Natural Remedies for Back Pain

One hot afternoon in October four years ago, my drilling and installation crew at water borehole drilling site was trying to mount a 4000liter plastic water tank on a 15feet stanchion when suddenly I noticed a weak link. I immediately rushed to assist the guy lifting on that side but before I reached with my raised helping hands, the tank was already falling and the guy had ran for safety. The tank fell into my raised hands and I fell backwards under the weight of the tank, against a fence wall and landed on my butt with the tank on my laps. The pain I felt around my lower back region was nearly unbearable. That was my first experience with back pain.

According to the American Medical Association, eighty percent of adults have suffered from chronic back pain. In the past people were told to lie down and rest to deal with their back pain. How did I deal with my back injury? When I got home that night, I laid myself face down on bare floor and asked my wife to gently trample on my back with her bare feet around the areas where I felt the most pain. The next day I did not feel much of relief, but I went back to work doing the very same things I did on a daily basis. In the subsequent couple of days continuing the same exercise and work routine, I was made whole again, without eating one tablet of pain relieving pill.

Experts have more recently found that the advice to lie down and rest when you have strained a back muscle actually contributed to more pain and disability due to the weakening of muscles. Now doctors are advising patients to get or stay active as a way of dealing with back pain.

‘You should definitely add strength training to your routine, especially exercises that target the abdominal and the back muscles. Strengthening these muscle groups will likely help to alleviate some of your pain, because weak back and abdominal muscles are often contributors to chronic back problems’ says exercise physiologist Miriam E. Nelson, director of the Center for Physical Fitness at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and author of several books, including Strong Women Stay Young.

Brisk walking and many other mild exercises will not worsen your back problem, and they are vital for overall health. Therapists encourage the use of comfortable and proper fitting exercise shoes as crucial, because the support your shoes lend is critical. Yoga and other exercises intended to improve your muscular flexibility have been shown to reduce risk of back injury. The practice of yoga teaches various poses that gently stretch the muscles plus breathing techniques that are designed to increase strength, flexibility, and circulation.

To maintain overall back region health, back pain prevention or curative classes teach exercise routines that strengthen the muscle groups that support the back and improve the student’s stretching capabilities. It will require some minor pain endurance at first, but the pain will go away not because some medicament has temporarily relieved it but rather due to the fact that our back muscles have become healthier. Our backs will be stronger when their muscles and bones are more supple and healthier.