Are you suffering from lower back pain? Cheer up. Most lower back pains do not need surgical treatments. Conservative treatment methods like exercise and medication are more than enough for relief from lower back pains. Doctors advise adequate rest as the first step to relieve the strained muscles and strengthen them. This is to prepare you for the next phase, which is physical therapy. Most of the lower back pain treatments, including those for chronic lower back pain treatments, have physiotherapy as the initial method.
There are strong reasons for doctors recommending physiotherapy as the starting point in curing low back pains. It is common knowledge that most of the low back pain occurrences are caused by improper sitting postures or extensive driving that impose a severe strain on the lower back muscles. Physiotherapy is meant to address this strain. The patient has to be taken through the process of relief from low back pain to ensure free function of the lower back in future. Further, the patient has to continue healthy physical practices to avoid the recurrence of such low back pains.
Physiotherapy could be either passive or active. Passive physiotherapy normally consists of good rest and sleep, ice packs, heat application, and electrical stimulation. Heaters are used before the exercises to warm up the strained muscles and nerves with the intention of relaxing them. Ice pack treatment is dispensed after the exercises are over, to ease the muscles and nerves and calm them after the strain from physiotherapy.
Active physiotherapy, which is the most important process in lower back pain or chronic lower back pain treatment, is meant for faster recovery from lower back pain. Prevention or reduction of future recurrence of such lower back pains is also an integral part of such active physiotherapy. The main purpose of this therapy is to strengthen the lower back muscles in order to provide more posterior support and to reduce the stress on the spinal chord and its discs and joints. Such a process automatically limits the chances of disc herniation and injury to muscles & ligaments, as well as joint dislocations.
Knowledge of some of the key exercises in active physiotherapy would be quite handy, when faced with lower back pain problems. Stretching is the first step in this process. The muscles that had not been very much in use, as well as the muscles that had spasm due to pressure on the nerve, respond to systematic stretching. The focus is normally on stretching the lower back muscles. However, muscles in the hip, legs and abdomen are also exercised to add further strength in this process. Stabilization and strengthening exercises like sit-ups, leg raises, crunches, and low back exercises specifically address this aspect of exercise. Water therapy, ice therapy and heat therapies are provided to supplement and fortify the effectiveness of physiotherapy.
However, the physician has to conduct a thorough check of the patient first and rule out possible fractures or tumors. The follow-up physical exercises done under the direction of the physiotherapist would go a long way in curing the problem of lower back pain as well as in preventing future recurrence of such pains.
Active physiotherapy, is the most important process in chronic lower back pain treatment and results in faster recovery from lower back pain