From Monday 5th to the end of the week it is Back Care Awareness Week and this year it is focusing on back pain in children.
Suffering from back pain is bad enough as an adult and it should be avoidable. What is even more avoidable is back pain in children.
However as leading London Chiropractors there are unfortunately some shocking facts about related to back pain in children. A lot of comprehensive school children suffer from back pain and figures taken from Back Care Awareness week reveal that one quarter of school children in Comprehensive Schools suffer from regular back pain. That is 1 in 4 young people suffering from back pain problems.
It shouldn’t really happen at all and we need to take a look at why it is and how to counter act it.
How to help children avoid back pain
Being busy London Chiropractors we advise all types of people on back pain and we are well placed to give advice on back pain with children.
There are two areas which we believe may be giving your school child back pain; sitting for lengthy period of time and their backpack.
Backpack – Are you are sending them to school with an overloaded backpack? Is their backpack a two shoulder one or a one shoulder one? Are they wearing properly?
Unfortunately a lot of kids are fashion conscience when it comes to their backpacks and will wear one sided bags that hang low. This is terrible for their backs and you need to insist they take a two strap rucksack to school. The other thing you can do is make sure it isn’t overloaded with heavy books. Check their bag before they head off for the day.
Sitting down for too long – There are two areas here, home and at school. While you can influence how active they are at home you have far less control over them when they’re in school. Try and advise them that they need to shuffle every 20 minutes or so and that in their breaks they should be walking or running around and not sitting.
A lot of the time simple changes can be made so that your children can enjoy life pain free but there are sometimes occasions which need more in-depth analysis and maybe specialist help is required.
For more information on Back Care awareness week, please follow the link.