Back Pain Relief

Everywhere you look there are claims about treatments, techniques or devices that offer back pain relief. How on earth do you start to figure out which treatments really work and which don't?

In order to help you make some informed choices about what is available to help you with your back pain relief I will talk about some of the different options and give a brief overview of any research evidence that is available to support or dismiss it.

manipulation Treatment can be divided into types of care that are passive or hands on ie someone does something to you. These include the following:

Acupuncture	Originating in china this treatment for back pain relief inserts needles into the skin.
Acupressure	Similar in theory to acupuncture, acupressure involves applying pressure to specific acupuncture points, no needles though!
Trigger Point Therapy	A western type of acupressure with a different theory. This treatment also involves applying pressure but it does not follow acupuncture points (not intentionally anyway!)
Back Massage	The thing most of my patients want and very few of them get!
Spinal Manipulation	This is a bread and butter treatment for many chiropractors and osteopaths, quite a few physiotherapists offer this too.
Spinal Mobilisation	This is something frequently practiced by physiotherapists. When I trained this was the mainstay of what we offered, times have changed now though and this is less popular.

Machines and physical treatments

Inversion Tables and Spinal Traction
Heat Therapy
Cold Therapies
Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS)
Interferential
Cold Laser Therapy
Pulsed Electromagnetic Energy (Magnet Therapy)
Ultrasound

Products

Magnet therapy
Braces and Corsets
Stretchers
Back Knobber and other massage tools
Mobiliser machine
Shoes
Chairs
Beds
Pillows
Lumbar rolls

Active treatments

You will always meet someone with back pain who has benefited from something or another and swears by it, but bear in mind that because they have done well with a type of treatment it doesn't’t mean that you will. Read the evidence for and against, make up your own mind and try it if you think it may help. Whatever you do though don’t get too pulled into the advertising and hype for unproven treatments or for treatments which we know really don’t help –some of them are very expensive.

Remember - there is no proven cure for non-specific lower back pain - if there was none of us would have it anymore!

04-Jul-2008