#Backpainhelp

How To Help Lower Back Pain

/ trishulvadi / Leave a comment

If you are unfortunate enough to be suffering with some sort of lower back pain and it just so happens to be at a time with it’s rather difficult to get hold of a health professional, such as on the weekend, during a national holiday, or when abroad in a remote area.

There are a few things you can do in the interim until you are able to get to a health professional. Remember this is not a fix, but just a simple way to potentially help you through the uncomfortable period.

Even if it starts to feel better it’s still worth taking the time to seek professional advice to be fully sure.

  1. Avoid Aggravation

The first thing you must do is avoid anything that aggravates the pain. Although some general advice says to keep active, if that particular activity is aggravating your symptoms then stop – this is NOT a no pain, no gain scenario (quite the opposite)

  1. Calm The Fire

Most of the time a lot of pain is due to inflammation. That means it’s hot and red, so we need to cool it with ice. Of course make sure you wrap the ice in a thin towel otherwise you may end up with frost bite on top of all the other problems you already have going on.

WIth an area that is inflamed, it’s “flame-atory” meaning it’s hot, so applying heat can potentially add more fuel to the fire.

If it was just muscle tightness then it may be suitable to apply heat – however the real question then becomes “Why is that muscle tight?”

So if you’re unsure go for the ice. The other advantage is your nerves don’t work very well at low temperatures anyway, so this can help give some comfort and relief by dulling the pain.

How To Tell If Your Condition Is ACUTE or CHRONIC

/ trishulvadi / Leave a comment

I see a number of people in my clinic with some type of injury or pain initially. It often will affect how they can function correctly. They often describe their condition as “chronic”. However they are not always right.

See the word chronic is related to the word chronology, meaning when something has happened in time. It has nothing to do with the severity of the symptoms problem. So if someone say “it feels really chronic today” actually doesn’t make sense because if it is chronic, it wouldn’t be chronic today, it would be chronic anyway.

An acute injury is one that has happened straight away. It would be flared up with inflammation, tension, spasming, really angry, raw and fiery. Pain scales tend to be very hight 8,9 or 10 out of 10 – well actually they would describe their pain as 20+ out of 10.

With chronic conditions most will describe their pain as around 2-4 out of 10.

When you experience an acute injury and don’t get it seen professionally, there’s a good chance it may “feel better” on its own. That’s the thing. Our body is very good at dulling the symptoms so that you can “live with it” and that’s a sign of an acute condition becoming chronic. That really concerns me when I hear “I can live with it” as it will only flare up again in the future at some point.

So you end up in a cycle of a chronic condition with acute flare ups until you seek professional help that can break that cycle and resolve the underlying condition.

You know this as you may have heard someone claim they have been fine for a long time, only to then injure themselves in the most debilitating way by simply reaching to get something. Not everyone who reaches for something has the exact same injury. So that implies that there was already something underlying in the individual who hurt themselves, i.e. a chronic pattern/behaviour which resulted in an acute flare up by reaching out.

It doesn’t matter how old, what gender, what occupation, lifestyle choices that have this pattern. It can affect anyone at any time if they are not having a professional take care of them.

If you had an injury out in the wild your body would dull the pain so that you are able to continue getting to safety from any predators. If you were worried about the pain you would not be able to get to safety and die. That is why most acute conditions end up in a chronic pattern, even now in a modern world.

You see every one of us are so unique, that no two people are alike. So the way I get great results is unravel any compensation patterns, whether symptomatic or not, to ultimately get to an optimally functioning body.