Thought Bytes...
December 2001
A Different Perspective on Back Injuries
I hurt my back last month. It was a rather humbling experience for an Ergonomist - I have never felt such intense pain in my life. A friend described childbirth as easier than the muscle spasms in my back. Maybe she just said that to comfort me as I crawled onto the floor of her van when she took me to the hospital. I was certain I had herniated a disk (which I didn’t). I was also certain that no one in existence had ever felt as bad as I did at that moment.
It certainly gave me a new perspective on some of the issues my clients deal with. Even three weeks later, I can’t sit comfortably for more that a few minutes. I have modified my computer work station so that I can work standing. And I am still cautious about lifting.
But I don’t let the remaining discomfort stop me either. Life goes on. I have a business to run and a house to maintain. I have presentations to make, assessments to do, and reports to prepare. And that still involves sitting, standing, walking, lifting, pushing, pulling and (in many cases) being able to demonstrate poor and good postures.
Most people who know that I am an Ergonomist got a good chuckle out of my predicament. Then they asked what I did to myself. Well, over the course of the week preceding my injury I lifted in excess of 2400 lbs. (mostly office chairs), spent two days demonstrating poor posture while doing a training course, sat on the edge of my seat for a day while doing workstation assessments, and then, to finish it off, I spent an afternoon bending over my rose bushes trying to get collars around them to hold the mulch before the snow came.
All of these activities I have done in the past without significant problems. Although lifting office chairs is awkward at the best of times, I am careful to use good posture. As I tell my clients, it is rarely one event that causes the injury, but the accumulation over time. And, as I have recently re-learned, insufficient recovery time is a significant factor.
But I am not convinced that the irritation to my disk is entirely mechanical. Yes, the outcome is mechanical, but I believe there were also contributing factors. On the preceding Monday I got a computer virus. Normally, I don’t open any remotely suspicious attachments - the fact that I did open one attests to my stress level at the time. The people who took my Office Work Station Assessments Training course know that I was slightly pre-occupied about the virus and getting rid of it before it damaged my system.
For years there has been debate over whether back injuries are entirely mechanical events or whether psycho-social factors play a role. At recent conferences I have seen several eminent spinal mechanics researchers speaking on the issue. More and more, there is recognition that:
- the mind and the body cannot be separated and
- numerous factors contribute to the development of injuries.
If it is not merely one event or one source that causes the back injury, then should we also look at multiple kinds of treatment? Most treatments focus on mechanical issues - healing the body. And rightly so to get the body back to a functional level. But, what about assisting the mechanical treatment and prevention of future injuries? If the psychosocial factors are not considered and controlled, will the treatment be as effective?
As for me, maybe I will take my own advice. I find that I like working at the computer standing up (I just need to save some money to buy a sit/stand work station!). I asked for help shoveling the snow and installing the new faucet in the kitchen. I said no to taking on more extra-curricular work at church, even though it sounded interesting.
If a workaholic like me can learn to ask for help and learn to say no, maybe I can keep both the psycho-social and the mechanical risk factors under control.
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