Back pain: grocery shopping can be torture

How many times have you come back from the supermarket with a sore back?

The fact is that grocery shopping carries a risk to our spine that we are unaware of, both because of the postures we adopt when carrying bags and pushing the cart, and because of the weight we are carrying, causing those terrible and persistent back pains, even aggravating existing injuries and conditions or creating new ones if we continue to do it wrong over time.

That is why it is important to follow the right guidelines when shopping, ensuring a long and healthy life for our backs.

Although the ideal situation is to carry nothing heavy and have our shopping delivered to our homes, this is not the option we normally choose, and we acquire bad habits for carrying and transporting things.

So then:

• Carrying all your shopping in one bag or in two bags of different weights, leaning forward when carrying heavy loads, and bending down to pick up bags from the floor can cause back pain and injuries, especially in the lumbar and dorsal areas.
• Keeping your elbows extended when carrying bags or pushing a shopping cart incorrectly can cause a lot of pain in your elbows, shoulders, and wrists.
• Misuse of the shopping cart (carrying it incorrectly or loading it with more than the permitted weight) can also cause us severe pain and future injuries to the spine and arms.

In addition to adopting correct postures when loading and knowing how to pack our shopping, we should also remember to stretch once we are at home and have put the shopping away, which will be very useful for any possible discomfort and for preventing future injuries.

At our clinic, we treat these types of conditions with personalized and professional care, combining different innovative physiotherapy techniques with a commitment to offering you preventive techniques.