Spine Article

Searching For Help For Your Lower Back Pain?

If you suffer from frequent low back pain, you have probably looked for and tried just about every known remedy to help ease it. To really effectively treat your low back pain, you really need to find out what is causing it. There are many things that we do in our everyday lives that can lead to low back pain, especially if you do a lot of lifting. Even if you are a full-time mom and spend the biggest part of your day hefting children around, your low back is probably complaining by the time you go to bed. In some cases of low back pain, there is no cause to be found, however, the patient is still in pain, and still needs relief from that pain, so that he or she may go on with their normal life.

Some common known causes of low back pain are practicing poor posture, muscle spasm, ligament injuries and sprains, strained muscles, herniated disc, joint problems or disease, such as Rheumatoid arthritis, and birth defects, just to name a few.

Degenerative disc disease, or herniated discs, can cause extreme low back pain, often because the disc puts pressure on sensitive nerves in the back, leading to severe pain with every movement. Most people who suffer from this type of condition are unable to pinpoint one certain injury or time that may have caused their problem, it just flares up one day, and they are suddenly in terrible pain.

In some cases of low back pain, you can find some relief from stretching exercises, or trying different positions that are designed to take pressure off of the spine and the nerves it contains. One remedy that I often have to use myself, is lying flat on the floor, with a thin pillow under my head, and then a fluffier pillow under my knees, or in really bad times, I just put my feet up on the couch or a chair while lying in the floor, and this really seems to help ease the pain fairly quickly. You may have to experiment to find the best position for you, but the overall goal is take any kind of strain off the spine, thus, hopefully, relieving the pain.

Depending on the severity of your condition, when your lower back does start to act up, you find yourself having to do nothing for three or four days, other than lie in the floor in this position. If you are able, you can alternate lying flat in the floor and doing some mild stretching exercises as your pain allows.

Other people with low back pain find relief from having someone massage their back, using counter pressure, heating pads, and ice packs, or even alternating between all three. This type of remedy is more to ease the pain, than cure the problem that is causing the pain to begin with.

Other pain relief includes over the counter drugs such as Aleve, Tylenol, Motrin, and Orudis, or your doctor may even prescribe you a mild pain medication to take when nothing else works and the pain is unbearable.