This studied whether an exposure-response association exists between physical demands in early working life (e.g. young adults just starting out) and risk of low back pain (LBP) later in working life.
Data was extracted from the SeniorWorkingLife study, which had 5909 wage earners aged >50 and currently sedentary work answer a survey about their physical work demands during their first working years and current LBP.
It’s a recall survey, so take from it what you will regarding study limitations.
Results:
Hard physical work during early working life was associated with more intense LBP later in life for senior workers with currently sedentary jobs.
Workers with ‘standing/walking work with lifting/carrying’ and ‘heavy or fast work that is physically strenuous’ during early working careers reported statistically higher LBP intensity than those with sedentary work during their first working years.
These findings highlight that exposure to strenuous physical labour early in a person’s career may predispose them to future LBP intensity, even in those with sedentary jobs in their later years.
Another point is that this study looked at older workers that were in sedentary work, not those still employed in physical work. Thus, it’s possible that the results of early exposure to heavy physical workloads may exacerbate the impact of LBP intensity in later life for older workers that remain in physically intense work.
The authors go on to report that younger workers may not necessarily have higher physical work demands than older workers (when in the same workplace), but younger workers may instead experience the work to be more physically demanding.
Nevertheless, if younger workers do take a greater degree of the physical workload then organisational measures to diminish risk factors is critical. This may be even more important given these findings that exposure to heavy physical workloads predispose young workers to later LBP and coupled with known physical declines in capacity and function over age makes it vitally important to “preserve good health throughout an entire working career” (p5).
Authors: Rúni Bláfoss, Sebastian Venge Skovlund, Rubén López‐Bueno, Joaquin Calatayud, Emil Sundstrup, Lars L Andersen, 2020, BMJ Open.
Study link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-040158
Link to the LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:6833894085221347329?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28*%2Curn%3Ali%3AugcPost%3A6833894085221347329%29
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