With all the amazing progress in medicine in the last century, it’s hard to understand why conventional medicine is so at lost when it comes to lower back pain treatments.
Lower back pain is one of the most prevalent health concerns in the modern world.
But still:
Conventional medicine has no real cures or solutions for back pain (Except for the dangerous prescription and OTC pain killers, steroid injections, and the failing back surgeries).
Are you scared about the possible side effects of main stream medicine?
You don’t have to be.
[yellowbox]You have other options. Safe, natural and effective ones.[/yellowbox]
In this post, you’ll find out what they are and how to use them to heal your lumbar pain naturally.
Ready? Let’s start.
Overview
The 5 Worst Lower Back Pain Treatments (and Safe Alternatives)
Here are the 5 most risky low back pain treatments, their possible (terrifying) side effects and their safe alternatives:
1. NSAIDs and OTC Pain Killers
Over 100,000 people die each year from prescription drug side effects (in the U.S. alone).
This does NOT include deaths from doctors accidentally prescribing the wrong drugs, nor from pharmacists filling the prescription incorrectly, nor from patients overdosing.
It is from “side effects”!
If that’s not enough, the Healthfinder.gov quoted a new study recently published in the American Journal of Medicine:
Patients with high blood pressure and coronary artery disease who took NSAIDs regularly had a 47 percent increase in the rate of death as well as nonfatal heart attack and stroke.
After a period of five years, those rates jumped to 126 percent for death and 66 percent for heart attack, the investigators found.”
And we all know about the potential damage to our liver and kidneys from long-term use of pain killers, right?
Safe Alternatives
Believe or not, you can naturally reduce the inflammation which causes your pain – with a few lifestyle changes and a high quality natural-anti-inflammatory supplement.
[yellowbox]Start with eliminating inflammation-causing-foods, exercise lightly every day and get to know the top 10 anti-inflammation herbs.[/yellowbox]
As for the immediate pain relief that’s really on your mind right now – use the amazing and side-effect-free infrared heating pad to relieve your pain naturally for 6 hours (You couldn’t pry my infrared heating mat from my cold dead hands…)
Another option is a good homeopathic pain relief cream. This is the one I have and it’s highly effective.
2. Spinal Fusion
A new study published in Spine compared the success of lumbar fusion surgery with nonsurgical treatments using Ohio workers’ compensation data. These were the results:
After 2 years, 11% of people under going spinal fusion were permanently disabled, comparing to 2% not having surgery.
36% of surgeries resulted with surgery complications, re-operation rate was 27% and only 26% returned to work, compared to 67% of the people NOT having surgery.”
Safe Alternatives
There are several natural methods to treat bulging and herniated discs, most of them, done right, can prevent any type of back surgery.
The most effective one is probably spinal decompression.
A good quality inversion table, or the highly popular Nubax Trio, can be extremely effective for bulging, herniated, slipped and ruptured discs in lower back, Sciatica, pinched nerve in lower back, spinal stenosis, pulled and strained muscles, muscle spasms and more non back related conditions (such as migraines).
The 2 amazing benefits in spinal decompression are the immediate pain relief, and the natural healing of the injured area, brought by the rehydrating of the discs.
[yellowbox]See how to do spinal decompression at home HERE[/yellowbox]
Another option is an excellent homeopathic pain relief cream, which works great for any muscle injury, a sports injury flare up, throbbing feet due to standing all day, pinched nerve horrible pain, swollen and aching joints and neck tension pain.
3. Epidural Steroid Injections
If you ignore for a second the fact that the success rate of steroid injections (by success I mean short-term pain relief) is only 50%, this highly questionable back pain relief is often accompanied with these “side effects“:
Paraparesis/Paraplegia
- Inflammation around your spinal cord, nerves and brain (Arachnoiditis)
- Bone FracturesMedication Side Effects – From the steroid medication itself – these include high blood sugar, decreased immunity, ulcers, hip arthritis and more
- Infection
- Spinal Headache
- Meningitis
Safe Alternatives
There are more than enough natural and effective ways to reduce inflammation, instead of these awful steroid injections.
- A natural anti-inflammation supplement. Heal n’ Soothe, for example, contains 10 of the most powerful natural anti-inflammation herbs, plus systemic enzymes.
See the top natural ways to reduce inflammation in your back
2. An infrared heating pad – this natural and side-effect-free technology can remarkably relieve your back pain for about 6 hours (!!), while increasing circulation and speeding up the healing of the problem area.
Learn more about infrared heating pads – HERE.
An Acupressure Mat – our body is lined with pressure points, which, when “pressured”, release pain relieving and stress reducing hormones (endorphins and oxytocin).
The result is an almost immediate relaxation, pain relief and stress relief.
Stimulating these pressure points causes an increased circulation, resulting in a warm feeling (blood is flowing, full of nutrients) and reduced heart rate, indicating relaxation.
This makes the Acupressure Mat an excellent sleep aid for people having trouble falling asleep due to back pain or just “plain old” insomnia.
See more about acupressure mats and how they can relieve lower back pain.
4. The “Good Old” Heating Pad
This popular low back pain relief method is seemingly harmless, but other than the fact that the minute you turn it off the pain returns, you are subjected to skin burns and direct electromagnetic radiation.
I think (or hope) that most of us know how dangerous EMF can be.
This is why you should not live in a house near high voltage power lines. According to the EPA, these fields have been linked to leukemia, lymphomas and other types of cancer.
The Safe Alternative
Replace your heating pad with a good quality Far Infrared Heating Pad.
While an electric heating pad has no other health benefits other than temporarily heating of your skin, the Journal of American Medical has published a list of the health benefits of far infrared therapy:
- Long lasting pain relief
- Reduction of arthritis pain
- Increasing of blood circulation (promoting a faster recovery and cleansing of your whole body)
- Helps to remove toxins in the body
- Improves range of motion
- Promotes stress relief and relaxation
Infrared light therapy is natural, safe and is scientifically proven to have no adverse effects.
If you’re still not sure, see this head-to-head comparison between the electrical and the FIR heating pad.
5. Wrong Back Strengthening Exercises
Any type of exercise is good for you, right?
Wrong.
When you have low back pain, it usually means that you have some type of muscle imbalances that cause it in the first place.
Just random back strengthening exercises, that are not tailored to fix your specific injury, can make the problem much WORSE.
For example, if you have sciatica, a hamstring stretch is a bad idea.
Whether you’re standing and leaning forward, in a runner’s stretch, or leaning over both feet, this one stretch aggravates the entire length of your sciatic nerve, from the lower back to the heel.
See 8 exercises that’ll make your lumbar pain worse
The Safe Alternative
The best exercises for your lower back pain should be tailored specifically to your muscle imbalances.
The first step, obviously, is to identify your muscle imbalances. The next step is to do the specific back and core exercises to re-balance these muscle groups.
You can spend hours researching this online, or you can simply use The Lose the Back Pain system, which shows you how to discover tour muscle imbalances and the exact exercises you need to “fix” them.
If you are serious about permanently curing your low back pain (from the root!), I highly recommend this inexpensive program. I believe they even gave a free trial for it, so you have nothing to lose.
Wait! You Have Even More Options!
1. The Trigger Point Foam Roller – great for muscle knots and pulled muscles.
What about you? Have you ever suffered from the consequences of these common back pain treatments? Share your experience with me in the comments below and help other people avoid them.
To your health and happiness,
Meital
Great post! I think natural pain management alternative are something more people should consider. I love my chiropractor, yoga, acupuncture, and homemade body oils to reduce pain and inflammation. I am intrigued by the acupressure mat. Thanks for sharing on Natural Living Monday.
This is a great list! As someone who has dealt with severe Scoliosis for 12+ years, I can appreciate some natural remedies, although there are times when all I can do is take an ibuprofen to relieve my pain.
I’m surprised, however, that you didn’t include a visit to the Chiropractor as a natural alternative. I have been visiting the Chiro monthly for about a year and have almost totally eradicated my symptoms.
Here’s my blog post about my Chiro visits: http://blairblogs.com/2013/02/whats-it-like-to-go-to-the-chiropractor/