Back Pain After Exercise? Three Things You Need to Know to Prevent Back Pain

Exercise is one of the best ways to feel good and to take care of your body. The feeling after a good workout is great. You feel like you have accomplished something. However, some people have a tendency to get a headache or back pain after a good workout. For some, this pain sets in soon after the exercise. For others, it takes a few hours to a day before the pain sets in. Why does this happen? To answer that question, we need to consider what happens in your body when you exercise.

Water
First of all, exercise causes us to sweat. Sweating means that our body is losing fluid. The body also loses fluid through breathing and no exercise is complete without some heavy breathing. This means that if we are not careful to drink enough water, we can suffer from dehydration. Dehydration can easily lead to headaches and muscle pains.

Minerals
An other important fact about sweat is its salty taste. This means that your body is losing minerals during the exercise as well. The human body needs to maintain 0.9% salinity in the bodily fluids. This means that in order to maintain this salinity level, you need to take minerals with your water. The easiest way to get the minerals you need is to add a pinch of sea salt to the water you drink. This will help your body absorb water and replenish the mineral supply. One of the most important minerals are magnesium. One sign of magnesium deficiency is trembling or cramping muscles.

Acidosis
When we exercise hard the blood is not able to transport enough oxygen to the muscles. Without oxygen the energy production in our muscles produces acidic waste. Only when a muscle is moving is it able to transport these waste products away. If you exercise hard and then suddenly stop, your body cannot transport this acidic waste away from the muscle fast enough. The waste is one of the primary causes why your muscles are sore the day after. By stretching properly or doing less intensive exercise in the end of your pass you help your muscles get rid of the acidic waste.

Summary
To reduce all kinds of pain after exercise you need to take care to warm up, drink plenty of water during and after your exercise and make sure you are replenishing your minerals. There are several sport drinks on the market that covers these needs. However, these sport drinks normally contain way too much sugar. You can make your own sport drink by simply adding sea salt to water. Also adding magnesium will help you relax after the exercise. Finally, stretching will help your body get rid the acidic buildup.