Living with chronic lower back pain can be distressing because it impacts your physical and mental health and makes it difficult to keep up with your daily life activities. Luckily, some treatment approaches actually work for your chronic back pain. Learn about 7 evidence-based treatment approaches that actually work for chronic lower back pain in this article. Visit the best Pain Management Clinic in Brooklyn at Doral Health & Wellness or log on to www.doralhw.org.
7 Evidence-Based Treatment Approaches That Actually Work for Chronic Lower Back Pain
These 7 Evidence-based treatment approaches actually work for your chronic lower back pain, offering pain relief and comfort:
- Physical Therapy and Exercise Program:
Physical therapy lays the foundation of exercise and stretching programs that play a crucial role in relieving back pain while improving overall functionality. It also helps to lower the risk of future pain. Your physical therapist will create an exercise program tailored to your symptoms and overall health, incorporating components such as stretching and flexibility exercises, core strengthening, endurance training, strength training, retraining posture, and aerobic exercises, as well as testing the limits of your pain tolerance.
Your exercises start under the guidance of a physical therapist to ensure you perform them in the right posture, and after some time, you can continue at home. If you experience pain during a workout, make sure you take a break or consult with a physical therapist to ensure your form or technique is right to perform the exercise. Research has found that people who exercise after their initial episode of acute low back pain are less at risk of recurrence of the pain than people who don’t exercise. You need to ensure you maintain the regular exercise regimen at home to get its benefits in pain relief and make the spine stronger and more stable.
- Diet changes:
Obesity is one of the most common factors that cause back pain. If you consume foods that are high in trans fats, refined sugars, and processed foods, not only do these foods increase your weight around the abdominal area, which strains your back, but also are highly inflammatory, which contributes to the intensity of chronic pain.
That’s why you must make dietary changes to lose weight and reduce inflammation by eating anti-inflammatory foods, like fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts, etc. Losing even only 10% of body weight can make a huge difference in lowering back pain. Make sure you consult a dietitian to get a personalized diet plan that helps you lose weight, along with managing chronic back pain for a better quality of life.
- Mindfulness and meditation:
Living with chronic back pain takes a toll on both physical and mental health. Frustration, irritability, depression, and other psychological aspects are common with chronic pain, which can lead to substance abuse. You need to learn how to deal with these psychiatric issues by consulting a psychologist.
Managing these issues also lowers the impact of chronic pain. Your specialist will teach you meditation, yoga, mindfulness, tai chi, and cognitive and relaxation strategies to manage these emotions and produce a sense of calmness, which helps lower the pain. A systematic review of research on mind-body therapies in lower back pain found that these therapies produce positive effects on managing pain and mental health.
The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, which is a combination of meditation and yoga, is scientifically proven to help manage pain better. Research has also proven that individuals with different kinds of pain have found a reduction in pain levels with a better ability to cope with pain that may not go away. So, make sure you consult your psychologist to learn these techniques to improve your mental health and enhance your ability to deal with this constant back pain.
- Pharmacologic treatments:
Your doctors can prescribe a combination of different medicines (topical, oral, injectable) to manage chronic back pain, including anti-inflammatories, muscle relaxants, nerve pain medications, and even antidepressants based on the symptoms. However, some medications may cause unwanted side effects.
That’s why you need to work with the doctor to explore medication that can directly address the cause of pain with fewer and/or manageable side effects. The doctor will start with the lowest possible effective dose to minimize side effects, to ensure you can take them until they are effective and well-tolerated. Long-term use of medications can lead to resistance. That’s why you must work with your doctor and take medicines as prescribed to prevent these issues.
- Injection-based treatments:
Different injection-based treatments like trigger point injections, epidural steroid injections, nerve blocks, and nerve ablations are used to treat chronic back pain. These injections are considered when the source of pain is known, but sometimes it can be helpful to rule out the causes if the other treatments don’t work.
These injections are used in or around the spine to relieve your pain by blocking nerve signals. However, these are used to relieve pain for a while, not for long-term use. This is because it can damage your nerves if used too much or too often. That’s why they are used sparingly, along with physical therapy, to manage pain.
- Alternative Treatments:
Some other treatment options are proven to provide temporary chronic back pain relief, such as acupuncture, massage, biofeedback therapy, laser therapy, electrical nerve stimulation, etc. These options offer benefits that outweigh their risks, which make them worth trying along with your conservative treatment. Make sure that before considering these treatment options, you can talk with your doctor to determine which one works for you.
- Surgery:
This is considered the last resort to manage chronic back pain, especially when other treatment options fail and you suddenly start experiencing any of the following symptoms, which are related to your spine condition:
- New or worsening bowel/bladder issues
- Gait and balance problems
- Weakness in limbs
- Evidence of increased reflexes
While surgery is a good option in these cases, you need to understand that it comes with a high-risk, high-reward ratio. It is irreversible and doesn’t guarantee complete back pain relief. It even causes some side effects. Most surgeons only recommend this when conservative treatments fail to offer relief. Make sure you consult with the best surgeon about whether or not you should consider surgery to improve your chronic back pain.
Dealing with chronic lower back pain can actually be difficult and impact your daily life activities. However, following the above-mentioned evidence-based approaches actually helps with your chronic back pain and improves your quality of life. Make sure you work with your doctor to ensure that these treatments give you the best results.
Need help with chronic back pain? Visit our pain management clinic in Brooklyn to get professional medical help. Call us to book your appointment now!!!!! If you’re ready to take the next step in managing your pain, we recommend consulting with our healthcare provider to explore the right treatments or therapies for you. Always listen to your body and adjust your daily routine to prioritize your well-being. Visit Doral Health & Wellness Pain Relief Department in Brooklyn, to get professional help and guidance on how to manage your problem. Call us on + 1-718-367-2555 to get a consultation. If you need help learning coping methods, register your information and make direct contact with our doctors at https://yuz88hfiyh7.typeform.com/Doralintake. Log on to www.doralhw.org. Or visit us at 1797 Pitkin Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11212.
