Back Pain, A Leading Cause Of Painkiller Addiction
Lower back pain is one of the Key reasons why people get ‘hooked’ on prescription painkillers.
Deaths caused by overdosing on painkillers now surpass murders and fatal car accidents in the US, and over the past 5 years, heroin deaths have increased by 45%.
Officials blame this increase on the rise of addictive prescription drugs such as Vicodin, OxyContin, Percocet, Codeine, and Fentora, all of which are opioids (derivatives of Opium). Heroin is simply a cheaper option to these prescription medications.
Still, prescription painkillers claim far more lives than illegal street drugs like Heroin.
According to the Director of the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, prescription painkillers were responsible for 16,600 deaths in Y 2010, that well over 5X more than those caused by Heroin.
US officials have recently gone on the offensive, stating that narcotic painkillers are a driving force in the rise of substance abuse and lethal overdoses, and that both patients and doctors need to become better informed about the risks.
Back pain, in turn, is a driving force behind opioid drug use, which makes it a central focus not just for decreasing disability claims and improving health and quality of life for millions of people, but also for tackling a rapidly growing problem of legal drug abuse and the associated death toll.
Please do not let your physician convince you that prescription drugs are your only option for pain relief.
Up to 80% of the US population will experience back pain at some point during their lives.
Most often, the problem is mechanical in nature: the result of poor posture, repetitive movements, or incorrect lifting, for instance, as opposed to resulting from injury, infection, or cancer.
If you visit a conventional physician for back pain, the 2nd most common reason for doctor visits, outnumbered only by upper respiratory infections, you will most likely be offered only a superficial treatment.
Pain-relieving drugs are among the most common treatment followed by steroid injections and even surgery. Along with being fraught with side effects, none of these solutions tend to lead to full recovery, leaving many patients struggling with back pain, often chronically.
Below are some tips on how to treat back pain naturally, as follows;
This list is in not meant to be comprehensive and all inclusive, but they are therapies that experts recommend. personally used stretching, meditation and yoga.
1. Chiropractic Care
Seeing a qualified chiropractor is an option if you suffer from back pain. One study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine even revealed that chiropractic care is often better than medication for treating musculoskeletal pain.
2. Stretching, Especially the Egoscue Method
Participants who took 52-min stretching classes, which emphasized trunk and leg stretches, received as much back-pain relief as those taking yoga classes. The way you stretch matters, however, and static stretching may actually lead to irritation and injury.
Another option is the Egoscue Method, which is a series of very specific posture stretches and special exercises tailored to each person’s specific needs. Egoscue helps to restore muscular balance and skeletal alignment and is often used as a natural method of pain relief. Personally, this method worked well for me in eliminating pain I had when I got out of my chair or car.
3. Strength Training
A regular strength-training routine will help strengthen your back and core muscles, which is essential for both relieving pain and preventing injury.
4. Osteopathic Manipulation
Osteopathic manipulation, which may involve moving joints back into place, massaging soft tissue, and helping you relax stressed muscles, was found to reduce chronic low-back pain in a study of 455 people. Participants received eight weeks of either osteopathic manipulation, a sham treatment, or ultrasound therapy.
Sixty-three percent of those who’d had osteopathic manipulation reported a moderate improvement in their pain while half said they had a substantial improvement.5
5. Reduce Your Stress
People with persistent negative thoughts and anxiety are more likely to suffer from back pain.6 The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) borrows from the principles of acupuncture, in that it helps you balance out your subtle energy system.
It helps resolve underlying, often subconscious, negative emotions that may be exacerbating your physical pain. By stimulating, tapping, well-established acupuncture points with your fingertips, you rebalance your energy system, which tends to dissipate pain and relieve stress.
6. Meditation
Meditation can be a powerful pain reliever. Among volunteers who had never meditated before, those who attended four 20-minute classes to learn a meditation technique called focused attention (a form of mindfulness meditation), experienced significant pain relief, a 40% reduction in pain intensity and a 57% reduction in pain unpleasantness.
7. Yoga
Yoga, which is particularly useful for promoting flexibility and core muscles, has been proven to be beneficial if you suffer from back pain. People suffering from low-back pain who took one yoga class a week had greater improvements in function than those receiving medicine or physical therapy. The Yoga Journal has an online page demonstrating specific poses that may be helpful.
8. Massage
Massage releases endorphins, which help induce relaxation and relieve pain. Massage therapy for 10 weeks offered greater back-pain relief than usual care, according to one study, and the benefits lasted at least 6 months.
9. Acupuncture
Acupuncture can be another useful approach, although in my experience requires a bit more time to achieve results. In one analysis published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers concluded that acupuncture has a definite effect in reducing chronic pain, such as back pain and headaches, more so than standard pain treatment.
10. K-Laser Therapy
Several beneficial things happen during K-Laser treatment. First, infrared laser therapy treatment helps reduce pain, reduce inflammation, and enhance tissue healing, both in hard and soft tissues, including muscles, ligaments, or even bones.
These benefits are the result of enhanced microcirculation, as the treatment stimulates red blood cell flow in the treatment area. Venous and lymphatic return is also enhanced, as is oxygenation of those tissues.
The treatment stimulates the cytochrome oxidase enzyme in your cells’ mitochondria. This is really one of the key discoveries in the whole science of laser therapy.
Specifically, injured cells are targeted because damaged cells are more readily accepting of photons of light, whereas healthy cells don’t need this extra energy. As explained by Dr. Phil Harrington, who is an expert on the use of K-Laser therapy:
“By stimulating the cytochrome oxidase enzyme, we are utilizing that oxygen in the respiratory chain inside of the mitochondria, producing more ATP for that cell. So regardless of what kind of cell it is, it’s going to function at a higher level.”
The three infrared wavelengths of the K-Laser target water, hemoglobin, and the enzyme to most efficiently stimulate cellular metabolism. The K-Laser is unique in that it is the only Class 4 therapy laser that utilizes three infrared wavelengths that penetrate deep into the body to reach areas such as your spine and hip.
11. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Talking with a therapist, with a focus on changing your thoughts and behavior, helped relieve back pain after just six weeks. After one year, nearly 60 percent of those who received cognitive-behavioral therapy reported that their pain was gone, compared to 31% of those who did not receive therapy.
12. Tai Chi
A form of Chinese martial arts, tai chi is an ancient form of self-defense that is said to support the balance of “yin and yang” in your body, thereby improving the flow of “qi,” or life energy. Often described as “meditation in motion” or “moving meditation,” the activity takes your body through a specific set of graceful movements. Your body is constantly in motion and each movement flows right into the next. A 10-wk tai chi program has been found to improve pain and disability in people with persistent low-back pain.
13. Physical Therapy
People who received physical therapy soon after an episode of back pain are less likely to require subsequent medical care than those who seek it at a later time.
14. Aquatic Therapy
Water therapy conducted in a pool is a gentle way to alleviate lower back pain. This is especially useful for people who are sedentary and pregnant women.
15. Eliminate or radically reduce most grains and sugars from your diet. Avoiding grains and sugars will lower your insulin and leptin levels and decrease insulin and leptin resistance, which is one of the most important reasons why inflammatory prostaglandins are produced. That is why stopping sugar and sweets is so important to controlling your pain and other types of chronic illnesses.
Eat well, Be well, and take good care.
HeffX-LTN
Paul Ebeling
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