Great British Gardening Injuries.
Great British Gardening injuries
Now that the constant winter rain has stopped (hopefully) lots of Brits are heading out to tend their gardens. As an osteopath I’ve noticed that this annual over-enthusiastic return to gardening brings in a fresh crop of patients.
It appears that overdoing certain gardening activities tends to produce some predictable problems with people’s backs. Here are a few I’ve seen already this year;
People who have lots of hedge to maintain, particularly if it's quite high, can often end up straining the joints or muscles in the middle (thoracic) part of their spines. Typically, the action of using shears or holding a heavy electric trimmer whilst bending forwards can strain the middle back joints and muscles due to the sustained leverage generated.
Over enthusiastic weeding by hand whilst bending over or kneeling can be a cause of low back muscle strains. Typically, people will stay in this bent over position for too long and may over-reach rather than resting and re-positioning themselves regularly.
Digging with a spade can sometimes cause problems with the pelvis and low back, particularly if digging hard ground or overdoing it. The main problem is the force generated by the foot strike onto the neck of the spade. This one-sided force can travel up the leg and jar the pelvis and low back. This often irritates the sacroiliac joint and can introduce a torsion into the pelvis leading to low back pain.
Whilst you can get back problems from gardening, the good news is that most problems are easy to treat and very amenable to osteopathic treatment in particular. It’s also worth noting that overall, gardening has been shown to be very beneficial for health, so you should keep doing it wherever possible!
If you are suffering from an over-exuberance related gardening injury then come and see me at Osteo Studio.
Cliff Russell, Registered Osteopath
Osteo Studio serving the areas of East Grinstead, Forest Row, Lingfield and the wider West Sussex area.
