Family Physician: A Friend to Depend On

Posted on: 23 October 2015

According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission's estimation, in 2012, more than 100,000 people were affected by gardening-related injuries. Some of these less-severe gardening injuries are treated by U.S. orthopedics specialists, general practitioners and chiropractors. It's easy to see how such injuries can happen. Keeping your flower beds and lawns looking nice requires digging, hauling mulch and manure, and picking up heavy trees and shrubs. However, you don't have to settle for back pain or injury in order to have a well-manicured yard. There are several easy things you can do to help avoid hurting yourself while working in the garden.

Keeping yourself healthy in the garden

1. Lift from your legs, not your back. You've likely heard this tip before, but using the strength in your legs to lift bags of mulch, drag that wheelbarrow and lift that tree into the hole is essential to keeping your back from getting injured while gardening. It's also a good idea to squat or sit on the ground while planting or weeding rather than bending down from your waist and avoid twisting and turning while lifting.

2. Don't try to do everything in one day. It can be tempting on that first warm day to try to get your entire property in shape for the coming season. However, any veteran gardener knows that working in your yard is a project that is never finished. Better to divide the tasks you need to do, especially those that involve heavy lifting and digging, into several smaller gardening sessions.

3. Invest in the right equipment. There are a myriad of gardening gadgets on the market today to help make gardening less taxing on your body. Just a few of these include bulb digging tools with long handles, so that you don't have to bend over to plant the dozens of bulbs you order every year, and ergonomic shovels designed to minimize the stress on your back from digging.

4. Consider raised bed gardening. Raised bed gardening, where you construct a ground-level frame and then fill it with soil, is another good way to avoid gardening-related injuries, especially if your property has clay soil. The soil you import is not only less dense than most natural soil, but you won't have to bend down nearly as far to reach it.

Being an avid gardener doesn't have to mean an aching back. Avoid long-term injuries by always using your legs to lift heavy items, squatting rather than bending to reach items on the ground and investing in the right tools to make your gardening tasks less stressful. However, if you feel persistent pain in your back, hands, or other areas, consider investigating websites of local orthopedic specialists, such as http://www.towncenterorthopaedics.com.