Massage For Lower Back Pain
If you’ve ever battled lower back pain, you know how nagging and exhausting it can be.
Pain medications can be dangerous to take for extended periods (and frequently only dull the pain, instead of dealing with it), relief found from injections is ineffective or short-lived, and some therapies can even make your lower back pain worse. Surely there’s something you can do to rid yourself of this pain.
You’re not alone in this pain. In fact, at least 80% of adults will deal with lower back pain at some point in their life. So how can we work to free you of this pain if most of these treatments are ineffective? Good news: You don’t have to give in and deal with this pain. There are solutions out there.
There must be something your doctor can prescribe that can cut through lower back pain, right? If this is so common, surely there is a solid, proven fix!
Unfortunately, there is no one solution and it typically takes a combination of efforts and time to get through an episode of pain.
- Pain medications – Pain killers and certain types of muscle relaxers can be helpful short-term to relieve debilitating pain and help you get a good night’s sleep when you’re hurting from an injury or ‘my back went out!’ incident.
But long-term usage of prescription pain medications is not a great management option. And long-term use of over-the-counter medications like ibuprofen and acetaminophen can increase your risk of stomach, cardiac, liver, and kidney issues. - Steroid injections – Just like pain meds, injections can be helpful for short term, immediate treatment of pain or swelling. Multiple injections can cause tissue damage over time, so the use is limited.
- Chiropractic – To treat low back pain, chiropractors use hands-on techniques to manipulate the spine and hips and often incorporate soft tissue work, stretching, heat or cold. Contrary to popular opinion, chiropractic adjustments can involve much more (or less) than the stereotypical yank, thrust, or twist. There are over 100 types of chiropractic adjustments/techniques so there’s a style that’ll work for pretty much everyone.
- Physical Therapy – A great physical therapist can help to assess and treat low back pain. Once the pain decreases and your quality of life improves again, your physical therapist can help you create a preventive routine of exercise and stretching.
- Massage Therapy – Obviously, I’m a fan of massage therapy! I’ve had great results treating low back pain in my own practice. And there’s a growing body of research to support the use of massage therapy for low back pain!
This study showed that both weekly whole body Swedish massages for relaxation and weekly massages focused on the lower back and hips were able to alleviate some of the pain – at least 2 to 4 points on the pain scale. This kind of improvement is actually a bit better than the relief found in over-the-counter meds like ibuprofen.
The study also showed that these regular massage sessions can alleviate enough pain for many with chronic back pain to hit the gym for strengthening and aerobic exercise to help remove much of the pain completely.
Our goal with your regular massage sessions is to locate the source of your pain and work to lessen it. I want to help to improve your physical function and get your life back on track. I know how much lower back pain can affect your life. From physical activity to time with family to simple activities like tying your shoes or pulling laundry out of the dryer, you feel lower back pain all the time.
Let’s work together to get you on the path to freedom from lower back pain. You deserve a healthy lifestyle, free from pain. Ready to get started? Book your appointment here and let’s get started.
- Pain medications – Pain killers and certain types of muscle relaxers can be helpful short-term to relieve debilitating pain and help you get a good night’s sleep when you’re hurting from an injury or ‘my back went out!’ incident.
