Back Pain Treatment

So let us finally try to summarize: once you have got back pain for the first time, it most likely will stay just for a while, but come back later. If your back pain is not excruciating and chronic, probably the search for

Given the fact that all weapons in the fight against the causes of back pain rarely lead to a final victory and keeping in mind that back pain in most cases is a periodic problem, we have to admit that drugs in the widest sense of the word usually work best.

Not all medications against back pain work for all victims though. So the golden rule should be: if you don

A good doctor surely will pursue two strategies in the treatment of a new back pain victim.
The first one is to find and cure the causes of the back pain; the second one is to stop the pain.

Truth be told: in the majority of the cases the causes cannot be definitely established. On the other hand do most of the therapies really help the patient, even if the cause of the back pain remains unclear.

To give you an example for this seemingly strange logic: physical therapy in the form of heat packs almost always brings relief – the heat will stimulate blood circulation in the affected area, better blood circulation will enhance the transport of nutrients and the disposal of toxic substances in the cells, and these effects will not be depending on whether the actual

There are a number of symptoms like numbness in specific areas or pain under specific movements that allow a rather clear diagnosis for the cause of an individuals back pain. We also see ever improving technologies in medical imaging that allow the radiologist to have a good look into our interior.

The problem is that especially in cases like back pain the radiological findings frequently do not correspond with the accounts of the patients – there is no objective measure to the degree of pain somebody claims to be suffering from, there is until today no way to establish whether a specific single nerve is irritated to which degree and finally there has been an increasing number of studies in recent years which emphasize psychological factors as the main source of back pain.

So diagnosis of the causes for back pain mostly comes down to some kind of puzzle: the doctor will look for a combination in which

There are many reasons, and most of them not even well understood by our doctors. But the main principle is simple: as long as the bones, the cartilage, the nerves and the muscles can work in the smooth interaction they were designed for, there will be no pain. Pain sets in when – but not necessarily at the exact point where – this smooth interaction is disturbed of even disrupted. And all the components in our back can cause pain.

The main reasons for back pain are most likely dislocations of or damages to the cartilage. The cartilage not only buffers the bones against each other, it also buffers the nerve roots, which exit the vertebral column through the cartilage. Nerve roots can be irritated or damaged by friction, and they will react with pain.

But even the assumption that in most cases of back pain the cartilage is involved recently is debated: countless studies have shown that people with severe cartilage damage do not suffer pain whereas other people without any physiologic findings complain about back pain.

If we take together the results of all the scientific studies about back pain, the perspective gets really frustrating – an endless number of proven, but often contradictory facts add up to little more than guesswork.