Massage Chairs Weaken Lower Back Pain

By Rick James

Low back pain is thought to affect 80% of the population at some times in their lives. This means that all of us at some point may experience some level of back pain. This may be aggravated by certain activities or happen because of an accident. What happens is the stress on your spine becomes concentrated which puts enormous stress. This stress will fatigue the soft tissues and muscles making them become stiff and hurt. Many people are turning to massage chairs as a convenient method to reduce the stiffness and pain associated with low back problems.

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 proactive method for back pain prevention is the periodic use of a massage chair. Massage chairs can be used to reduce low back pain, but also can be used as part of the warm up and warm down activities to prevent back pain. Massage chairs come with a variety of therapies to help the body. In addition to numerous massage therapies, massage chairs also have heating elements, traction systems and music players.

A massage chair can help adjust the spine with the use of a rolling massage. A rolling massage uses the rollers to go up and down the spine. As the rollers pass each vertebrae, they apply a slight traction that flexes the soft tissues which helps to make them more flexible. This is especially relieving when they are tight and stiff.

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 of the newer functions being integrated into massage chairs are traction systems. These traction systems can stretch the upper body including the arms and shoulders. Other traction systems are for the lower body which stretches the hips, thighs, knees and ankles. These systems will stretch out these muscle groups helping to improve range of movement by increasing the flexibility of muscles.

We have shared some basics in preventing low back pain. Remember many forms of injuries can be avoided just by correcting your sitting, standing and lifting. A massage chair can be used to warm up and warm down when undertaking exercise or other physical activities. Massage chairs provide targeted relief when you do have stiffness and tightness. Get the right set of preventative tools in place to make sure your back stays in great health. - 32188

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