Dr. Stefano Sinicropi, M.D.

You don’t need to completely overhaul your daily life in order to gradually improve the health of your spine. There are a number of little things you can do each day that will act as a building block for long-term spine health. In today’s blog, we’re going to spotlight some of those minor tweaks that you can make to your daily life that can eventually have a major impact on your spine health.

Boosting Your Spine Health With Five Daily Habits

If you can strive to perform a couple of these actions every single day, you’ll be doing right by your spine.

1. Get Outside More – Get outside and soak up some more sun. Sunlight exposure is key to healthy Vitamin D production, and it can be difficult for those of us in Minnesota to regularly get outside, especially in the winter time. Find little ways to get outside more, even if you’re just going for a walk around the block or reading a book in the sun. This extra sunlight exposure will help your body produce more Vitamin D, which is important for the development of bones and soft tissues that support the spinal column.
2. Move More – Your spine would love it if you exercised more regularly, but start by simply striving to move more throughout the day. Again, we don’t want to completely overhaul your daily habits, we just want to tweak them slightly so that the changes are more likely to stick. Go for a 20-minute walk around the neighborhood after work, walk around the building a couple times a week on your lunch break, or park further away when you’re out shopping so you get more steps in each day. All this movement forces your spine to handle healthy stress, and this controlled stress is essential for developing and maintaining muscle and ligament function.
3. Drink More Water – Many of us could benefit from drinking a little more water throughout the day. Drinking a little more H20 isn’t going to revolutionize your spine health, but it does help to provide a better foundation for it to thrive in the long term. Staying hydrated ensures that blood vessels remain wider and can more easily help healthy blood reach critical structures. Make it easier for your spine to get the nutrients it craves from your bloodstream by drinking plenty of water throughout the day.
4. Dietary Tweaks – We don’t expect you to go on a crash diet and shed a crazy amount of weight, but if you can swap out a snack or a side dish for a healthier option each day, you’ll be helping your spine get important nutrients and limiting your calorie intake, in turn reducing your risk for weight gain that serves to put more stress on your spine. Swap out potato chips for cucumber slices or french fries for an apple, and you’ll likely notice an improvement in your spine health and your whole body health.
5. Limit Screen Time – Spine specialists are seeing a growing amount of younger people presenting to their office with upper back and neck pain, and prevailing wisdom is that screen time may be to blame. Limit the amount of time you spend looking down at a cell phone or an iPad, and you’ll avoid overstressing your cervical spine and its supportive muscles. If you’re going to be looking at your phone or messing around on a tablet, try to have the device out in front of you a bit so that your head isn’t tilted forward and straining your spine.

Contact Dr. Sinicropi – Expert Spine Surgeon

These small daily adjustments can do wonders for the long-term health of your spine, so work to make these tweaks if you’re hoping to have a healthier spine in the future. And if you’re dealing with new or existing back pain that is disrupting your life, connect with Dr. Sinicropi and the team at Midwest Spine & Brain Institute today at (651) 430-3800.

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