either question.
. .. In fact, there are so many potential causes of acute, new-onset back pain (bulging discs, muscle pulls, inflammation, fibromyalgia, and on and on), that it would take several articles such as this one just to list them all and describe how they differ, so what I will focus on instead is the obvious factors that significantly raise the risk of getting acute back pain, such as strenuous jobs, certain sporting activities (and although I don’t consider golf to be a sport, I must point out that golfers with poor swings – which is nearly all duffers – have a very high rate of back pain), and improper lifting techniques (whether at work or at home), but the two major risk factors that I want to flag are the two charter members of the same old, same old club of risk factors for nearly everything bad that happens to you: being significantly overweight (no shock, there, I’m sure) and lack of fitness, or more specifically, living a typical western-world sedentary lifestyle.
. .. In fact, if I had to pick out one risk factor above all others for most people, I’d say it’s that we sit way too much for most of our days, so that inevitably, through our lack of activity, we suffer a weakening in those back muscles, abdominal muscles, tendons, ligaments, discs, and other structures that evolved over the millennia to be constantly stimulated and re-stimulated and which deteriorate if left undisturbed for long periods of time.
. .. After all, when we first trundled down from the trees to walk on the savannah, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that those ancestors with the best backs (and the best thighs and best eyesight) were the ones who also had the best chance of avoiding ending up as the lunch or dinner of some marauding predator, and so it continued over the millennia, that is, even though we left the savannah, we still basically spent most of our days working, standing, walking, and moving, and it’s really only over the last few decades that we’ve become such daytime sedentary beasts, and I suspect that our backs (and abdominal muscles) have simply not evolved to keep up with such a major change in lifestyle.
. .. Now, for the next key question: why is there
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