well oversimplify a highly complex issue. Identifying and managing elder abuse requires an understanding of the person’s vulnerabilities, their decision-making capacity and ability to consent, the will and preferences of victim and the role of perpetrator in the older person’s life. Abuse happens in the context of family and social networks. And reporting abuse can have consequences for the victim’s quality of life and care.

    Consider the complexities of a case where an older person declines to have her grandson reported to police for stealing her money and medication because of her fear of becoming socially isolated. She might even feel responsible for the behaviour having raised the grandson and not want him to have a criminal record.

    Secondly, a public campaign can create the illusion government and our institutions have the matter “in hand”. This might slow the opportunity for real change.

    Ideally, the campaign will strengthen the argument for better policies, reporting procedures, policing, prosecution and judgements that are aligned. But these ends will also need investment in more research to build better communities that take good care of older people.

    Joseph Ibrahim, Professor, Aged Care Medical Research Australian Centre for Evidence Based Aged Care, La Trobe University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Scheduling Tips for Overrunning Tasks

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Your Questions, Our Answers!

    Q: Often I schedule time for things, but the task takes longer than I think, or multiplies while I’m doing it, and then my schedule gets thrown out. Any ideas?

    A: A relatable struggle! Happily, there are remedies:

    • Does the task really absolutely need to be finished today? If not, just continue it in scheduled timeslots until it’s completed.
    • Some tasks do indeed need to be finished today (hi, writer of a daily newsletter here!), so it can be useful to have an idea of how long things really take, in advance. While new tasks can catch us unawares, recurring or similar-to-previous tasks can be estimated based on how long they took previously. For this reason, we recommend doing a time audit every now and again, to see how you really use your time.
    • A great resource that you should include in your schedule is a “spare” timeslot, ideally at least one per day. Call it a “buffer” or a “backup” or whatever (in my schedule it’s labelled “discretionary”), but the basic idea is that it’s a scheduled timeslot with nothing scheduled in it, and it works as an “overflow” catch-all.

    Additionally:

    • You can usually cut down the time it takes you to do tasks by setting “Deep Work” rules for yourself. For example: cut out distractions, single-task, work in for example 25-minute bursts with 5-minute breaks, etc
    • You can also usually cut down the time it takes you to do tasks by making sure you’re prepared for them. Not just task-specific preparation, either! A clear head on, plenty of energy, the resources you’ll need (including refreshments!) to hand, etc can make a huge difference to efficiency.

    See Also: Time Optimism and the Planning Fallacy

    Do you have a question you’d like to see answered here? Hit reply or use the feedback widget at the bottom; we’d love to hear from you!

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  • Indistractable – by Nir Eyal

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    Have you ever felt that you could accomplish anything you wanted/needed, if only you didn’t get distracted?

    This book lays out a series of psychological interventions for precisely that aim, and it goes a lot beyond the usual “download/delete these apps to help you stop checking social media every 47 seconds”.

    Some you’ll have heard of before, some you won’t have, and if even one method works for you, it’ll have been well worth your while reading this book. This reviewer, for example, enjoyed the call to identity-based strength, e.g. adopting an “I am indistractable*” perspective going into tasks. This is akin to the strength of, for example, “I don’t drink” over “I am a recovering alcoholic”.

    *the usual spelling of this, by the way, is “undistractable”, but we use the author’s version here for consistency. It’s a great marketing gimmick, as all searches for the word “indistractable” will bring up his book.

    Nor is the book just about maximizing productivity to the detriment of everything else; this is not about having a 25 hours per day “grindset”. Rather, it even makes sure to cover such things as focusing on one’s loved ones, for instance.

    Bottom line: if you’ve tried blocking out the distractions but still find you can’t focus, this book offers next-level solutions

    Click here to check out Indistractible, and become indeed indistractable!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • Stretching Scientifically – by Thomas Kurz

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    People stretching incorrectly can, even if they don’t injure themselves, lose countless hours for negligible flexibility gains, and put the failure down to their body rather than the method. You can have better.

    This book’s all about what works, and not only that, but what works with specific goals in mind, beyond the generic “do the splits” and “touch your toes” etc, which are laudable goals but quite basic. A lot of the further goals he has in mind have to do not just with flexibility, but also functional dynamic strength and mobility, because it’s of less versatile use to have the flexibility only to get folded like laundry and not actually actively do the things you want to.

    He does also cover “regardless of age”, so no more worrying that you should have been trained for the ballet when you were eight and now all is lost. It isn’t.

    As for the writing style… The author, a physical fitness and rehabilitation coach and writer, wrote this book while at the Academy of Physical Education in Warsaw during the Soviet period, and it shows. It is very much straight-to-the-point, no nonsense, no waffle. Everything is direct and comes with a list of research citations and clear instructions.

    Bottom line: if you’ve been trying to improve your flexibility and not succeeding, let this old Soviet instructor have a go.

    Click here to check out Stretching Scientifically, and stretch scientifically!

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  • Bird Flu: Children At High Risk; Older Adults Not So Much

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    In this week’s news roundup…

    Children at highest risk for bird flu

    When a new infectious disease comes out, we get used to hearing the usual refrain, “children, the elderly, those with compromised immune systems” are those considered at greatest risk, and therefore first in line for vaccines.

    In this case, however, it seems that older adults appear to be rather more resilient to bird flu than children, and it’s noted that early childhood influenza exposure can elicit immune responses that last a lifetime. For those whose lifetime was not curtailed by the initial infection, that means they may enjoy extra defenses now.

    You may be wondering whether this headline statement is just a hypothesis based on that, and no, it’s not. It’s a (albeit tentative, like most things in any emerging science, as responses to a novel infection will always be) conclusion based on blood samples from a little over 150 people born between 1927 and 2026 (so, quite a range), and examining the antibodies found therein; adults born prior to 1968 are the ones who are most likely to have been exposed to H1N1 or H2N2 in childhood, resulting in them now having antibodies that work against the H5N1 virus (but still, by all means please do take all sensible precautions anyway!):

    Read in full: Older adults might be more resistant to bird flu infections than children, research finds

    Related: What you need to know about H5N1 bird flu

    GLP-1 Receptor Agonists? They work, but at what cost?

    We’re not talking about the side effects this time! Nor even the “what happens if you stop taking it” problems.

    Rather, the “cost” in this case is the literal financial cost; out of a selection of weight loss drugs examined, semaglutide (such as Ozempic and Wegovy) and tirzepatide (such as Zepbound and Eli Lilly) were the only ones deemed to not be cost-effective for patients:

    Read in full: Semaglutide, tirzepatide not deemed cost-effective obesity therapies despite benefits

    Related: Most People Who Start GLP-1 RAs Quit Them Within A Year (Here’s Why)

    Inflammation now, brittle bones later

    Chronic inflammation is a root cause of many diseases (due in part to how it weakens the immune system, but also because of how the body functions so badly in general when it’s constantly at war with itself, as is the case in chronic inflammation), and it worsens many diseases that it doesn’t outright cause.

    In this case, the new science is that chronic inflammation also makes changes to bone density over time.

    Spoiler: the changes are not good changes

    Furthermore, this holds true for young people also, not just people in the usual demographic that one would expect for brittle bones (especially: older women with untreated menopause, but also just anyone older than middle-aged in general, as most people start losing about 1% of bone density per year after their mid-30s).

    Read in full: Inflammation proteins linked to bone density changes over time

    Related: The Bare-Bones Truth About Osteoporosis

    Take care!

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