My Daughters Back Pack

My daughter complained of back pain the other day.

“From what?” I asked.

She pointed to her backpack, the one she carries to school every day. It looked innocent enough, sitting modestly on the floor in the hallway. She read the questioning look on my face.

“Try and pick it up,” she said, with a hint of defiance in her voice.

“Okay,” I said, accepting the challenge.

Reaching over from the waist, with my knees locked, I hooked my fingers through the arm loops and gave it a jerk. Immediately, I could feel a twinge in my lower back, but I lifted with my arm and got the backpack off the floor cleanly.

“See,” I said. “No problem.”

“Yeah, right,” my daughter laughed.

Lowering it back down to the floor and massaging the small of my back, I asked, “What the heck have you got in there?”

“The usual,” she responded. “It’s what I carry every day.”

Together, we sat on the floor in the hallway as she took the items out of her backpack one by one and stacked them into a pile: 1 copy of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”; an oversize Spanish textbook called “Interacciones”; a humongous “History of Western Society, Vol. 2”; Vergil’s “Aeneid, Books I-IV”; “Principles and Problems,” a physics textbook; 1 history notebook; 1 geometry supplement; 1 pencil case; 1 daily planner; 2 classroom folders for biology; 3 school notebooks; 1 three-ring binder; 1 wallet; 1 cell phone; 1 make-up kit; 1 bottle of water; and $2.00 in quarters in case she lost her bus pass and had to pay for the ride home.

“Wow,” I said, as I gathered up the pile in my arms, careful now to bend my legs as I lifted, already feeling a little soreness in my back. “Let’s weigh this.”

With a little rearranging and my daughter’s skills in geometric positioning, we got it all onto the bathroom scale. Not the most scientific of experiments, but accurate enough to convince me of the hidden danger lurking for my daughter every day with that backpack.

“Low back pain is the most common health problem we see at Spine and Sports Medicine,” says Dr. Brian Kessler, our Medical Director, “and we’ve seen an increasing number of adolescents over the years complaining of back, neck and shoulder pain. Hauling a heavy backpack around every day can cause serious postural misalignments and vertical subluxations of the spine that can restrict movement and predispose kids to a number of ailments. We’re concerned that the damage inflicted now will be showing up 30 years later in even more serious back problems.”


According to guidelines from the American Chiropractic Association, students should carry no more than 10% of their body weight, and backpacks should have two adjustable and padded shoulder straps to equalize the weight.

I looked at my daughter’s backpack lying in the hallway. One shoulder strap was ripped nearly all the way through from the constant strain and the other was seriously frayed.

“Let’s go look at some new backpacks,” I said, as the pile of contents on the scale slowly toppled over like a wobbly Jenga tower.

“Great,” she said. “Then you can help me with my geometry.”

“Don’t push it,” I said.

Labels: back pain, Low back pain

Posted by Spine and Sports Medicine on 8:24 AM

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