Back pain is like a cut – you have micro-tears in your muscles, you can have a lowered immune response around the joint, and general tissue disruption.

If you have a low level of zinc or vitamin C in your body, this will impair the healing process. As a result, your back pain will heal more slowly and it is more likely to become chronic.

If you increase your vitamin C levels by taking a supplement or simply by increasing your fruit and vegetable intake, you can aid the healing processes.

Zinc is present in a wide variety of foods, particularly in association with protein foods.

A vegetarian diet often contains less zinc than a meat-based diet, so it is important for vegetarians to eat plenty of foods that are rich in this vital mineral.

Your iron levels, however, are important: muscles need iron because iron brings oxygen to them.

If your iron levels are low, your muscles will tire and you’re more likely to experience back pain.

If you are not eating red meat at least two to three times a week, then your iron levels may be low. You may need a supplement to boost your iron levels.

Make sure you also eat vitamin C. Vitamin C helps you absorb iron, so if your intake of fruit and vegetables is low, this could also be a reason for having low iron levels.

Improve your diet. Eat red meat, fresh fruit and vegetables to make sure your iron and vitamin C levels are good.

Your back will benefit greatly, as will your overall health.

This means that unless you can see yourself without back pain, removing your back pain is going to be difficult.

The first step to remove back pain is actually visualising that your back pain is gone.

This is not make-believe, new age quackery or some spiritual quest.

Your brain is simply your most powerful tool … so use it.

If you visualise yourself running around free of back pain, your mind helps to produce these results.

Start by spending 17 seconds, 10 times a day, then increase it to one minute, 10 times a day.

Sit, stand or lie down and imagine running around freely, easily, with strength and agility, doing everything you wish to do.

Hold the thought; feel the emotions of what it will be like to be without back pain … and your mind will help you achieve it.

Try it and see the difference.

Stress will tighten your muscles, which will cause your joints to tighten and back pain to occur.

Often, stress may cause upper back pain, and it’s just as likely to cause lower back pain too.

One of the easy ways to reduce stress, and therefore ease back pain, is to breathe more deeply and become more relaxed.

Try this simple technique to reduce your stress levels:

• Hold your right hand up and curl your index and middle fingers towards your palm. Place your thumb next to your right nostril. Close the left nostril by pressing gently against it with your ring finger and inhale through the right nostril. The breath should be slow, steady and full.
• Now close the right nostril by pressing gently against it with your thumb, and open your left nostril by relaxing your ring finger and exhale fully with a slow and steady breath.
• Inhale though the left nostril, close it, and then exhale through the right nostril.

Because when back pain occurs, rest is not advisable – unless you are in too much pain to move.

If you can move … move.

Movement will help joints keep moving, it also helps muscles to relax and helps to reduce inflammation.

Go for a gentle walk as often as possible, just around your house or back yard. Keep moving, and you will stop a lot of back pain problems.

Research has shown that if you keep the joint moving, it will heal more quickly and there will be less chance that your back pain will become chronic.

If you notice that the longer you stand the more your lower back or upper back get sore, you’ll find the following tip particularly useful.

Place a book or block of wood about the height of a yellow pages phone book on the ground. Place one foot on the book and keep the other flat on the ground.

Stand like this; every half hour or hour, swap feet so that the other foot is on the book.

This changes the lower back posture and removes the majority of tension that builds and cause back pain.

This is great if you work in retail, in labs, on lines – or at any job where you stand all day.

It’s also good to do if you’re doing dishes, preparing food for a meal and so on.

Try it – you’ll notice how easy it is to stand without getting back pain.

The reason is simple enough.

Most adults never rest against gravity. When you sit or stand you are fighting gravity.

Gravity compresses your discs, tires your joints and fatigues your muscles. More than 95% of all back pain issues relate to the day-to-day stresses on your body. Falls and injuries are an infrequent cause.

What happens when you lift something and suddenly feel back pain? Often you’ve lifted it hundreds of times before. Why did it cause you to feel back pain today?

Tension has built up in your spine until your spine could take no more, then back pain arrived while you were doing a normal daily activity.

Lying down more often reduces the stress of gravity on your spine. It helps muscles stay stronger, it releases pressure off the spinal joints and will actually help your discs stay healthy.

So each night, rather than sitting on the couch and watching TV… lie on the couch OR lie on the floor.

Lie down more often in weekends (you don’t need to go to sleep – just rest). The more you lie down, the more anti-gravity effects you will gain.

Try it – you’ll see that your spine isn’t the only thing that benefits.

Although you still need to address the muscles and joints that are causing your back pain, ice and heat will help ease your pain.

Place ice on the painful area for 10 minutes, then replace with heat for 10 minutes (a hot water bottle or wheat bag is ideal), then ice for 10, heat for 10 until you have had three episodes of ice and three episodes with heat. Make sure you finish up by using heat.

Using alternate ice and heat creates almost a pumping action to remove any remaining inflammation. Also, heat improves the blood supply to the area.

If the blood supply is high, you will remove the by-products of the muscles working hard – which causes a lot of your actual back pain.

If you have had a sudden onset of back pain, use ice in the first 48 hours. Ice will reduce inflammation and pain levels.

Put ice on the area of pain for 10 minutes, then remove it for 10 minutes. Repeat this so you have three episodes of ice on the area.

Repeat this often during the day and your back pain levels will reduce quickly.

If you target the area as soon as back pain occurs, you can stop it getting worse; you can prevent muscles tightening and help joints ease quickly.

Early intervention is the key.

And when you think about it, aren’t gardening and household chores just as physical as going to a gym, for a run or to play sport?

So warm up before you do chores, then warm down.

Do this and a lot of back pain from so-called ‘normal’ daily activity will not occur.

Remember, more than 90% of injuries happen in the home doing usual household chores. Warm up and warm down to avoid these.

Simply go for a two- to three-minute walk around your home or property.

Bend and stretch and simulate the activity you are about to do – just without tension.

For example, pretend to vacuum without the vacuum in your hand. Do this for one to two minutes, then attack your chores!