How To Deal With Your Back And Neck Pain


by mmnewbold - Date: 2009-11-20 - Word Count: 640 Share This!

As we age, back and neck pain becomes far more common. The condition affects not only the physical health of these individuals but also their social and economic well-being. Back and neck pain can disrupt working life, social routines and other daily activities you engage in. In fact, the condition is one of the leading causes of doctor's visits and one of the most common reasons why people take days off work.

However, while back and neck pain can make your life awfully uncomfortable and difficult, the majority of these cases are treatable without resorting to painful and expensive surgery. There are also certain coping strategies you can follow in order to handle the issues that may arise as a result of back and neck pain. These strategies will not only help relieve the pain but also help you reduce the likelihood of recurrences of this condition.

The Main Causes of Back and Neck Pain

In most instances, back and neck pain is caused by strains or other injuries to the muscles and ligaments surrounding the spinal column. These, in turn, may be caused by sports injuries or a sudden increase in physical activity to which the individual is not accustomed.

Viral infections may also cause flu like symptoms that are often accompanied by muscular pain affecting the neck and the back. The condition is known in medical circles as myalgia.

Another possible cause of your back and neck pain is the degenerative change that your spine undergoes. A person's spinal column is made up of individual bones (vertebrae) that are joined together by the intervertebral discs, joints and ligaments. All these combined form the strong but flexible structure of your spine.

As a person ages (middle age and beyond), back and neck pain occurs as a result of the wear and tear of your intervetebral discs and other associated components of your spine. The number one cause of these degenerative changes is movement. Motion causes the neck (cervical) and the lower parts (lumbar) of the spine to gradually break down.

Being biological structures, your ligaments and joints will try to heal and repair themselves but as a result, your spine also becomes deformed with several bulging discs, buckling ligaments, and bone spurs. These changes could also affect the canals through which the nerves pass through, pinching them as a result.

The Best Treatment for Back and Neck Pain

Although as yet there is no definitive cure, back and neck pain is a highly treatable condition. The most common therapy used to treat back and neck pain is over the counter or prescribed medications with pain-killing or anti-inflammatory properties. These can have a swift effect on your condition, but offer only a temporary solution.

Passive physical therapy used in conjunction with exercise (active physical therapy) is also another option. Taking up core-strengthening exercise programmes, such as pilates or yoga stretching, can help to protect you from further injury, and may prevent reoccurrence in most cases.

Hot or cold compresses applied to the area affected in order to alleviate the pain can be an effective treatment for you to perform at home. Using beneficial essential oils in these compresses, and also mixed into a warm bath has been proven to be effective, especially with fibromyalgia or fibrositis symptoms.

Other modalities may also be used, including the application of electric impulses via a TENS machine in order to override the muscular spasms that so often characterize back and neck pain. TENS machines can often be purchased quite inexpensively, and are offered for sale in most high street pharmacy or chemist shops.

There are many more therapies you can try, and it is worth trying a few out to find the solution that best suits you. For more advice about how to deal with your back pain by a team of experts trained in back care and pain management, see below.

Related Tags: backache, fibromyalgia, aromatherapy, sciatica, back pain relief, back support, relieve back pain, fibrositis, bone health, fybromyalgia, lumbago, spine care

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