Low back pain, don't use heat.

Hi there and welcome to my blog.  I attempt to add weekly information that, after 19 years in practice, I think will be helpful to those of you with back issues.

Almost daily I will have someone come in the office that has acute low back pain and they have been using heat and rest for their home treatment.  Home treatment is just as important to the treatment you will have in a chiropractors office for low back pain, but if you do the wrong treatment you will get worse.  Most of these patients have a very high level of pain in the low back and with just light pressure on the skin they have increased pain.

The reason for this is the heat will bring in more inflammation and then with the rest that inflammation will just sit there and irritate the already ticked off nerves in the region.  Even though the heat feels good at first it will not only increase the pain long term, but will cause more internal damage due to the increased inflammation to the region.  The only time to use heat is when the pain is more chronic and you are going to use the heat to loosen up the region and then do your home exercises or stretches.

So what to do for the low back pain? Ice!  Sit with an ice pack on the area of pain.  Make sure there is something between your skin and ice or you will burn the skin.  Ice for about 10 minutes at a time and do not ice the low back laying down.  (Many people cannot get back up.)

There are so many things to help low back pain.  If you happen to suffer from acute low back pain or chronic low back pain chiropractic may help.  I am a chiropractor in Everett Wa.  I would look forward to the opportunity to sit and speak with you about your low back pain and how chiropractic can help. I do offer in house X-rays if needed and also lumbar decompression.

 

Chiropractor 98204  back pain