Recently released guidelines from medical community for dealing with low back pain.
There are new recommendations for people experiencing low back pain. And it’s, essentially… to ‘wait it out’ and to try to let your back heal without drug interference or hospital stays. Light movement and manual therapies like massage can help to alleviate the condition while the muscles calm down.
You can read about it in a helpful NYTimes article here and see the specific guidelines here.
Of course, if you’ve ever had a seriously painful back-spasm, you might know that “waiting it out” isn’t fun. And making it to your next regularly scheduled Yoga Class can be next to impossible. Even still, what the medical community is telling us is positive news. In the past we might have been overmedicating, causing the healing process to be prolonged and increasing the risk of drug dependency. The goal for the American College of Physicians is to keep ER visits at bay and prevent future drug dependency – both things in which the risk and cost outweighs the benefit.
Try manual therapies instead, and remember to tell yourself that you WILL get better. I myself have had two big back spasms. I got better with time and the help of my massage therapist and chiropractor.
Now, what wasn’t made super clear is that not all back pain is equal. If your back pain is accompanied by tingling, numbness or weakness in the legs, if you have severe, shooting or debilitating pain, or if the pain your experiencing doesn’t ever subside, it’s time to see a doctor in order rule out or treat vertebral disc or nerve issues.
Even still, Deep Tissue Massage and Trigger Point Therapy can help in any case, and is traditionally indicated as a complementary treatment for Low Back Pain.