Alternative Methods for Pain Management

When you're first prescribed pain medication, it may seem like a happy day. Not that you're a fan of drugs or anything, but the medication seems give hope for an an end to your pain. It even works for a short time – until you have to start taking more, and then more still. And then you realize that you're more reliant on these pills than you would like to be. And where you could see an end to your pain before, now you just see a road that leads to addiction.

With 31 million Americans suffering from low back pain alone, this is an issue that affects a great number of people in our country. So, how can we manage pain without relying on medications with serious side effects and risks of addiction? There are quite a few natural pain relievers out there. The key is finding the right one, or combination of ones, that works for you.

Stretching

A staggering 70 to 80 percent of low back pain is muscle related; this is due to conditions such as sciatica, Myofascial pain and piriformis syndrome. Stretching can help loosen tight muscles and begin relieving pain that may be caused as a result of muscle tension. As an example, piriformis syndrome is caused when the piriformis muscle, one of the lateral rotators buried deep to the gluteal muscles, is stressed or tight and puts pressure on the ever-important sciatic nerve. This pressure causes an array of pain in the lower back, buttocks, and legs; and often leads to Sciatica. By using a therapeutic tool, such as the Piri-Stretcher®, to target stretches to the correct muscle, patients increase strength and mobility and can begin to heal the muscle that is at the root of so much pain.

Lifestyle changes

No one wants to hear this, but if you're carrying around some extra weight, this may be causing or contributing to your pain – especially if that pain is in your back. Diet and exercise can help you shed the problematic weight, which can help relieve your pain. This method alone may not eliminate the pain entirely, but depending on how much weight you lose, it can make a major impact.

Chiropractic care

If your pain is in the back, a good chiropractor may be able to help relieve it for you. Chiropractors are trained in healing the back and keeping it healthy, and they employ various methods to help get your back into proper alignment and keep your muscles from tensing up. The right chiropractor will find the root cause of your issue and begin a treatment plan to help you get better over the long term. This method is aimed at actually healing what ails you, and not just covering up the problem with medication.

Low back pain sufferers incur a wide array of costs from pain relief methods including surgery, physician visits, X-rays, MRI scans, medications and injections in order to try to make pain go away. Some of these costs are necessary in order to identify and start treating the problem. Others are likely to mask the symptoms, which may do more harm than good in the long run. Instead of covering up the problem, maybe it's time to start making real progress with a pain-relief program targeted at solving the underlying issue.