The Dangers of Beer

- (Not the dangers of drinking beer mind, but the dangers of a life revolving around the sale of beer.)

Now I know I'll never hear the end of this from Zak because he's always telling us that we lift far too much at Beer Ritz in one go. It transpires though that at the beginning of last week I felt a dull pain around my downstairs area, and being the paranoid hypocondriac that I am, decided to get a quick check up. After a pleasant man handling at the docs, that us guys know all to well, it turns out that I'd given myself a small groinal hernia.

Now it's unclear what actually caused the hernia (because you can even get them from coughing too much!) but it's pretty probable that the culprit was lifting a few too many beer crates over the busy christmas period. Now the good point to all of this though is the fact that I've just got a tiny hernia, it causes me no distress, apart from a little ache after I've sat down for too long in the same position, and the doc says it should right itself in a couple of weeks (hopefully). So good news is to be had there, but there is a more important point to the story.

This could have easily been a lot worse! Bad hernias can be very painful and will usually require sergery to fix them, in fact hernia sergery is one of the most common sergeries performed in the UK. With 35% of males in this country who will develop one of the hernias I have in there life, a shout out to all my peeps in the alcohol industry needs to be voiced.

We all need to take it easier. Not saying we need to work less, just work smarter. Spread out your lifting loads, lift less, and lift with your legs not your back. Get a belt support as well, it will greatly help when it comes to racking your firkins and getting your crates of beer out of the cellar. If we all worked a little smarter we could make it so hernia opperations go down the top ten list of surgerys in the UK.

Now I will be fine, my little hernia does not impeed my work life at all, but what about you? If your in an environment where heavy lifting is the norm then it could just be a matter of time. Can you afford to go under the knife? And yes I will be changing the amounts I lift at once in the shop.