If you’re like most back pain sufferers, you’ll reach for a bottle of pain killers and go lie down. But is that really the best way to get back on your feet and keep the pain away?

Use this guide during those important first hours after injury to help your back recover quickly, or even for pain relief from chronic back pain flare ups.

First 15 Minutes: Apply Ice

Apply ice as soon as possible after injuring your back – preferably within five minutes. The sooner you apply the ice the more it will help. This can be a cold pack, ziplock bag of crushed ice, or even a bag of frozen vegetables like peas or corn.

Use a circular massaging motion when applying to prevent the ice from resting in one place too long (a spouse or friend can help ice
massage your lower back), or simply place a thin towel between the compress and your skin to help prevent frostbite. Apply ice up to 20 minutes at a time. This can be repeated over the course of the first few days, or after flare ups.

The cold will cause nearby blood vessels to constrict, helping minimize swelling and painful inflammation which has already started. It numbs painful nerves. And the cold stimulates your body to rush more oxygen-rich blood full of antibodies and vital nutrients to repair the injury and carry away waste products as it attempts to warm the area you are cooling with the ice.

First Hour: Apply Heat

Applying heat after you ice your back may seem odd. But ice
followed by heat is a powerful way to shock your back out of the pain-spasm cycle. Try 20 minutes of ice followed by 20 minutes of heat. Repeat up to three times and you should get at least some relief from even severe lower back pain.

There are numerous ways to apply heat. Two of my favorites are a hot tub (if you have one available) or a far infrared heating pad. Not to be confused with a standard heating pad which will help in a pinch, far infrared heat penetrates up to three inches deep to warm the muscle itself instead of just the skin area. Other great ways to apply heat include ultrasound, pain creams, and even a long hot shower.

As heat is applied, your back muscles relax and circulation increases again as your body sends fresh blood supply to cool the area back to normal. Repeat heat treatments as necessary.

First Day and Beyond: What else you should do

Acute lower back pain typically comes on suddenly and can be painful enough to take your breath away, or even drop you to your knees. While ice
and heat can break the initial pain-spasm cycle, you also need to consider how much you should rest, when you should exercise, and what to do about continuing pain and inflammation. Here’s what I recommend.

Anti-inflammatories and Pain Relief

Inflammation is your body’s natural response to an irritant, such as a sprained back. Inflammation is a normal part of the healing process. The problem is our bodies lose the ability to turn off the inflammatory response as we get older. By our late 20s, chronic systemic inflammation becomes a real health concern.

While non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen and naproxen can help with both pain and inflammation during acute lower back pain, they also carry significant cardiac and digestive health risks. A better option for most people are proteolytic enzymes which naturally reduce inflammation and its resulting internal scar tissue.

Rest

Yes, you need to rest your lower back. Certainly, if a certain activity led to a case of acute lower back pain don’t repeat it for at least a week. For example, if your back pain started after lifting something heavy, don’t lift heavy objects for at least a week to give your back time to recover.

But don’t take rest too far. Studies have shown that too much bed rest (more than a couple days) can nearly double how long it can take to recover. In fact, some evidence shows there is little or no benefit to bed rest at all over staying active, but your level of pain will determine that at the outset. Listen to your body.

Exercise

Exercise, including both strengthening and stretching, is important for your long-term recovery. Many cases of lower back pain start with muscle imbalances, where some muscles are overly tight while opposing muscles are too stretched out. You’ll want to be very careful your first couple of days, but some light stretching can often reduce lower back pain by relieving tension.

One easy stretch to try can be done while lying in bed. Gently raise your knees from the bed to your chest, then put a slight pressure on your
knees for a light stretch in your lower back. This stretch can help relieve pain spasms in your back faster than waiting on them to resolve on their own. But again, take it easy and listen to your body – the stretch should not add to your pain.

Going forward

Whether your acute lower back pain goes away quickly or becomes chronic, you want to give your body the best chance at not only overcoming pain,
but preventing it from returning. You will find what has worked for thousands of other lower back pain sufferers in my free book, The 7-Day Back Pain Cure.

Related references

Dahm KT, Brurberg KG, Jamtvedt G, Hagen KB. Advice to rest in bed versus advice to stay active for acute low-back pain and sciatica. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. 2010 Jun 16;6:CD007612.

Deyo RA, Diehl AK, Rosenthal M. How many days of bed rest for acute low back pain? A randomized clinical trial. The New England journal of medicine. 1986 Oct 23;315(17):1064-70.

Waddell G, Feder G, Lewis M. Systematic reviews of bed rest and advice to stay active for acute low back pain. The British Journal of General Practice. 1997 Oct;47(423):647-52.

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Not only will these help you keep those muscle loose but hopefully it gave you a good laugh as well

Be sure to check out our other posts for more in depth articles and videos about how you can eliminate that nagging neck pain.

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1. Eliminate Neck Pain Caused by Whiplash
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3. Can You Really Laugh Away Pain? (Jokes Enclosed)

For some reason, they just really aren’t ready… otherwise they would have done it already or at least be actively working on it… relentless in their determination to get their life back.

Many of these people claim that if they only knew “how to” solve the problem they would. Yet there is more than enough of the how to… it’s everywhere…in books, videos, audios, doctors, etc… our entire website is full of some of the best how to there is when it comes to back pain… yet most people still don’t get relief… but not because the how to didn’t work, they don’t get relief because they are lacking the “want to”… a real desire to do what it takes to eliminate the problem.

I urge you to listen to this audio from Steve Chandler about the difference between the “How to” and the “Want to”… it’s this that can keep you stuck in pain or can set you free.

Click here to download

If you listen, please share your thoughts by commenting below.

If you don’t listen, it’s obvious that you don’t really want to get rid of the pain.

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In the study, researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine reviewed medical evacuations from Iraq and Afghanistan over the four year period of 2004 — 2007. They found nearly a third of all medical evacuations were for muscle, joint, and back pain unrelated to combat or other wounds. That’s more than double the evacuation rate for combat injuries which resulted in only 14% of evacuations over the same period.

Soldiers regularly carry heavy physical loads in combat situations which can contribute to the debilitating muscle, joint, and back pain found in the study. What makes the problem especially burdensome to the military is even after evacuation, many of the evacuated still weren’t able to find pain relief. Only about 13% of those evacuated for musculoskeletal, connective tissue, or spinal pain issues were well enough to return to duty 2 weeks after evacuation.

Besides the low healing rate of muscle, joint and back pain overall, another fact was called out by the researchers. Soldiers diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are nearly twice as likely to experience all kinds musculoskeletal complaints including back and neck pain. Once evacuated for back pain, those having a concurrent psychiatric diagnosis like PTSD also had a decreased likelihood of returning to duty by as much as 38%. This further validates other researchers’ discoveries that stress has a lot to do with back pain and recovery.

NOTE: The Healthy Back Institute is going to donate 1000 copies of it’s Lose the Back Pain program to men and women of the military suffering from various types of back, neck and sciatic pain.

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As narrowing places pressure on the spinal cord and other nerves, mild to excruciating pain or even numbness in various areas of your neck, shoulders, back, arms, legs and buttocks results. Severe cases may even interfere with normal bladder and bowel functions.

Diagnosed primarily in older adults, many dismiss early signs of spinal stenosis as regular aches and pains of growing older. The good news is progression of spinal stenosis can often be slowed or even reversed.

What causes spinal stenosis

Spinal stenosis is most commonly attributed to osteoarthritis-related bone damage, but a number of other conditions may constrict the spinal canal including a herniated disc, scar tissue build up, inflammation or even a tumor. In fairly rare cases spinal stenosis can be caused genetically in which case it is already present at birth as opposed to acquired later in life.

Like most health conditions, spinal stenosis is best dealt with through prevention rather than corrective actions after diagnosis. Fortunately many of the preventative steps you can take can also help reduce symptoms of the condition and even relieve the constriction itself depending on the cause.

How to naturally treat — or prevent — spinal stenosis

If you already are experiencing pain from spinal stenosis, you will need to experiment to find what you can tolerate and what treatments work best for you. Surgery may become a a required option for some, but should rarely be necessary if you first use these symptomatic and condition helping natural therapies:

• Heat therapy, or ice and heat together, can break the pain-spasm cycle. Saunas, hot tubs, or far infrared heat also help improve circulation to bring more healing oxygen and nutrients to injured areas of the spine.
• Proteolytic enzyme therapy offers a safer solution to the problem of inflammation than offered by over the counter NSAIDs like ibuprofen or prescription medicines. Inflammation is almost always present with pain, and may be the actual cause of your spinal stenosis.
• Trigger point therapy provides a mechanism to self-treat tiny yet painful muscle knots almost always present along with spinal stenosis.
• Muscle balance therapy gets to the source of many spinal conditions which are postural dysfunctions caused by muscle imbalances.

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One of Dr. Sarno’s most comprehensive books on the subject of the mind and how it can create all sorts of pain. Watch this quick video review to see what we think about it…

If you’ve read this book, please post your comments.

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After reviewing the similarities and differences of 7,664 pairs of twins – about 56% fraternal and 44% identical – researchers claim they were able to establish a similarity in back pain risk and pain. By studying patterns in both types of twins, the genetic and environmental risk factors can be better understood.
The attributed level of genetic risk for back pain varied by what area of the back was affected. Neck pain was most commonly associated at 39%, followed closely by lower back pain at 38% then thoracic, or mid-back pain at 32%.

What is important to remember though is while genes may place one at increased risk, back pain itself always has an underlying cause. Preventing back pain, or eliminating it once it occurs, remains possible in the vast majority of cases through corrective back pain exercises, inversion therapy, trigger point therapy, better nutrition, reducing inflammation naturally and other lifestyle changes.

Also, this research contradicts other research that has proven that the environment has the greatest effect on our cells and how they develop and change. Watch this video to learn more about how our genes actually work:

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Natural Pain Relievers for Back Pain…
13 Ways You Can Reduce Pain Quickly

If you suffer from any type of back, neck or sciatic pain (any pain for that matter), you should find this video very helpful… in it we share with you thirteen different ways you can reduce pain quickly.

And here are some safe yet effective, all-natural products you can use to reduce pain and promote healing:

Rub-on-Relief – Natural Pain Relief Cream
Heal-n-Soothe – Proteolytic Systemic Enzyme
Super Joint Support – Joint Pain Relief

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The problem is we often rely upon pain to direct our health choices instead of being proactive. A heart attack is often the first sign of heart disease most people notice, but then it may be too late. Severe back pain is typically the result of years of poor posture and inadequate exercise. Pain just brings these problems to our attention.

Everyone looks for pain relief when hurting. That’s why so many health product and service advertisements focus on pain relief. Truly effective products and therapies also focus on correcting the underlying issues instead of simply masking the symptoms.

Take a herniated disc for example. Traditional treatments might focus on anti-inflammatory pain relievers such ibuprofen. Reducing inflammation and relieving pain are reasonable goals, but will pain medicine correct the actual condition which caused the pain?

A better treatment plan combines relieving pain and inflammation with a targeted approach to improving or completely eliminating the unhealthy condition.

The best treatment plan is no treatment plan at all. In other words, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Continuing with the example of the herniated disc, one could greatly decrease the odds of injury by maintaining back health all along.

Proper diet and nutrition is always a cornerstone of good health. Correct exercise which takes into account your body’s current condition is very important. Good sleep habits form the third corner of the health triangle. Small steps bring important results.

The next time you face a painful condition be thankful you have the opportunity to recognize a problem. Then take the necessary steps to improve your health, not just your pain.

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Some in the traditional medical community seem to have dismissed acupuncture out of hand. Yet even the World Health Organization has officially published a long list of conditions acupuncture has been proven effective at treating.

Most acupuncture patients have less pain and are more functional at the end of a session. Since effects of acupuncture are often subtle to begin with it may take several sessions to make a significant impact, although some patients leave the first session dramatically improved.

What happens during an acupuncture treatment session?

During a session, anywhere from one to twenty needles are inserted into the body. Unlike hypodermic needles, acupuncture needles are solid, much smaller, and do not draw blood.

The needles are inserted at varying depths ranging from just resting on the surface of the skin to penetrating several inches deep into layers of muscle or fat. They are in place from 15-30 minutes and may be occasionally jiggled by the acupuncturist, warmed, or electrically charged to aid in the healing process.

Does acupuncture hurt?

The most common question about acupuncture besides “does it work” is “does it hurt”. Because the needles are extremely thin and used with precision, the act of inserting the needles is virtually painless.

While the needles are inserted it is not uncommon to feel a slight tingling or achiness, or even a slight electrical pulsing sensation in areas far from the insert point. These side effects disappear when the needles are removed at the end of the session.

What does acupuncture do?

Science is still trying to catch up with exactly how acupuncture works. But we do know that acupuncture can stimulate the body’s release of enkephalins and dynorphins which help relieve pain. Current research also shows that acupuncture activates a part of the middle brain which plays a role in decreasing pain response.

If you’re considering acupuncture you may be very interested in the new Battlefield Acupuncture technique demonstrated by licensed acupuncturist Dr. John Howard in the video below. It has an amazing 89% success rate at reducing pain to manageable levels – even among those unable to get pain relief with traditional pharmaceuticals!

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