While raising the issue of ‘low back pain among the working women’, various health experts here on Wednesday, said that ‘adopting wrong posture at work place or using wrongly designed furniture’ are the main reasons for this acute problem which is gradually increasing day by day. “We have sufficient evidence of high prevalence of non specific low back pain among working women,” said Dr Amarjeet Singh, Prof. School of Public Health, PGIMER while speaking at a seminar on orientation training of female medical and paramedical hospital employees and students of Chandigarh on measures to prevent and reduce low back pain.
Working women in India are exposed to a dual burden of job and home. Hence they over-exert themselves due to which they suffer from various health problems. One such commonly encountered problem among women employees is of low back pain, says experts. There are many factors that cause low back pain without any major underlying pathology, added Experts.
“Even the clinicians and the laboratory based researchers of apex institutions are not well versed with the intricacies of community based research on physiotherapy related topics like low back pain”, said Dr Singh. Experts admitted that conservative measures like on-site ergonomic modifications including posture correction and lifestyle changes viz. exercise/yoga/diet/weight reduction can prevent and alleviate low back pain. However, even medicos/paramedical professionals and educated women are not aware of these options.
At the seminar, various experts including physiotherapists demonstrated tips for maintaining correct body postures at workplace and routine life for preventing low back pain.