Kirkland Chiropractor, Chiropractic care, Redmond, Bellevue, Bothell, Totem Lake, Washington.

We spend a significant amount of time in school in our early lives. Perhaps every waking minute from the time we are 6 until the time we are 18 and often beyond are spent in some way, shape or form educating ourselves to be productive members of society. Undoubtedly, an inordinate amount of time is spent carrying or lugging our book bags and back packs to and from school, to and from the library or to and from work. Many of you may be surprised to find out that the type of bag as well as the amount of the load of our book bags can adversely affect how are muscles adapt and shorten as well as how our spines develop.

From an early age we are taught that brushing and flossing are of vital importance in terms of maintaining our dental health. Unfortunately, apart from being told to stand up straighter with our shoulders back and our chests up to improve our posture we really aren’t taught anything about spinal health.

As a Chiropractor that sees patients’ everyday with varying levels of spinal health, I feel that it’s vital that I help people to understand that it’s very important to be proactively preventing problems before they become an issue. I feel that prevention should begin the moment children enter school.

Research shows that there are an increasing number of reports of childhood back pain in recent decades. By the end of their teen years, more then 50% of youths experience at least one low-back pain episode (Spine 1998; 23:228-34). New research even indicates that this increase may be due, at least in part, to the improper use of backpacks. But, you don’t need to be a scientist to understand the effect of backpacks on you spines; watch children in any schoolyard struggle to walk while bent sideways under the weight of an overloaded backpack on one shoulder – you’ll quickly realize the potential danger of this commonplace item.

Think Carrying a Backpack is “No Big Deal?” Think Again!

12 pounds in an average child’s backpack X 10 lifts per day X 120 lbs per day X 180 school days per year = a staggering 21,600 pounds lifted in one school year. (That’s nearly 11 tonnes of weight; the equivalent of 6 mid-sized automobiles!)

– Courtesy of Backpack Safety America.

Good spinal health begins with prevention. Something as simple as wearing your backpack over both shoulders versus just one can help to distribute the amount of weight one has to carry. This in turn helps to prevent postural imbalances which often lead to vertebral subluxations.

A restricted spinal motion segment which can cause physiological, neurological and biomechanical dysfunction. Subluxations can be precursors to many things like neck, mid and low back pain, headaches, osteoarthritis and even weakened immune function.

Only your Doctor of Chiropractic is adequately trained to perform adjustments to your spine and extremities in order to alleviate subluxations. Consulting Dr. Sue either on your own or your child’s spinal health as well as taking measures by fitting your child’s backpack properly can help to prevent many problems from developing.

For information on purchasing and fitting a backpack properly check out http://www.backpacksafe.com/. Or to check out some backpacks and bags that get our stamp of approval check out http://www.airpacks.com/.

Dr. Bourree is available to come to your child’s school to do presentations on backpack safety for the benefit of students, parents, teachers and staff. For more information please contact Dr. Sue at Lakeview Chiropractic.