Bart de Vries, Physiotherapist and founder of Limber, talks to us about back pain and the implications of our chosen work desk.
What you believe about back pain might be delaying your recovery.
What people commonly understand about back pain is outdated. Commonly held beliefs like bed rest, pain medication and surgery have been proven to be less effective and more risky than taking an active approach to recovery.
The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care’s new standard of care for low back pain was released in August. Bart has released a fun and educational quiz about back pain. This will help you separate fact from fiction and take an active approach to your recovery.
The facts:
1 in 6 Australians have back problems. Back pain costs the health system $4.8 billion annually. This is according to the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care.
Peter O’Sullivan is a professor of musculoskeletal physiotherapy at Curtin University. He helped write the commission’s new care standard. Peter says, “A lot of the common understanding of low back pain makes people believe that their backs are fragile and need to be protected. This leads to people avoiding movement and activity, which can slow recovery times.” He continues, “The truth is that back pain recovers faster when we relax, move and get active. In the majority of cases, people can get better without treatments like strong drugs or surgery.”
How much do you know about back pain?
The pervasiveness of unhelpful back pain messages led Bart to create a quiz. This is a fun and quick way for people to test their back pain knowledge to get on the path to faster recovery.
“The Limber Back Pain Quiz is available for free at www.limberlife.co/quiz
It’s ten true or false questions that uncover the back pain myths that people may believe and set them on the right track” De Vries says.
He said that things like aging and your core strength get a lot of the blame for back troubles. “But that simply isn’t the case; neither your core strength nor age have a scientific link to whether we have back pain.”
It is hoped that with the change in the clinical standard and the introduction of the Limber Back Pain Quiz, people’s back pain recovery journey will be smoother and faster than ever before.
About Limber:
Limber is on a mission to halve disability from back pain by 2050 (currently the #1 cause of disability in the world). We’ve started by creating the world’s healthiest desks. Dynamic floor sitting and standing workspaces that make it easier to move throughout the day, keeping our backs strong. Limber has over 1000 customers serving New Zealand and Australia.
For more information and to see our range of products visit: http://www.limberlife.co
Learn more here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnZr0TcGF_A&authuser=1
~ Bart de Vries