Did you know that low back pain affects hundreds of thousands of people each year? We all know the symptoms. One wrong twist or turn and our back makes a twang and ouch! Sometimes, it happens fast, while other times its a gradual process. Symptoms develop through times perhaps starting with stiffness and progressing on to soreness. At some point in our lifetime, we will experience low back pain. As someone that has lower back pain, I found that a massage chair has helped in many ways.
One of the most important areas for low back pain is prevention. There are many things you can do proactively to minimize the occurrence of low back problems. Prevention means you have to be aware of things that can impact your back health in a negative way. By changing some of the most basic habits with respect to sitting, standing and lifting you can reduce the occurrence of low back pain.
The most common areas to correct are your standing posture, sitting positions and lifting techniques. These are areas of the highest probability of an injury. So if you are standing, hold your head up high and put your shoulders back. Try not to slouch forward. This creates concentration of pressure on your spinal column.
How do you sit? For the most part we sit with our shoulders slouched forward. This places more strain on the muscles of the upper back. You can immediately correct this pain by holding your shoulders back and sitting up straight. This protects the back from top to bottom.
Lifting is probably one of the most important activities to make sure you do properly. Lifting generally involves adding more weight and stress to your back. When lifting, you need to lift with your legs. These are some of the strongest muscles in the body. Do not lift by bending over and letting your back do the work. This is a sure way to cause a low back injury.
Another area of prevention is warming up and warming down prior to and after physical activities. Many injuries occur due to improper warm up before activities. The muscles and the body are cold and inflexible. When strain is put on them, they do not have the elasticity required and may cause an injury. Massage chairs help the body to warm up and warm down before and after activities.
Relax your back with a soothing rolling massage from a massage chair. The rolling massage moves the rollers up and down the spine. The chair is usually reclined back so the weight of the body is used to help adjust each disc in the spinal column as the roller passes each one. This provides a stretching of the soft tissues which helps to keep them flexible and elastic.
A Shiatsu massage is a very relieving massage that can be delivered by a massage chair. The Shiatsu technique came from Japan and has been integrated into many massage chair programs. Shiatsu stimulates acupressure points throughout the back. The back is known to have over 100 such points. These points help induce full body relaxation. Additionally, chopping and kneading massages are used to relieve tension in the muscles.
One excellent feature of massage chairs is a stretching system. The stretching system is used to elongate different parts of the body. Some stretching systems target the lower body while others can do the arms and shoulders. The rolling massage provides for traction of the spine. In some cases, most of the body can be stretch with the functions of the massage chair providing needed relief.
If you have back pain, then a massage chair may be an important compliment to your overall health and wellness plan. Prevention is certainly the best medicine. However, if you are affected by low back pain, then finding the right treatments is paramount to proper recovery. A massage chair can help you both on the prevention side and on the recovery side.
Check out different Massage Chairs for Back Pain and find what is best to suit your needs. There are a wide variety of massage therapies and supplemental treatments as well which make for a holistic experience. Peruse our extensive library of candid Massage Chair Reviews covering as many models as we have tried.