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Healing Back Pain

Healing back pain has long been a challenge for medical practitioners, especially in patients in whom the persistent pain interferes with daily life. In some cases, the pain could be so crippling and debilitating that these patients could no longer work and require the aid of loved ones for certain activities that they were once able to do on their own.

Healing lower back pain could not be properly accomplished without first knowing the cause. The most common causes of lower back pain are…

1. Sprain or strain on the muscles, ligaments and other supportive tissues of the lower back.
2. Traumatic injuries such as in vehicular or sports accidents. Falls in the elderly or in patients with osteoporosis could also cause pain.
3. Tearing or injuries to ligaments during strenuous or high impact muscular activities.
4. Herniated discs.
5. Nerve compression in conditions such as sciatica, stenosis of the spine, or spinal tumors.
6. Abnormal spine curvatures such as scoliosis and lordosis.
7. Referred pain coming from the kidney and other lower abdominal conditions.
8. Infection, specifically shingles pain or postherpetic neuralgia.
9. Pregnancy may cause compression and irritation of the spinal nerve roots and sciatic nerve.

In majority of cases, lower back pain resolves on its own, like in herniated discs or minor injuries.

Healing Back Pain and Other Serious Injuries

In patients with serious injuries due to significant trauma, healing back injury may require surgery. Certain conditions such as spinal stenosis and abnormal spinal curvatures would also require surgical intervention to relieve nerve compression.

Lower back pain caused by shingles and postherpetic neuralgia is treated with NSAIDs or opioids in cases of severe pain. Some patients may require epidural injections with corticosteroids. Prevention of recurrence of shingles pain may also require vaccinations against the Varicella zoster virus and regular intake of higher doses of Vitamin B complex.

Healing sciatica is just as tricky as treating lower back pain because the cause of the sciatic nerve pain should be identified first. Treatments for sciatica include the use of NSAIDs, epidural block, traction, or spinal decompression to relieve nerve impingement, particularly those caused by herniated discs.

Remaining Mobile Promotes Healing Back Pain

Doctors, however, emphasize that all the treatments for lower back pain would be useless if the patient does not remain mobile. In fact, bed rest for lower back pain is only effective during the acute phase (the first 24 hours of pain onset). Afterwards, rest will only aggravate the pain. Thankfully, physical therapists have developed a number of exercises that would address the specific causes and thus promote healing back pain.

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