Treating Back Pain:
Different Methods For Pain Relief!

How is Back Pain Treated? Most low back pain is caused by muscle imbalances and can be treated without surgery?

Treatments Include:

• Ice and heat many times help with chronic neck & back pain. They reduce pain and inflammation and many times make it easier to move. I don't know what I would do without these. I use a lot of ice & I can't tell you how much this helps. Warm baths & heating pads many times relaxes your muscles. You should make sure that you don't sleep on a heating pad, as this can cause burns & cause additional tissue damage.
  
  Now, instead of using a heating pad which benefits are gone once you turn it off, check out healing heat, which heats fast, penetrates so deep, you'll feel the comfort and healing flood the recesses of your body in less than 30 seconds and last up to six hours (depending on how long you soak in the heat)!!
  
  
• Muscle Balance Therapy: Most of our back problems are caused by muscle imbalances. A great program, recognized by the Today Show, Associated Press, Chicago Tribune Online and others, that I am using myself, is a program called Lose The Back Pain. This program is a self assessment and self treatment program which helps you figure out which muscle imbalances you have as well as provides you with the exercises you need.
  
  
• Inversion Therapy is a method of treating back pain by diminishing the influence of gravity, reducing the compression of the vertebrae and discs and allowing the muscles and ligaments that encase the spine to relax. This is typically performed on what's called an inversion table. The table allows you to lie on your back relaxed, in an inverted position. This position eliminates some or all gravitational compression. This therapy is the safest, quickest and most effective way to increase the space between your vertebrae. Check out this inversion table.
  
  
• Bed rest: With chronic back pain you will find many times that you just have to lie down. If you have to spend more than one day in bed, you should be calling your doctor. At night or during rest, you should lie on one side, with a pillow between the knees (some doctors suggest resting on the back and putting a pillow beneath the knees).
  
  
• Exercise: may be the most effective way to speed recovery from low back pain and help strengthen back and abdominal muscles. A routine of back-healthy activities may include stretching exercises, swimming, walking, and movement therapy to improve coordination and develop proper posture and muscle balance. Yoga is another way to gently stretch muscles and ease pain.
  
  
• Medications:are often used to treat chronic neck & back pain. Effective pain relief may involve a combination of prescription drugs and over-the-counter remedies. You should always check with your doctor before taking drugs for pain relief. There are many different types of medications used to help manage chronic pain and provide you with pain relief. Check out Chronic Pain Medications: A Starting Point to get the information you need.
  
  
• Spinal manipulation is literally a "hands-on" approach in which professionally licensed specialists use leverage and a series of exercises to adjust spinal structures and restore back mobility.
  
  
• Acupuncture involves the insertion of needles the width of a human hair along precise points throughout the body. Practitioners believe this process triggers the release of naturally occurring painkilling molecules and keeps the body’s normal flow of energy unblocked. I receive acupuncture treatments about once a month. For me, it definitely opens up my energy pathways to allow for healing & therefore pain relief.
  
  
• Interventional therapy can ease chronic pain by blocking nerve conduction between specific areas of the body and the brain. Approaches range from injections of local anesthetics, steroids, or narcotics into affected soft tissues, joints, or nerve roots to more complex nerve blocks and spinal cord stimulation. When extreme pain is involved, low doses of drugs may be administered by catheter directly into the spinal cord. Chronic use of steroid injections may lead to increased functional impairment.
  
  
• Biofeedback is used to treat many acute pain problems, most notably back pain and headache. Using a special electronic machine, the patient is trained to become aware of, to follow, and to gain control over certain bodily functions, including muscle tension, heart rate, and skin temperature (by controlling local blood flow patterns). The patient can then learn to effect a change in his or her response to pain, for example, by using relaxation techniques. Biofeedback is often used in combination with other treatment methods, generally without side effects.
  
  
• Traction involves the use of weights to apply constant or intermittent force to gradually “pull” the skeletal structure into better alignment. Traction is not recommended for treating acute low back symptoms.
  
  
• Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) is administered by a battery-powered device that sends mild electric pulses along nerve fibers to block pain signals to the brain. Small electrodes placed on the skin at or near the site of pain generate nerve impulses that block incoming pain signals from the peripheral nerves. TENS may also help stimulate the brain’s production of endorphins (chemicals that have pain-relieving properties). This works for many people, however, it did not work for me.
  
  
• Ultrasound is a noninvasive therapy used to warm the body’s internal tissues, which causes muscles to relax. Sound waves pass through the skin and into the injured muscles and other soft tissues.
  
  
• Surgery Although most of you will not require surgery, it is always important to be well educated in your pain relief options read on. In the most serious cases, when your pain does not respond to other therapies, surgery may relieve pain caused by back & neck problems or serious musculoskeletal injuries. For more information read Surgery for Relief of Chronic Back and Neck Pain.