The Younger Next Year Back Book is part of a series of books on living a healthy lifestyle. The authors collaborate and provide their respective expertise on both the structure of the back and motivational speech.

The book assumes that you picked up this book because of terrible back pain or a complaint in your back. Perhaps you slept wrong, maybe you twisted in some manner that you shouldn’t have. Whatever the reason you attribute it to, the authors argue that it was not that one single event that threw out your back, but a series of lifestyle choices and stupid decisions.

The back is a complicated system made up of the spinal column, the spinal cord, muscles, tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and various other bones. It is intricately balanced and specifically designed to help you keep your posture properly. As such, the authors treat the back holistically. This merely means that they treat the back as a whole unit rather than one single muscle or ailment.

The book is written in a charming manner. It provides tons of information on back pain; from the movements that you might be doing wrong to the activities that you should stop doing for the sake of your back. Alongside that are seven rules to follow if you want to avoid back pain. Now, there is a caveat in all of this. When the authors say that they can help you with your pain, they say this knowing that there are some people that are too far gone. They are the 20% or so that need surgery. They might have a herniated disc, a bulging disc, or even a burst disc. For the other 80% it is possible to alleviate your pain, but keep in mind that this is a process. You will have to do movements and exercises that might seem painful at first. You might even have to give up doing some things for a while.

Some of the things it tells you to give up are surprising until you read the reasons why. These are things like Golfing, Yoga, Pilates, and strength training of any variety. The reasons given are interesting. Basically, you learned to do the movements wrong. I never really thought about it, but I suppose a golf swing really does torque your back a lot. Some of the stuff is not so surprising. Sitting for hours at a computer or device is almost obvious. Running I can understand, since the back does take a lot of punishment when you are pounding the pavement, but cycling I didn’t think of as all that bad.

Anyway, this book was really entertaining and informative. It was a quick read and easy to understand. If you have back pain or expect to have it, this book is worth your time. ( )