According to TIME'S cover story this week, eight out of ten Americans will sooner or later suffer from backaches. The rate may be even higher for journalists. They spend long, sedentary hours crouched over typewriters and telephones, wedged immobile in the seats of planes and press buses, and trapped by deadlines that elevate stress levels past the danger point: practically a prescription for back pain. Yet of the TIME editors, writers and correspondents who contributed to this week's story, only a few confessed to back problems. Medicine Writer Anastasia Toufexis, who wrote the story, and Adrianne Jucius, the reporter-researcher who assisted her, approached the subject with pain-free objectivity. All of those involved, whether they count themselves among the afflicted or not, gained useful insights into the physiology--and the psychology--of aching backs.

Joyce Leviton of TIME'S Atlanta bureau interviewed a physiotherapist who can tell from a person's posture whether he or she has a back problem. "He looked at the way I sit in a chair and deduced, correctly, that I have had bouts of backache," she says. New York Bureau Chief Peter Stoler, who first injured his back in a mountain climbing accident a decade ago, interviewed numerous doctors, researchers and fellow sufferers. "There is more awareness of the problem today," says Stoler. "Fewer people are enduring in silence any more. More people are aware of the need to maintain a certain level of physical fitness, especially as they get older." Linda Stern Rubin of TIME'S Midwest bureau found Detroit engineers and designers conducting surveys and motion tests to determine ways to make automobile seats more comfortable. The Los Angeles bureau's Joseph Pilcher visited several "pain clinics," where such unconventional therapies such as acupuncture and electrical stimulation help patients deal with back pain.

Chicago's Gary Ruderman was told by one neurosurgeon that prolonged periods of squatting would reduce pressure on the spine. Ruderman tried the posture while waiting for a bus, but found the view of passing knees and the stares of passers-by unnerving. Backaches are also an occupational hazard for photographers, who labor not only under stressful deadlines but also under large amounts of equipment. Bill Pierce, whose photos accompany the cover story, is typical. He threw his back out several years ago and now does special exercises regularly to avoid a recurrence. Says he: "If I backslide, it isn't long before a twinge reminds me."

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