A lot of people deal with lower back pain on a regular basis and are unsure of exactly how to reduce it, prevent it, or stop it from getting worse. Constant or recurring back pain can be debilitating, both mentally and physically, and can have a negative impact on multiple aspects of your life. These include your social life, personal life, and even your work life. So for those dealing with back pain, what are the best ways to treat it? Common Cents Mom has something to say on that below.
Although there are a lot of obvious methods that many people attempt to use, sometimes it can feel impossible to consistently keep back pain away. There are a lot of important factors in your everyday life that can contribute to a lack of or increased amount of back pain, and hopefully, after reading some tips here, you’ll be able to get rid of as much of your back pain as possible!
Exercise and Stretching
Exercise
Although, at first, it might seem like exercise would negatively impact back pain, it can help out in a number of ways. First and foremost, a lot of the time refraining from being active can lead to an increase in back pain, whereas consistent and careful amounts of exercise can help to strengthen your core and relieve the constant strain that’s being placed on your back.
In many cases, one of the core causes of back pain can be an increase in weight or being overweight. As a result, exercising and dieting to lower your weight can help also help to relieve your back of the extra effort that it may normally be putting in. Although this isn’t the only cause, maintaining an active lifestyle and a healthy weight can definitely help with recurring back pain.
Stretching and Footwear
When engaging in daily exercise and dealing with back pain, it’s important to take into consideration preparative measures that will make sure you don’t do more damage to your back. First, make sure that you’re taking the time to stretch and allow your muscles to be loose and limber. This will release a lot of lactic acid that has built up and caused a portion of the muscle or back pain and will also prevent your muscles and back from becoming more damaged from exercise.
Second, it’s important to make sure that you’re wearing the right type of footwear. The right pair of shoes can help significantly with posture, reducing the potential for or severity of back pain. Although this is particularly important to keep in mind when you’re exercising, it’s just as important to have the right type of footwear for any type of activity — whether that’s hiking, walking, traveling, or anything else. Footwear is much more important than it may immediately seem for preventing back pain and can have a noticeable effect a short period after making the change. For proper posture, good heel spur inserts can really make a difference.
It’s worth noting that stretching is not only important in preparation for exercising but also to do in general. There are a number of stretches that you can do that will specifically target your back, whether you’re in need of relief from upper or lower back pain. In most cases, these stretches involve lying with a flat back and extended other parts of your body to get the full extension of each muscle and relieve the pain of knots or tension.
All in all, exercise, stretching, and footwear are extremely important elements of maintaining a healthy and pain-free back, and incorporating these differences should make a huge difference particularly for those suffering from chronic back pain.
Medicine: Homeopathic and Over-the-Counter
The way that you alleviate back pain should be relative to the way that your back pain started. So, if you have back pain from prolonged activity or slouched posture, then you’ll need to use more in-depth methods to relieve the pain. Options, like getting occasional deep tissue massages or engaging in physical therapy, will be extremely useful in these cases.
But in cases where back pain is the result of a recent injury, then it’s good to try and prevent inflammation or swelling to keep the back pain from getting worse. Whether you choose to get over-the-counter anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen to help cope with the pain and limit swelling, or you choose to simply apply pressure and use ice packs or a heat blanket, it’s important to use some sort of medicinal remedy in the initial stages of the injury.
Preventing back pain from getting worse is an important part of relieving pain but is even more essential for attempting to prevent pain from becoming chronic. Taking some time out of your day to tend to the injury with our chiropractors in palm desert will make a world of difference for the long term, and hopefully one of these methods will help you immediately!
Finding the Right Mattress
One of the biggest causes of back pain can be sleeping on a mattress that’s either too soft or too firm for your back. The feel of your mattress should be dictated by the way that you sleep, with firm mattresses being better for front and back sleepers, while softer mattresses are better for side sleepers.
It’s also important to take into consideration which brand makes the mattress, how reliable they are with quality, and what type of sleepers they tend to cater to. As long as you’re able to find the best mattress for your back pain, you should see a reduction in the amount of pain that you’re experiencing. In addition, those who sleep on their front should consider changing the way they sleep to prevent their back pain from becoming worse.
If you’re not ready to upgrade to a new mattress, you can also look for a mattress topper for back pain. Toppers are less expensive and still provide support to reduce pain and tension in your back.
Overall, there are a lot of different causes for back pain and just as many remedies. Once you’ve figured out what the cause of your back pain is, as long as it’s a relatively minor injury or caused by unnoticed habits, you should definitely be able to significantly reduce the pain. Whether it’s slightly adjusting your posture, changing mattresses, stretching more often, staying more active, or using occasional medication, hopefully, by reading through this, you now have a better idea of how to fight your back pain. Here’s hoping that getting rid of your back pain will help you be more available in the aspects of your life that it may have been affecting!
Resources: Virtua, Cheshire Medical Center
