You're listening to life kit from NPR.
Hey, everybody, it's Marielle.
Many of us at some point in our lives will experience back pain.
Back pain is actually one of the top, if not the top, reason that people go get medical care.
That's Ping Huang, a health reporter at NPR.
And she says for a lot of people, that pain never fully goes away.
So one of the most common causes is inflammation or arthritis.
You know, it can also be caused by disc degeneration.
There's no cure for that general wear and tear on our spines.
Yeah, I know this is a super depressing way to start the episode, but Ping says it's not as bad as it might sound.
She's been reporting on back pain, and she talked to a doctor named Griffin Baum.
He's a spine surgeon at Northwell Health in New York City.
And he told her, once we get over the misconception that somehow it's possible to get back to the bodies that we had from years ago that didn't hurt at all, it can actually be a liberating thought.
Let's talk about what is possible.
You know, people can still do a lot of what they want to do.
They just have to do it with a different strategy.
Today, we're going to focus on how that ethos applies to something many of us do every day.
Cooking.
Cooking can be a highly physical act.
Even starting with the prep.