Practicing what you preach is sometimes easier said than done, especially in the field of healthcare. Your nurse can tell you to give up smoking, but that message doesn’t have the same meaning if you see that same nurse smoking a cigarette as you leave the clinic.

However, we try our best to practice what we preach at Midwest Spine and Brain Institute, because if we want patients listen to our advice, we better be taking measures to ensure our spines and brains are healthy. So today, we’re going to share five daily activities our neurologists try to partake in to ensure their spines stay in tip top shape.

Tips From Professionals

Here’s how some of brightest minds in the world of spine care keep their backs in top shape.

1. Daily Exercise – Exercise is one of the best things you can do for your spine and its supporting structures. Regular exercise strengthens areas of the spine that keep it stabilized, and it creates healthy muscle in the area. Not only is exercise a great way to keep your spine in good shape, but exercise has also been shown to decrease symptom prevalence in individuals with certain spinal conditions, like muscle spasms or inflammation, as it helps healthy blood get to the area.

2. Stretching – Like most Americans, neurologists live busy lives, so we can’t always carve out an hour or two to get to the gym. Even if we can’t exercise, we can still help our spine by taking five minutes to stretch a couple times throughout the day. If we stay seated or standing for a long time, the same areas in the spine become overstressed. To help alleviate some of the pain from this stress, and to ensure other structures can get healthy blood flow, perform some simple back stretches throughout your day.

3. Diet Choices – We don’t pretend to stick to a perfect diet all the time, but the food choices you make play a significant role in the health and development of the spine. Consuming a wide range of fruits, vegetables and fish ensures that our bodies benefit from a variety of vitamins and minerals. Additionally, junk foods and foods that are high in fat or sugar can spur the development of inflammation in the body, which can contribute to back pain if you have bone spurs or disc issues.

4. No Smoking – Smoking has been shown to contribute to the degeneration of spinal discs, and it negatively affects blood flow throughout the body. When oxygenated blood can’t easily circulate to spinal structures, those areas are more prone to spasms, injury and atrophy. Your spine is just one of the many areas of your body that would benefit from giving up cigarettes.

5. Listening To Warning Signs – Spine specialists may be more knowledgeable when it comes to knowing what warning signs to look for, but they also are more likely to have a problem looked at before it spirals out of control. If you begin to develop back pain, and it doesn’t resolve or it continues to get worse, set up a consultation sooner rather than later. It is always better to treat a condition in its infancy rather than when it has grown into a bigger problem. Unfortunately, many people shrug off spine pain and try to go on with their normal day, which only serves to exacerbate the pain. If you have worsening or shooting back pain, contact a specialist.