High-Fat Diet and Cigarette Smoking Cause Low Back Pain

Most peo­ple think that chron­ic low back pain is sim­ply due to wear and tear on the mus­cles and car­ti­lage of the spinal col­umn. In real­i­ty, one of the major caus­es of low back pain is poor cir­cu­la­tion to the struc­tures of the inter­ver­te­bral disks, as a result of ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis and/or cig­a­rette smok­ing. That’s why low back pain is most com­mon in the pop­u­la­tions that also have high rates of heart attack!

Check out the review arti­cle I wrote about this sub­ject for chi­ro­prac­tors. If you want to keep your back in good shape, start by keep­ing your arter­ies clean! If your total cho­les­terol is below 150 mg/dL, which is easy if you eat a low-fat, pure­ly plant-based diet, your arter­ies become self-clean­ing!

Cig­a­rette smok­ing makes the prob­lem worse because the nico­tine caus­es the arter­ies to tight­en up. It’s like putting your thumb over the end of a gar­den hose. It rais­es the pres­sure but decreas­es the flow.

Pho­to by sandiegop­er­son­al­in­jury­at­tor­ney