Some Tips on How to Relieve Back Pain

We as a nation are forever ‘putting our backs out’. Low back pain is the single most common reason for lost working hours in the UK.

There are a multitude of causes and many possible approaches to managing low back pain. What follows is current best practice, giving most people the best chance of getting back to an active life as soon as possible.

Most sufferers will attend their GP, chiropractor or osteopath who separate out the serious from the simple.

Serious causes include rare things like tumours (less than one per cent of all back pain) and aneurysms (a bubble in the main blood vessel of the body).

The doctor will ask you questions about your general health and may look for signs of serious illness in older patients or those with a history of cardiovascular disease. He/she will also ask you about the nature of the pain. In particular, you should be asked about bowel and bladder or erectile disturbance.

If you have pain radiating down both legs this may represent nerve root compression and needs urgent referral. Pain in one leg may be sciatica and is not an emergency. Everyone else can usually be successfully helped in the general practice setting.

You may then be asked to perform some light acrobatics – stretching and bending and generally being poked about the spine to see the extent of your problem! You may even be hit with the hammer – reserved for particular patients…

X-rays are not much use. Most of the time they show nothing and involve a hefty dose of potentially damaging radiation to get the pictures.

Young men who get low back pain about the hips with early morning symptoms including stiffness may need a blood test for a type of arthritis.

Exercises may help and you should continue to get about. Do not go to bed for days on end as stiffness leads to further disability.

Pain relievers are usually prescribed. Anti-inflammatory tablets are very helpful if you can take them. They may not be good for you if you have asthma or a history of stomach ulcer and you should not take them continuously long-term as there is a very slight increase in heart complications.

Other medication that may help includes a muscle relaxant in small doses for one to two weeks. Again I do not recommend this more than infrequently as it can be addictive.

Most people are back at work within a month and most others are able to return to full duty within six months.

Recurrence is common. As with everything in health – weight loss helps and gradual increase in exercise tolerance will help strengthen your back muscles.

The good news is, despite our inability to cure back pain, over 90 per cent of it gets better within six weeks!

Good luck, and when the doctor hits you with the reflex hammer, resist the temptation to grab it off him and hit him back…

(c) 2008 Express & Echo (Exeter UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.