Swapping back pain scapegoats ∞

This little article about back pain wisely challenges the fearful assumption that spines are fragile, and that’s great … but unfortunately it just shifts the blame to “weakness” instead. Sure, exercise is pretty good for back pain — that is well established — but probably not because backs are weak.

How about we stop blaming back pain on any tangible property of the spine? Fragility, weakness, posture, degeneration, etc … they all miss the point. Pain (especially chronic pain) is multifactorial and neurological by nature and rarely has a tidy physical explanation or solution. We need to be okay with that.

Personally, I would prefer to have a strong back, because reasons … but “back pain insurance” is far down the list. We can sing the praises of a strong back all we like: the people who have both strong backs and pain are not going to go away, and there’s plenty of them. There is no compelling evidence that weakness is a risk factor for back pain.