Cervical and lumbar pain, with a bit of thoracic for good measure. That’s the story of my back. It’s not a pleasant story, but at least I’m not completely debilitated by it. I am also not alone with it, by any means, with back pain being one of the most common medical complaints in the industrialised world.

My osteopath tells me that back problems are so common because we humans, clever as we think we are, have simply not evolved properly to walk upright yet. Effectively, we still have a spine that is intended for moving about using both sets of limbs most of the time. Yet, at some point a couple of million years ago, one of our ancestors decided that walking on their hind limbs most of the time was a clever thing to do.

Stupid hominid.