Suffering through back pain can be a debilitating experience. Missing work may cut into your paycheck and eat away at your vacation days. Students unable to sit in a desk for more than a few minutes may miss exams or important lectures.
Lower and upper back pain can make even the smallest day to day tasks nearly impossible to perform. Picking up your children or bending over to collect a bag of garbage may be too excruciating for you to bear.
By stretching frequently, using multiple forms of therapy and seeing licensed professionals you can alleviate lower back pain and return to a normal way of living.
Stretch Your Hamstrings
Back pain can be rooted in tight hamstring muscles. Having taught hamstrings can limit motion in the pelvic area. This limited movement can create tension in the lower back area. Loosen up your hamstrings and relieve your lower back through stretching.
Stretch out your hamstring muscle for 45 seconds consecutively. Engage in daily stretching sessions to alleviate back pain. Simply bend over at your waist and reach for your toes to loosen up the muscles in the upper back of your thighs. Don’t engage in any bouncing movements. Bouncing or making any sudden, jerking movements can tear your muscles.
Use Heat
Heat therapy can offer you healing benefits as well as pain relief for your lower back. Use warm gel packs, hot baths, heat wraps and heating pads to ease your back pain. Applying heat is a simple, easy way to decrease your suffering and most methods are fairly cheap too.
Consider using heat therapy with ice treatment to attack your back pain from multiple angles.
Apply Ice Treatment
Applying cold presses to your back can reduce swelling and ease pain. Place ice packs on your back as soon as possible after suffering an injury. This form of treatment works best if you apply it quickly. Postoperative back discomfort and intense pain can be controlled by applying ice to the agitated area.
You may use a commercial ice pack or bag of ice wrapped in a towel to address your injury. Alternating ice treatment with heat or massage therapy can prove to be a powerful one-two punch in addressing your back pain.
Use Massage or Water Therapy
Both water and massage therapy can ease your back pain and suffering. Massage therapy can reduce your anxiety and lessen depression in addition to alleviating lower back pain. However, as it says on CFAH.org, “A bad massage can actually make your problems with pain worse”, so make sure that only a qualified masseur gives the massage.
Water therapy relaxes your body and reduces pressure on your spine. Combine these benefits with an improved range of motion and you have a therapy that’s both easy on your joints and soothing to your back.
Visit a Professional Therapist
Visit a therapist to relieve your back pain. If you want to return to your normal day to day activities without worrying about suffering a trip to the therapist can provide you with instant relief. Pain management and physical therapy are two of the many services offered by licensed, skilled therapists.