I have witnessed cases of road accidents during my practice as a medical doctor. I have handled minor surgical cases sustained from injuries of people who have fallen in bathrooms at home or missed steps. Some injuries can occur inside our bodies causing sudden death as seen in individuals suffering from chronic illnesses.

We need regular alertness in order to avoid these injuries. We witness so many road accidents not because people do not know how to drive but simply because they lose concentration only to be awoken by horrible incidents.

Of course speeding is one of the precipitating factors of road accidents.

It’s very nice to enjoy a ride on a motor-bike but many motorcyclists in our countries are people grappling with fiscal social challenges. Social problems over-ride the mindset of many transport workers especially motorcyclists to become mindless of road accidents until they are involved.

Even chicken will cross the road in a cautious way but I have seen cyclists who cross junctions recklessly and end up causing accidents.

Calculation of movements is also a difficult moment among transport workers. Not only movements but the weight of what we carry can also inflict an injury as seen in some few patients.

If you have to carry or lift something heavy, you should always keep it as close to the body trunk as possible. The amount of pressure that your muscles and ligaments feel increases exponentially as the object that you are carrying gets further away from your body core.

Physical injuries seen in patients with disc herniation is always linked to the impact of pressure to the body.

You put your body at risk if you lift and move a heavy object. If you swing the lifted object around, you should not leave your feet planted on the ground. You just have to adjust your position in order to minimize the risk of the injury to the muscles and ligaments that line your spine. The best way to do this is to bend your knees, get hold of the object, lift by straightening your legs while keeping your arms relatively relaxed but with a firm grip. Then the object should be pressed against the abdomen or pelvis, move your feet to where you want to place the load or object.

The next step is that you lower the object with your legs bent and not by bending your back.

To avoid risks of disc-herniation, you need to balance brain and physical coordination.

Most people suffer disc herniation as a result of their daily duties. For example when I took medical history from one of my patients, he said he could feel something not very strenuous from his daily work but one time suddenly felt a pop which was followed by vague discomfort that quickly morphed into excruciating pain that left him in bed, unable to even get to the bathroom.

There are many reasons that can prompt this to occur. Think of the shock absorber-like discs that lie between your vertebrae with jelly-filled dough. The jelly in the center of your discs is called your nucleus pulposus, while the dough that surrounds the jelly consists of multiple layers of protective fibrocartilage. These layers are collectively called annulus fibrosis.

To be considered injured, the majority of these layers should be affected to a point where your nucleus pulposus can squeeze through to touch and irritate your spinal cord and peripheral nerves.