How to Help Someone with Chronic Back Pain
Chronic Back Pain is a condition of pain and stiffness in the spine, particularly in the lumbar region. The cause can be numerous including dysfunction, instability, muscular imbalances or spasm, core stability muscle weakness, injury, ligamentous laxity, softening of bones, arthritis and degeneration. The severity of back pain can vary from being mild to severe leading to loss of comfortable movement and disability. The success of achieving relief from pain depends upon knowing the real cause of back pain, only then the treatment can be easy and thus can produce good results. The best way to seek relief is to consult a physical therapist who can plan a treatment plan for you to manage the back pain effectively.
Instructions
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1
Postural Correction
Nowadays back pain is very common not only in geriatric population but also in middle aged and young individuals. It is now a well established fact that 80% of lower back pain issues are due to faulty or slouched posture and secondary comes the trauma. Thus it seems reasonable and effective to correct the postural habits of people with back pain as if it is the cause, It’s correction will automatically result in the relief of symptoms of pain in the back. -
2
Core Strengthening Exercises
Most of the cases of non traumatic chronic back pain are a result of Muscular Imbalances, spasms and weakness of Core Stability Muscles of the Spine. Strengthening these muscles via exercise regimes will result in the increase in stability of the Spine itself and decreasing the compressive stress on the spine resulting in slowing the degeneration process and automatically decreasing the symptoms of Morning Stiffness and Chronic Back pain. -
3
Heat Therapy
The use of heat is providing relief from pain and morning stiffness is well established as it increases the local blood supply and causes softening of tissues thus decreasing the spasm and muscular tone. Both Superficial Heat such as Infrared therapy and Deep Heat such as Moist heat Packs, can be used to provide relief in conditions of pain and stiffness, but the use of Moist Deep Heating is well established. -
4
Electrotherapy
The benefit of Electrotherapy is two fold in the management of Chronic Back Pain. Firstly it can be used to relieve pain via the pain gating mechanism such as TENS, and secondly by causing muscular contractions by electrical stimulation it can be used to prevent the atrophy of muscles. -
5
Analgesics & NSAIDs
Chronic back pain can also be relieved by the use of medicines such as Analgesics and in case of Chronic Inflammation to be the cause of Back Pain with Morning Stiffness NSAIDs can also be used. -
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Consult A Physical Therapist
In case of severe pain resulting in loss of range of motion and activities of daily life it is strongly indicated to consult a professional physical Therapist who can plan a treatment plan for the management of your back consisting of a combination of Modalities, Exercises, Mobilization and Traction.
