Nobody wants surgery, especially surgery on their neck or back. Luckily, there are ways you can help avoid spine surgery.

Here at Saratoga Spine, we don’t recommend surgery for our patients unless we believe it’s absolutely necessary. In fact, over 80% of our patients don’t require surgery! With some conditions surgery is the best option. However, for most of us, there are steps we can take to avoid it.

1. Catch the Problem Early

First and foremost it’s important to recognize and treat a spine problem earlier rather than later. That’s not to say you need to run to a doctor after feeling a twinge in your back. However, if you experience back or neck pain for 3 or more months and just ignore it, the problem may worsen. Depending on your condition and the underlying cause, you could be doing more damage by allowing the issue to persist. There is a happy medium between running to the doctor with each twinge and ignoring your pain all together. It can be tough to determine when it’s time to see a doctor. We’ve put together some guidelines on when it’s time to see a doctor.

2. Stretch and Exercise

Stretches are often a good way to help reduce and eliminate neck or back pain. The spine is composed of many bones and discs stacked on top of each other. Compression of the spine can lead to back or neck pain. This compression can be reduced by performing specific stretches. To learn more, visit our page on stretches for your back and neck stretches. But, be careful, there are some stretches to avoid with a spine condition.

Exercising can keep your body healthy and strong. You don’t have to be a marathon runner or weight lifter to get exercise. In fact, walking is a great exercise for many areas of your body. Exercise helps maintain good blood flow to all parts of your body and increases your strength. Increasing your core strength helps reduce stress on the spine as it has to carry less of your body’s weight.

3. Practice Good Habits

Some of our neck or back pain can be directly attributed to our habits. Being aware of our habits and understanding how they affect our spine can go a long way toward helping a spine condition.

Posture is a great example of this. Have you ever seen a person looking at their phone? Look at the back of their neck. See how they’re looking down and their neck is curved downward? The natural resting position of our necks is with us facing forward, not down. Now think about how many hours a day that individual spends looking down at their phone and the stress that is putting on their spine. This condition has a few different names, text neck, tech neck, and forward head position. Whatever you call it, it can lead to many problems such as pain in the neck, shoulders, and down the arms. Being aware of your posture and trying to maintain proper posture as much as possible can help you avoid those symptoms.

Another example of how your habits can affect your spine condition is your daily activities. Repetitive motion injuries are injuries to your body caused by you performing the same motion over and over again. Did you ever get a sore back after raking the leaves for a few hours? Or performing a task involving lifting heavy objects? Similar to how we need to be aware of our posture, we also need to be aware of how our activities can strain our spine. Practice these safety tips as you rake leaves, use proper lifting techniques when lifting heavy objects, and be aware of any repetitive motion in your daily life.

Keeping your body strong, being aware of your posture and activities, and seeing a doctor when appropriate, are just three ways you can help yourself avoid spine surgery. What do you do to keep your spine healthy? Let us know on our facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/SaratogaSpine/.