Harley Street osteopath reveals all the ways you can damage your back doing housework

Housework IS agony! Top osteopath reveals painful injuries caused by hoovering, washing up and ironing including sciatica and frozen shoulders – and the easy rules to prevent them

  • Anisha Joshi, who runs the OsteoAnisha Clinic in central London, posted a reel outlining the potential dangers caused to the body by housework 
  • Said she’d seen many patients who were in pain because of not doing everyday chores correctly – which could spark lower back pain and frozen shoulders 
  • Advised on knee-bending to avoid injury when cleaning the bath and raising an ironing board as high as possible to avoid bending over it

A top osteopath has revealed – via an Instagram reel – how simple household chores including ironing and washing up can wreak havoc on your back. 

Anisha Joshi, who runs the OsteoAnisha Clinic in central London, posted a clip of herself carrying out simple housework, and showed the potential spinal pitfalls they can cause.

The osteopath, who appeared on This Morning earlier this week advising on how to deal with chronic pain, told her 16,000 Instagram followers that the common error of over-reaching can cause conditions including sciatica, frozen shoulders and lower back pain.

 

Clean house, sore back! Anisha Joshi, who runs the OsteoAnisha Clinic in central London, posted a reel outlining the potential dangers caused to the body by housework

The osteopath said she'd seen many patients who were in pain because of not doing everyday chores correctly - which could spark lower back pain and frozen shoulders

Over-stretching when hoovering can cause lower back problems

The osteopath said she’d seen many patients who were in pain because of not doing everyday chores correctly – which could spark lower back pain and frozen shoulders

After posting the real to her followers on Instagram, Joshi wrote: 'You’d never think that hoovering, cleaning the bath or ironing could lead to a day off work and sleepless nights!'

After posting the real to her followers on Instagram, Joshi wrote: ‘You’d never think that hoovering, cleaning the bath or ironing could lead to a day off work and sleepless nights!’

Explaining why she created the video, Joshi told FEMAIL: ‘When people are cleaning their house they can sometimes overstrain muscles by doing things in the incorrect position.’ 

‘The kind of injuries such overstretching might cause include shoulder pain, neck strain, lower back strains – and even sciatica.’

After posting the clip, she wrote: ‘Over the last 13 years that I’ve been a qualified osteopath I’ve seen soooo many of you come in after cleaning the house and “pulling something” or “straining something”.

“You’d never think that hoovering, cleaning the bath or ironing could lead to a day off work and sleepless nights!”

In the clip, Joshi shows how housework should be done to prevent unnecessary strains – with knee-bending an ally when cleaning the bath, and bringing dishes closer to your body when drying them at the sink to avoid over-reaching.  

Tips: Joshi says moving with the hoover, keeping it closer to your body is the way to avoid injury when cleaning dust from carpets

Tips: Joshi says moving with the hoover, keeping it closer to your body is the way to avoid injury when cleaning dust from carpets

Let the dishes come to you! The osteopath says not bending over the sink but bringing dishes to you is the way to prevent washing up strains

Let the dishes come to you! The osteopath says not bending over the sink but bringing dishes to you is the way to prevent washing up strains

All about the knees: not over-stretching when cleaning the bath will help prevent back injuries

All about the knees: not over-stretching when cleaning the bath will help prevent back injuries

She explains how hoovering is all about moving with the machine as you work to clean carpets, saying: ‘Seems simple but try not to lean and stand still. Move with the hoover and keep it close to you.’

When it comes to ironing, the advice was go high. 

Joshi suggests: ‘The ironing board always needs to be higher than you think. Stand tall and don’t bend into it.’ 

The awkward position of most bath tubs mean giving the tub a scrub can be fraught with potential injuries. 

Joshi advises: ‘Try to bend your knees and get closer to the bath. When you’re cleaning the other side, still keep a slight bend in your knees.’ 

And, if you’re not lucky enough to have a dishwasher, then bending down over the sink ‘isn’t advisable’, the osteopath suggests, saying ‘bringing the dishes up and closer to you is great.’ 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk