The Current 9:00 Why your approach to back pain could be all wrong Aidan O'Leary, 77, has suffered with back pain brought on by a hip replacement, but says he's found great relief by staying active at his local swimming pool. "Everything moves when I swim. It's not like walking or using a gym machine or anything," O'Leary told The Current .
"In the water, everything moves, every muscle moves." "I feel so free in the water, I feel weightless." O'Leary, who lives in Toronto, was an avid cyclist before he broke his hip in a fall two years ago.
He's replaced cycling with swimming three times a week and said it "very much" helps to alleviate the pain. Statistics Canada has estimated that four out of five Canadians will experience back pain at some point in their lives, with the World Health Organization (WHO) recognizing it as the leading cause of disability globally . But Shawn Beaudette, an associate professor of kinesiology, says that many people who experience back pain can develop kinesiophobia — the fear of specific movements that may have contributed to their injury — and avoid the physical activity that would help with healing.
Aidan O’Leary has suffered with back pain after he broke his hip in a fall two years ago. (Submitted by Aidan O’Leary ) In a 2022 paper published in Frontiers in Behavioural Neuroscience , researchers in Quebec noted that kinesiophobia affects between 51 and 72 per cent of patients with chronic pain. The researchers wrote that in contrast to.
