Monday, March 30, 2009

Got A Muscle Pull In Your Lower Back? Learn The Best Way To Recover

When you pull a lower-back muscle, they need special care to heal. Without understanding the body's recovery process, many people innocently cause themselves more low-back pain. And they slow their own healing.

This one practice seems harmless, and it offers temporary relief from pain and soreness. So, how could it be causing long-term damage?

This one common self-care practice is Heat application.

Typical scenario:

It's the first heavy snowfall of the winter season, and your lower back muscles were not ready to shovel the entire driveway and front walkway. The next day, your whole lumbar area is extremely sore. So, you settle into the couch in the evening, with a heat pad on your lower back.

Heat is like a new trend in self-medication. We have heated car seats, and even our couches have cushions that heat up. We keep heat packs at the office, too. Heat offers a quick fix, but it may aggravate the condition.

Why is heat application so bad for relieving aches and pains?

Pain and soreness might be your back's way of screaming out for assist. They are frequently a sign of inflammation, and overactivity.

When we apply heat, our mind blocks out pain signals temporarily. But if the pain is due to inflammation, the pain would return when the heat is removed. And it could return with a vengeance.

Is your weary body calling out for more heat?

Instead, apply Ice. Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation are the four basic steps of first aid. (Notice: heat is not included).

If you consider that your lower back muscles need to rest and cool down, then try the greater relief and healing of ice.

Tendinitis and Back Pain

After 48 hours of the injury physiotherapy treatment should be apply to accelerate heeling process by repairing damage tissue, restoring full movement of the joint and muscles strength. Strong ligaments also attach to adjacent vertebrae to give extra support and strength to the spine. be sure that you exercise to strengthen the muscles around the tendon to prevent the condition coming back.

Once the pain has reduced, a programme of personal exercises designed for the patient to assist the muscles regain their strength. It is significant that the activity which caused the problem is not resumed until the whole area is looser, the area is completely pain free and the muscles have regained their strength otherwise the problem would just recur. Any sport that aggravates the tendon should be stopped for at least a week, although exercise that doesn't stress the tendon, like swimming, might be possible. Regular pain relief with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), like Ibuprofen, steroid injections bandaging and orthotic devices, like shoe inserts and heel lifts, to take the stress off the tendon.

Physiotherapy/bodywork massage, to strengthen the weak muscle group in the front of the leg and the upward foot flexors. Surgery, (rarely needed) to remove fibrous tissue and repair tears.

Yoga

Yoga improves our concentration and could make us stronger both physically and emotionally. Yoga offers us a holistic approach to body, mind and spirit, which could offer us with the tools to cope with the challenges of daily life. Yoga is suitable for people of all ages and ability. Yoga also serves younger students and athletes by balancing strength with flexibility and physical training with mental and spiritual focus.

Practice

Regular practice enables an increased level of movement and suppleness in the body, improved circulation, better balance and posture. Deep abdominal breathing, which assists to cleanse and nourish the body; and proper relaxation techniques are practiced.

You must be allowed to twist and stretch during your practice, so you need yoga clothing that allows your body freedom to move and breath. Yoga could be practiced at any age, extending health throughout a lifetime. We practice our yoga to the guidelines of the scriptures of Patanjali. It increases the would power and the power of concentration. The prolonged practice of yoga would, in time, lead the student to a sense of peace and a feeling of being at one with his or hers environment. The Indian sage Patanjali collated the practice of yoga into 195 statements presented as the Yoga Sutras around 2000 years ago. "Well-structured yoga classes with excellent instruction are great for developing a confident self practice.

Glen Wood - The Yoga Teacher. Glen is a yoga expert who loves to teach you how to lose your neck, shoulder or back pain with yoga. He is dedicated to unlocking the Real Secrets of Back, Neck and Shoulder Pain.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Is Non-Surgical Spinal Decompression Therapy Considered An Good Treatment Choice For Back Pain?

With millions of back pain sufferers worldwide looking for alternative ways to check chronic back pain relief, non-surgical spinal decompression therapyarises. Non-surgical spinal decompression therapy has successfully treated many back pain sufferers who received unsatisfactory results with traditional treatment methods like bed rest, physical therapy, pain medications, acupuncture, surgery and traction. As new clinical research demonstrating the positive outcomes of this form of therapy continues to surface, it may not take long before it is widely considered to be an effective treatment option for chronic back pain conditions.

In a recent study published in Pain Practice, patient outcomes indicated that chronic low back pain improved with treatment on the DRX9000 True Non-surgical Spinal Decompression System.

The study titled, "Treatment of 94 Outpatients With Chronic Discogenic Low Back Pain with the DRX9000: A Retrospective Chart Review" indicated that patients with a mean pain duration of 535 weeks (Over 10 years) reported a mean verbal numerical pain intensity rating equal to 6.05 on a 0 to 10 scale prior to treatment with the DRX9000.

Patients were treated at four clinics throughout the United States. They received 30-minute DRX9000 sessions daily for the first 2 weeks tapering to 1 session/week.

After the completion of the DRX9000 True Non-surgical Spinal Decompression System therapy, the mean verbal numerical pain intensity rating decreased to a statistically and clinically significant rating of 0.89.

Furthermore, patients also reported a decrease in analgesic use and improvement in activities of daily living.

The authors were able to follow-up at a mean 31 weeks with 29 patients and reveal mean values of 83% improvement in back pain and satisfaction of 8.55 on a 10-point scale. None of these 29 patients reported requiring surgery. The authors also acknowledge that there are other spinal decompression systems available commercially. However, they suggest that the design difference between these devices, "may lead to differing physical responses to therapy, so studies of one type of apparatus should not readily be applied across all machines."

As more clinical research demonstrating positive results utilizing this form of treatment is disseminated, the question may no longer be whether it's effective but rather who offers it.

Non Surgical Back Pain Cure

Eighty percent of North Americans have some back pain, usually lower back pain at some time in their lives. And about 45% of those folks have repeated back pain attacks.

If you could recover from back pain without surgery, you are much better off. You may have unforeseen complications, anything from infection to nerve damage. Back surgery could go wrong leaving you with more pain than you started with. Plus most surgeries are not really necessary.

Most people who suffer back pain have a problem with the short rigid back muscles and it could be relieved by improving your posture while sitting, standing, and working regular aerobic exercise; stretching and exercises to strengthen your back muscles.

At least 20% of the people with back pain have spinal injuries involving the rupture of one or more disks, a gel filled shock absorber between the vertebrae, or bones of the spinal stack. Before thinking about surgery, you should wait at least 3 months after being diagnosed by a doctor and use alternative remedies during that time unless there is an emergency for such surgery. Many times the disks would acquire better with the same type of nonmedical treatments that repair the back muscles.

SITTING:

The proper position for sitting is just in front of your ischium bones of the pelvis. Those are the big bones that you could feel pressing against the chair right where your thighs end and your buttocks begin. At least you could feel them when you are sitting correctly. Lean slightly forward from the hips, then keeping your pelvis in place, move your upper back slightly back. That means do not slouch forward, do not round or hunch your back and shoulders and keep your feet flat on the floor. You should become conscious of the curve in the small of the back.

The key to this back pain relieving, pain preventing sitting posture is to lift your breastbone as you are seated. Pretend that a string is attached to the middle of your chest and is tugging your breastbone upwards. You prefer to lengthen the space between your belly button and your breastbone. This corrected sitting posture would feel awkward for a few days, however, because sitting incorrectly for so long could change the configuration and tone of your muscles.

Do this breastbone lifting exercise whenever you notice that you are leaning back or slumping over. The resulting posture not only would position your body correctly on your sit bones, but would also position the head correctly on the spine, putting the spine in a natural alignment that supports your musculature and gives the overworked muscles of the lower back some needed relief. Plus relieve some of that back pain.

DRIVING:

A lot of people who drive for a living have bad back pain. This is because car seats seem to be designed to hurt the back. Your knees are higher than your hips, throwing the weight of your body onto the sciatic nerve. Plus your leaning back with the head forward and the arms extended, which stresses your lower back and neck.

To minimize the damage, your car seat should be as flat as possible so that your knees and hips are at the same level, you prefer to drive the same way you sit.

If your car seat doesn't adjust automatically, you could build up the dip by sitting on a folded towel, a foam wedge, or a small pillow. Put a small pillow behind your lower back also.

Next, position the seat so that you aren't reaching for the steering wheel or leaning forward to grasp the wheel. The wheel should be close enough that your arms could hang naturally from the shoulders and your shoulders feel relaxed.

Just be sure your breastbone is about 10 inches from the center of the steering wheel. That way, you would lessen the possibility of injury from your seatbelt or airbag if your in an accident.

STANDING:

For back pain free posture when standing, do the breastbone lifting exercise, then have a friend look at you from the side. If you are standing correctly that is, in a posture that could prevent or relieve back pain a vertical line could pass through your ear, the middle of your shoulder, the middle of your hip bone, and the outside of your ankle bone.

Correcting posture induced back pain is really logical and really simple, but people make it so difficult. The body is a perfect mechanism. All we have to do is remove whatever imbalances are in the way of the body performing the way it is supposed to and this exercise does that.

LIFTING:

You probably know how not to lift; never bend over at the waist. And maybe you have also learned the commonly prescribed method of correct lifting to prevent back pain. Squat with your knees apart, with the object between your knees and as close as possible to your body. Using your legs, stand up and lift, bringing the object closer to you body as you stand. Be sure to keep your back straight also.

For those people who cannot manage a squat, however, there's another way. Put one knee on the floor. Then using your arms move the object onto the oposite thigh and with a firm grip on the object stand up.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Herniated Disc - Reasons, Symptoms And Diagnosis

Herniated discs are extremely common back injuries. Herniated disc disease is due to a change in the structure of the normal disc. Most of the time, disc disease comes as a result of aging and the degeneration that occurs within the disc. Occasionally, severe trauma could cause a normal disc to herniate. Trauma may also cause an already herniated disc to worsen. They occur when the thick outer layer (annulus fibrosus) of an intervertebral spinal disc bulges or ruptures. Sometimes, the gel-like interior of the disc (nucleus pulposus) would actually break through the outer layer and leak out into the body. This is called a ruptured or extruded disc.

Some herniated disks could be painful. The most common signs and symptoms of a herniated disk are:

- Sciatica - a radiating, aching pain, sometimes with tingling and numbness, that starts in the buttock and extends down the back of one leg
- Pain, numbness or weakness in the lower back and one leg, or in the neck, shoulder, chest or arm
- Low back pain that worsens when you sit, cough or sneeze

Several risk factors make you more susceptible to a herniated disk:

- Age : Herniated disks are most common in middle age ( after age 60 ) due to aging-related degeneration of the disks.
- Smoking : Smoking tobacco increases the risk of disk herniation because it decreases oxygen levels in the blood, depriving your body tissues of vital nutrients.
- Weight : Excess body weight causes extra stress on the disks in the lower back.
- Diabetes : Diabetes could deplete oxygen levels in the blood, making spinal disks more prone to herniation and disease.
- Occupations that strain the spine : Physical Work ( like lifting, pulling, pushing etc.), like farming, concrete reinforcement, lumber work, quarry work, food packing, trucking and warehousing. Sitting or standing in one position also may increase the risk of disk herniation.

The doctor's are diagnosis by using below methods:

X-ray -- High-energy radiation is used to take pictures of the spine.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) -- An MRI offers detailed pictures of the spine that are produced with a powerful magnet linked to a computer.
Computed Tomography (CT) Scan -- A CT scan uses a thin X-ray beam that rotates around the spine area. A computer processes data to construct a three-dimensional, cross-sectional image.
Electromyography (EMG) -- This test measures muscle response to nervous stimulation.

Inversion Therapy - Realigning Spine

Inversion therapy? At first glance it may sound like a proposed cure for over-taxed mathematicians, but it is actually a treatment for joints and muscles touted by no less than that the enormously clever secret agent, Angus MacGyver. If the man who popularized using duct tape and Swiss Army knives as cure-alls for every conceivable household or mechanical ailment and who once hotwired a broken truck with little more than a turkey baster, a paper clip, and tweezers used inversion therapy, it must be good.

Inversion therapy works by suspending a person head down at an angle. The ankles are first clamped to an inversion table, allowing the body to rest at an inverted angle. This decompresses everything below the ankles and allows every joint to benefit from an equal and opposite action from that in an upright position.

This is especially beneficial for those suffering from back pain. Inversion therapy releases pressure on the discs, ligaments, and nerve roots of the spinal column, allowing them to return to their natural shape. This is great for treating sore muscles, shoulder tension, and joint pain.

Because only the movement of your feet is prevented, the rest of the body is free to move. There are several exercises which could be done in an inverted position which would increase your body's flexibility. As the muscles are already pre-stretched from being upside down, exercising in an inverted position would allow for stretching of muscles that would result in greater flexibility.

While not a cure for serious back ailments, inversion therapy offers great relief from occasional stiffness, soreness, back and joint pain. In addition, proponents of inversion state that it aids in improving posture by aligning the spine and increasing blood flow by acting on the circulatory system in an opposite manner than when the body is standing.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Sciatica - Natural Treatments

Sciatica is a set of symptoms including pain that might be caused by general compression and/or irritation of one of five nerve roots that give rise to the sciatic nerve, or by compression or irritation of the sciatic nerve itself.

Sciatica is generally caused by the compression of lumbar nerves L4 or L5 or sacral nerves S1, S2 or S3, or far less commonly, by compression of the sciatic nerve itself.

Sciatica is characterized by pain in the lower back and gluteal region. It is a set of symptoms rather than a diagnosis in itself (meaning it does not explain the cause of the pain). Sciatica is worse in the evening, better in the morning and aggravated by fatigue. Besides discomfort, sciatica is known to cause numbness in the affected regions of the body, as well as trouble with controlling the leg.

Common non-surgical treatments include over-the-counter pain relievers, prescription non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), hot and cold packs, spinal injections, chiropractic care, physical therapy, and natural remedy supplements.

The goals of non-surgical natural sciatica treatment should include both relief of sciatica pain and prevention of future sciatica symptoms.

The natural treatments of sciatica discussed below are nutritionally balanced solutions that tend to raise overall health. They contain enzymes and many other naturally occurring phyto-nutrients shown to assist reverse and prevent disease generally by optimizing the immune and hormonal systems.

Capra Mineral Whey is 100% natural, mineral-rich, goat's milk whey powder. Goat's milk is the most widely consumed milk in the world and is largely like human milk in its composition. Capra goats are not fed any pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics, or growth hormones.

This milk contains more than 20 naturally occurring minerals which would offer benefits to weak and painful joints and would soothe and heal the digestive and intestinal tract. This is also a natural immune system enhancer.

Boron is a really effective treatment for about 95% or more of the relief of arthritis. Its range of action extends to adding calcium into the cartilage and bone and combined with Capra milk is a really useful natural remedy for Sciatica.

Serrapeptase is a naturally occurring physiologic agent which digests inflammation in all forms. It is a viable alternative to salicylates, ibuprophen, and more potent NSAIDS. It is a really good natural treatment for all types of pain including Sciatica.

Zell-Oxygen is a substance that improves the balance of the immune system by assisting cellular communication. This product has many years of clinical use. Its Beta-Glucans strengthen the immune system which assists to eliminate infection which is an essential part of any regenerative program.