The mystery of back pain solved?

Slouching in front of the computer or telly can effectively switch off your back muscles. And it's not easy to switch them back on again.

That's the key finding from research at the Univeristy of Queensland in Australia. Researchers studied 19 young men who spent eight weeks in bed. (No shortage of volunteers there, we'd imagine.) Previous studies had shown that in most cases of lower back pain, the muscles that keep the vertebrae in place or hold the pelvis together, were inactive. This was the case here too.

This may all sound obvious yet it appears to hold the answer to the riddle as to why so much lower back pain has no obvious cause like an injury or heavy lifting. The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to examine the back muscles and noticed that after eight weeks they had pretty much switched off.

'This is the first study to show that these muscles that protect your spine are switched off,' Julie Hides, one of the researchers, told the BBC. She said slumping in front of the television or computer could have exactly the same effect.

The reason why this is particularly important is that the researchers also found that switching these muscles back on is not simply a matter of getting up and walking around. Some of the volunteers have been monitored for six months and their back muscles have still not recovered, despite exercise. Strong evidence that prevention is far easier than cure.

The UK charity BackCare said men need to think about their backs at home and work. 'Lots of us are very careful to look after our posture and how we lift things at work and then forget all about it at home,' Backcare's CEO Nia Taylor told the BBC. 'Use cushions to maintain the s-shape of your spine, avoid twisting your spine, change position often and stretch and move about from time to time.'