Three months of back pain: why did this happen to me?
One of the questions I’ve struggled with after receiving my herniated disk diagnosis was: “Why did this happen to me?”
Before the diagnosis, I had thought about myself as a perfectly healthy guy. My body generally did what I wanted it to do: playing with my son, carrying around groceries, or walking up to the fourth floor multiple times a day, to name a few. What’s more, I had been lifting weights five times a week and even replaced my office chair with a treadmill a while ago.
When I listened to others talking about their back pain, I always told myself: “This could never happen to me”. Well, so much for that ...
The diagnosis hit me by surprise. After the initial shock had receded, I wanted to understand exactly what had gone wrong. As usual, I ordered a pile of books and started reading up on the subject.
Here’s a rough overview of my current understanding (but please take this with a grain of salt, as I’m definitely no expert). I believe that there were two main contributors:
First, throughout my twenties, I had maintained a fairly sedentary lifestyle. Being a software developer, I spent long stretches of time slouched into an office chair. But my evenings consisted of yet more sitting, thanks to pastimes such as reading books, playing video games, and programming for fun.
All that sitting has left the disks between my vertebrae malnourished. As a result, my disks have “dried up” and have become more susceptible to damage. Sadly, that process is irreversible.
Second, I’ve lifted weights with poor form. When I started weightlifting many years ago, I paid lots of attention to the proper execution of all exercises. But over time, I stopped paying close attention to it. Since my injury occurred during a squat, my form must have been off during that exercise. Quite likely, it has been off for a while.
Squatting down with proper technique is great for your back because it strengthens those muscles that hold the spine in place and protect it. But a squat with poor form is really bad for your back because of the amount of weight involved and the unfavorable mechanics.
Now take a spine prone to injury and plenty of squats with poor form, add them together, and you get – voilà – a herniated disk.
To summarize, my injury wasn’t caused by a single mistake. Rather, it is the result of hundreds or thousands of small stressors that have accumulated over the years.
PS: other issues might have contributed to my injury, e.g. work-related stress, lack of sleep, bad posture, lack of flexibility, insufficient nutrition, or even genetics.