Acute Back Pain – What to do at home
low back pain is commonly due to a sprain injury to the joints at the base of the spine. It’s very important to rest the injury and ice it to reduce the inflammation and promote healing during the acute stage of back pain.
Lie on the floor with your legs on a chair so they are bent at approx 90 degrees at the hips and the knees. Put a pillow or cushion behind your head.
Lying in this position flattens the curve at the base of your spine and takes the pressure off the damaged area.
Use an ice pack (make sure its flexible when you take it out of the fridge) if it’s not leave it for a few minutes – you don’t want to be resting on a BLOCK of ice.
Wrap the ice pack in a tea towel and place it under your spine when lying with your leg raised, leave it there for half an hour and repeat 4X – 5X per day.
Try and have a few short 5 minute walks every hour to help to loosen your spine. Anti inflammatory medication for eg Ibuprofen maybe taken to help reduce the inflammation if you are not allergic to it.
Visit your chiropractor when your are able to stand and walk…remember early correct treatment drastically speeds up your back injuries recovery reducing your back pain quickly to more tolerable levels.
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Back pain? Low back pain exercises
There are 2 main two main types of exercises you can do to help to relieve your Lower back pain and Sciatica.
(1) Core exercises to strengthen your core muscles.
(2) Mobility exercises to loosen up your spine by mobilising your joints and stretching and relaxing your muscles.
We are focusing on the mobility exercises we give to our patients in this article:
In conjunction with rest and regular weight bearing exercise (short walks) a specific lower back pain mobility exercise routine performed regularly will greatly enhance your recovery from lower back injury, reducing your lower back pain
and helping to prevent future problems by keeping your spine more supple and flexible.
Also doing these exercises every morning before you get out of bed will generally help to keep your spine mobile and loose. REMEMBER these exercises are tried and tested, we have given them to thousands of patients over the last twenty years, many of these patients religously do these exercises every morning because they have noticed a difference: they have less morning back pain and stiffness.
Primary Chiropractic treatment, ie spinal manipulative therapy is highly effective (hence Chiropractic’s popularity) however we can enhance our patient’s recovery by also providing advice, soft tissue therapy, mobility exercises and core exercises. A lot of chiropractors do use other modalities/treatments as an adjunct to their spinal manipulative therapy. At Peverell Chiropractic Clinic we have found that using a multi-factorial approach to treatment particularly with more serious and more chronic back pain cases does produce slightly better results.
These simple exercises have been designed to gently mobilize the spine aiding it’s return to normal function without
Click at the end of the article to download our clinic's A4 exercise sheet
putting undue stress on the joints and tissues.
If you have lower back pain and/or sciatica perform the exercises at least 4X per day (or as directed). Always do them before you get out of bed to mobilise your spine and loosen it up before you actually put any stress on it when standing
up and weight bearing, then do them every few hours through theday. After the first 2-3 days as the acute back pain diminishes spend more time on your feet, taking regular 5 – 10 minute walks, this will aid in returning your spinal joints and muscles back to normal function.
Perform the exercises in numerical order. Only do the exercises to about 70% of full motion so as not to overstretch the damaged tissues but to gradually restore normal function by: relaxing tight muscles, stretching and strengthening weak muscles, relieving joint inflammation and swelling, increasing bloodflow to aid healing, and reducing joint stiffness. Peverell Chiropractic Clinic 2012.
Do the exercises rhythmically and if any exercise causes discomfort DO NOT CONTINUE WITH IT until your injury has recovered more fully.
Click Here To Go to Downloads Area to download full size A4 version
Chiropractic manipulation in the treatment of acute back pain and leg pain with disc protrusion: a randomized double-blind clinical trial of active and simulated spinal manipulations.
Double Blind Study shows effectiveness of Chiropractic treatment for radiating leg pain.
In the UK thousands of patients with leg pain are successfully treated by Chiropractors every day.
Radiating leg pain
This study by Santilli V, Beghi E, Finucci S. was to assess the short- and long-term effects of spinal manipulations on acute back pain and radiating leg pain with disc protrusion.
Sham manipulation was used compared to proper manipulation to remove any placebo effect
Results showed that patients benefit was much greater from the genuine manipulation than from the sham manipulation.
Click here to see the study
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What is a Slipped Disc ?
Slipped discs are very common
A Slipped Disc (disc herniation) is a rupture of fibrocartilagenous material (annulus fibrosis) that surrounds the intervertebral disk. This rupture involves the release of the disk’s center portion containing a jelly like substance called the nucleus pulposus. Pressure from the vertebrae above and below may cause the nucleus pulposus to be forced outward, placing pressure on a spinal nerve and causing considerable pain and damage to the nerve. This condition most frequently occurs in the lumbar region and is also commonly called herniated nucleus pulposus, prolapsed disk, ruptured intervertebral disk, or slipped disk.
Plymouth Chiropractor Kevin Kelly treats slipped discs (disc herniations ) regularly…He says “with any type of disc lesion reducing the inflammation is the immediate goal….reduce the inflammation and you will reduce the pain. Correct advice is very important in disc herniation rehabilitation, as the inflammation reduces – spinal manipulation and spinal decompression can be used to restore the patients normal spinal biomechanics and reduce symptoms, for a more complete recovery it is very important to exercise generally as well as developing the bodies core muscles to help to stabilise the spine.
Click the link to see a great slideshow of what happens
http://www.spineuniverse.com/conditions/herniated-disc/herniated-disc-slideshow?page=0#top
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How does the chiropractor diagnose a slipped disc?
Careful history taking, vital signs, and orthopedic and neurological testing are standards of practice in chiropractic offices. Are the reflexes intact? Is there loss of muscle strength or signs of muscle wasting? Is there loss of sensation along an area supplied by a particular nerve? These are vital questions that the orthopaedic and neurological exam your chiropractor performs helps to answer.Chiropractic treatment effectiveness is second to none, but it is chiropractors diagnostic skills that have really elevated our profession.
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