Back pain, muscle injuries, a feeling of numbness, aching and intense soreness have never really been of much concern to me - until just before Xmas. A combination of bad posture, stress, carrying too much weight on one shoulder and possibly even a strain, all joined forces to give me a lovely neck inflammation - or rather a tendinitis. A frozen muscle in my neck - possibly the levator scapulae. Doctors seem to have many words to describe this kind of injury and yet have very few ways to cure it. The straightforward, common answer is to prescribe a full blown course of anti-inflammatory drugs, which only really just calm the problem but don't address the cause.
I found that a mild anti-inflammatory drug like aspirin (mild in comparison to what they offered me), combined with heat patches, massages and hot baths did soothe the pain,perhaps only temporarily, but nevertheless in a gentler manner. I have never taken strong drugs and will carry on down that path unless my pain threshold can simply no longer cope. A few sleepless nights with a thumping head nearly led me to my limits, but it never quite got bad enough for me to reach for the hard stuff. A visit to a great osteopath settled a minor imbalance in my verterbras and provided a much needed relief to my strained muscle.
Most importantly, this painful episode reminded me how our bodies are so important, they are the most fundamental elements of our lives and yet we often take them for granted. Health is key to all of us and this has made me evermore aware that we need to take great care of it. I also felt suddenly quite old, powerless and weak. As a matter of fact, we often associate back and muscle pain with older people (after all, that's what my mother would always complain about), but actually this affects people of all ages and in good physical shape. Worryingly, it affects more and more younger people, which I would guess, is mainly down to unhealthy lifestyles and an increased time spent sitting in front of computers.A few decades ago this wasn't so widespread, so normal. Hence, with this new normality, back and muscle pain have become other normalities.
