Winter Car Casualties

If you’re suffering unexplained pain and tension this winter your car could be to blame.

Sounds unlikely but as many as 1 in 10 winter-reported back, shoulder and neck injuries could be related to cold weather driving. Check if you are likely to fall prey to any of these top 5 causes of Winter Car Casualties:

• Failure to adjust seat etc

If you are now driving in a thick winter coat you are adding inches to your body outline. This doesn’t just mean the seatbelt feels tighter. To compensate for the extra bulk you may need to alter your seat position and re-align mirrors. Otherwise stretching for the gearstick or to mirror -signal-manoeuvre will be putting extra stress on your neck, shoulder and lower spine.

• Temperature Changes

Whether you run your car like a hot-house and then step out into the cold or blast the fan heater when its air is still freezing, the neck is susceptible to drafts and can spasm into a “stiff neck” on temperature changes and we subconsciously raise our shoulders when cold which builds up chronic pain.

• Footwell Cargo

In poor weather we are less likely to stand outside to pack luggage into the rear boot correctly and will be tempted to store heavy shopping or briefcases in the passenger footwell. Twist-stretching to heave this cargo is the cause of many a back twinge and even slipped disc.

• Graceful Entrance

Finishing schools give lessons in the ideal way to enter a car. Gracefulness aside, sitting from the roadside first and swinging legs into the footwell guards against the back injuries caused by weather-induced “clambering in”.

• De-icer Luckydip

Swivelling and stretching in your seat to feel about for lost rear-seat scrapers and de-icers might save seconds on a frosty morning but has sent chilled spines into spasm. Keeping kit at hand keeps pain at bay.

Here’s to painfree driving and the best drive-in you could ever have – book Zen Ten Spa- the massage suite that drives to you for relaxation and injury relief on your doorstep 07709101010