Chronic Back Pain Relief

Back pain is blamed, generally for poor muscle tone especially on the affected area. Overall, 90% of chronic back pain sufferers are individuals (professionals, housewives, students…) that seldom see an exercise regimen. And the other 10% have the condition due to injury such as ripped muscles.

If you have back pain, you are not alone. Back pain the one of the most common neurological complaint that physicians diagnose in the United States, next to headache. So it’s no cause to fret if you have one.

And no, most back pain is not always associated with age (though age DOES have an effect on back pain), instead it is the lack of physical activity and deficiency in liquid intake.

There is not a single definition of pain that is appropriate for everybody because it is a highly subjective experience. What, to another person, is excruciating may be nothing more that a slight discomfort for you.

Not only do views of pain vary among individuals, your own perception of it can change over time. Even when you do have a clear perception of what pain means to you, there is not an objective way to measure it you can use to convey your impressions to somebody else.

It is not unusual for patients in a doctor’s office, who have come in because pain is severely impairing their day-to-day lives, to have great difficulty describing it clearly.

Defining the pain is important in order to control it. And for purposes of our definition, we categorize back pain into three categories. We have the Acute Back Pain, Chronic Back Pain, and the Neuropathic Back Pain.

Acute back pain is a common type of pain that is directly related to a damage tissue. It is experienced immediately, characterized by sharp, biting pain of a damaged tissue. It is generally accepted that acute back pain lasts less than 3 months if left untreated.

If the pain persists longer after it has been healed or treated then it falls now under the classification of chronic back pain. Chronic back pain falls into two sub categories: pain with an identifiable pain generator and pain without an identifiable pain generator.

The former obviously has a cause, such as: degenerative disc disease, spinal stenosis, spondylolisthesis and other spinal structure problems due to injury. The latter is more a disease rather than a symptom of an injury. And for purposes

As long as you have no serious physical injury or occurring illness, chronic back pain relief is very achievable. It’s all in the problem approach. First thing is identifying the problem.

Was it just stress or a serious defunct? Don’t be hasty in dismissing it as stress. Look for other telltale signs. Are you having fever? Are other parts of your body hurting? If so, then look for other signs. Common culprits are appendicitis, hepatitis and gastrointestinal complications.

Next is identifying the pain type. Is it muscular or structural? Structural poses a difficult situation, you may have herniated discs. If muscular, ripped muscle is common but usually harmless cause.

Tai Chi

Doing Tai Chi is one effective chronic back pain relief. It promotes good posture and the meditation improves your ability to withstand the pain. If done regularly, these exercises would equate doing a good aerobic exercise with also eases bad backs.

Bending exercises also helps in chronic back pain relief though somewhat lesser in efficiency. Alternately, you could purchase a back pain machine. The TENS machine is surprisingly an effective chronic back pain relief and it is handy, portable, and quite cheap.

In a word, I would suggest using a TENS machine for immediate chronic back pain relief and Tai Chi for the long lasting prevention for back pain.

Chronic Back Pain Self Care

To begin with, you must make sure clear lines of communication have been established with you physician(s) and any other health care providers being seen for chronic back pain. Do not just assume it is your cross to bear and suffer in silence.

Though it is true that the majority of back pain in general is not symptomatic of serious illness, do not assume you are therefore free from all risk.

There have been cases of people whose backs’ hurt persistently and they just mistook it for a fact of life and went on the best they could, only to discover that “bad back” was really a sign of something much worse, like cancer or otherwise damaged internal organs.

In order to facilitate communication to a health care professional it is a good idea to spell out some specific things to yourself first as a means of organizing your thoughts and presentation. For example, asking yourself and answering the following questions can go a long way toward clarifying what you are experiencing:

• How bad, on a scale of 1 – 10 is my pain?
• How long have I had this pain?
• What words can be used to describe it (tearing, burning, throbbing, etc.)?
• What could have caused my pain? Is there an injury, psychologically stressful event, or activity I can link to its onset?
• Are there any other health problems I am having?
• In addition to pain medication, what other medicines am I taking?
• What kinds of things have I done to try alleviating the pain? Have any helped, even some?
• Both emotionally and physically, how has pain affected my daily life, be it at work or at home?

The questions do not have to end with the examples above, of course, and asking a few may help you zero in on more specific inquiries – just as the information provided will help your physician to get a clearer picture of what is happening with you. Once the chronic back pain is described, a variety of approaches, alone or in combination, are available to treat it.