Dear LPG,

I know I am not alone because so many of the people in my age group, who I have occasion to meet and talk with  when I am out and about at my weekly elders club, shopping or in my GP’s waiting room complain about the pain they are feeling in their backs or hips. 

The worrying thing is that these days it is not only us oldies, so many of the younger people I know are saying exactly the same thing, and when I say young I mean really young.  My granddaughter is not yet 35 but often mentions her back pain. 

It is interesting that my back only started to really play up about ten years ago and I hear this when talking to many of my friends of a certain age.  When my generation were young we had a lot more physical work to do which I believe kept our backs strong.  We did not have so many appliances that did the work for us; we had to stand over our twin tub washing machines and push our mechanical lawnmowers over the grass, so few people had cars that we had to walk and use public transport to get where we wanted to go which forced us to get the exercise that our spines needed.  We also have to blame the fact that  televisions and computers encouraged us to sit down so much and then there was the increase in fast and convenience food which made us give our backs more weight to manoeuvre when we did move. 

I believe that many of the younger back pain sufferers have to blame much of their suffering so early in life on the 1970s and 1980s because it was at about that time that everything started to become automated.  There was a decade or two when people got quite lazy and I think that, until it became fashionable to become a member of the local Gym, take a morning jog around the block, attend an exercise class or get interactive with one of those exercise videos, we have to take the blame for the state of our backs.  Basically the children of the 70s and 80s, for the most-part, did it to themselves.    

There have been many studies on the subject and lots of information to be found online, and now that I am getting on I think that I have to accept a degree of pain, but the amount of relative youngsters that are already suffering disturbs me.  What are they going to be like when they get older?

KC,  Lee

LPG found a little information which may be of interest…

(►►►)