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Continued From 7/28/14
By Dr. Mercola
Cut Your Risk of Back Pain Right from the Start!
As with any health condition or disease, preventing back pain is better than trying to cure it after it has set in, and may be too late. So even if you’re not experiencing back pain symptoms, I would recommend you follow these simple tips:
Always stretch before any strenuous physical activity. In fact, I strongly advise you to engage in a regular stretching program. My favorite is active isolated stretching (AIS), developed by Aaron Mattes. It's completely different from the traditional type of stretching, and is a great way to get flexibility back into your system.
Do not slouch when standing or sitting.
If you spend most of your time sitting, pay careful attention to consciously sucking in your belly and rotating your pelvis slightly up. At the same time, you should keep your head back, with your ears over your shoulders and your shoulder blades pinched. This posture will keep your spine in proper alignment. Do this every hour you’re sitting, holding the muscles tight for several minutes.
Sit in chairs or car seats with good lumbar support.
Switch your sitting positions often. I would also recommend periodically walking around or gently stretching your muscles to relieve tension.
Avoid bending over without supporting your back.
Wear comfortable, low-heeled shoes. Women should also refrain from wearing heels all the time.
Sleep on your side to reduce any curve in your spine. You should also sleep on a firm surface.
When weight-lifting using your legs, always keep your back straight.
Maintain an optimal weight.
Quit smoking. Smoking reduces blood flow to your lower spine, causing the spinal discs to degenerate.
Get enough vitamin D from sun exposure daily, as vitamin D helps keep your bones, including your spine, strong.
Drink plenty of water to enhance the height of your intervertebral disks. Since your body is composed mostly of water, staying hydrated will keep you fluid and reduce stiffness.
How to Relieve Back Pain Naturally
If you are already suffering from chronic back pain or pain of any kind, you should understand that there are many safe and effective alternatives to prescription and over-the-counter painkillers, though they may require some patience. Here are some strategies I highly recommend:
Chiropractic Care
Chiropractic Care for Back Pain
One of the best tactics to help treat back pain is to see a qualified chiropractor. I am an avid supporter of the chiropractic philosophy, which puts great emphasis on your body's innate healing wisdom and does not rely on Band-Aids like drugs and surgery.
The problem is that a lot of people ignore chiropractic care, thinking that it’s just pushing bones into place. However, there’s a whole lot more to chiropractic care. In fact, one of the basic foundations of this health system is vitalism recognizing that the human body has an innate healing intelligence or ‘life force’ that guides and directs your body's healing process.
Qualified chiropractic, osteopathic, and naturopathic physicians are reliable, as they have received extensive training in the management of musculoskeletal disorders during their course of graduate healthcare training, which lasts between four to six years. These health experts have comprehensive training in musculoskeletal management.
Many studies have confirmed that chiropractic management is much safer and less expensive than allopathic medical treatments, especially when used for low-back pain treatment.
What’s more, researchers have also found that chiropractic adjustments may affect the chemistry of biological processes on a cellular level. Chiropractic care can affect the basic physiological processes that profoundly influence oxidative stress, immune function and DNA repair. This means that aside from addressing any immediate spinal misalignment that might cause back pain, chiropractic care can also help address, prevent and treat deeper dysfunctions in your body.
Exercises for Back Pain
Adapting an exercise program can help compensate for long hours of being sedentary, a risk factor of back pain. Exercise and being physically active help strengthen the muscles of your spine. One of the best back pain exercises I recommend is Foundation Training, created by chiropractor Dr. Eric Goodman. He developed it to address his own chronic back pain.
Foundation Training exercises are simple but powerful structural movements that help strengthen and realign your body posture and address the root cause of lower back pain, which is related to weakness and imbalance among your posterior chain of muscles that are caused by a sedentary lifestyle and too much sitting.
Foundation Training focuses on your core the part of your body connected to your pelvis, whether above or below it. These include your hamstrings, glutes, and adductor muscles. Foundation Training teaches all these muscles to work together through integrated chains of movement, which is how you’re structurally designed to move, as opposed to compartmentalized movements like crunches.
Every exercise included in Foundation Training lengthens the front of your body, which is over-tightened, and strengthens the back of your body, helping you stand tall and move with grace and flexibility.
Anyone who wants to do Foundation Training must learn The Founder, the key basic exercise. The Founder disperses your weight through the posterior chains, helping to reinforce proper movement while strengthening the entire back of your body. This excellent exercise can help reverse the effects of frequent and prolonged sitting that may lead to back pain.
To help address back pain caused by excessive sitting, I also recommend Egoscue Exercises, a series of stretches and special exercises that help restore your muscular balance and skeletal alignment. I often spend at least one hour or more doing an Egoscue exercise called The Tower. It’s simple you only need to lie on the floor and allow your pelvis and thoracic spine to relax. I found this exercise tremendously helpful for treating my chronic low back pain, which is now gone.
You should also include high-intensity sessions in your exercise routine, although you only need to do these once or twice a week at the most. You should also include exercises that not only challenge your body intensely, but also promote muscle strength, balance, and flexibility. Remember to build up your abdominals to avoid back pain. And, as mentioned above, always do some stretching and warm-ups before engaging in strenuous physical activity.
Remember, though, that just because you exercise regularly doesn’t mean that you can justify your long hours spent sitting. In fact, even if you're fairly physically active, you may still succumb to back pain and other health problems if you spend most of your day behind a desk or on the couch. This phenomenon is called the "active couch potato effect." In order to avoid this, you must make it a habit to break the pattern of sitting as frequently as possible. Dr. Goodman says:
"Stand up throughout the day to stretch your body appropriately, the way it is meant to be stretched. The simple act of standing as tall as possible for a minute or two will help break the pattern of sitting, as long as you repeat it frequently. Be sure that while standing you take full deep breaths to expand your torso as well. We often have very shallow breath while we sit, counter that with big deep breaths as often as you can throughout the day.
My opinion is that people should not go longer than 30 minutes in a chair without standing, deep breathing, walking and stretching. If you think I am crazy for asking that much of you, then I suggest you not go longer than 20 minutes."
Yoga
Yoga for Back Pain
Yoga may be an effective strategy for alleviating back pain by making people more aware of how they move their bodies. The benefits of yoga were proven in a study of more than 100 adults with lower back pain. After taking weekly yoga classes for 12 weeks, the participants, who were between ages 20 to 64, experienced improvement in their body function and a reduced need for pain medication. At the end of the study, only 21 percent of the patients who take the yoga class were taking pain medication, down from almost 60 percent at the start.
Massage
Back Massage
Getting a massage is another simple strategy I recommend to help ease not only your back pain (and other types of pain), but anxiety as well. Massage offers real health benefits that are being recognized even by conventional hospitals, making it a standard therapy for surgery patients. Massage releases endorphins that help induce relaxation, relieve pain, and reduce levels of stress chemicals, such as cortisol and noradrenaline. It also reverses the damaging effects of stress by slowing your heart rate, respiration, and metabolism and lowering raised blood pressure. Massage can:
Ease your tense and knotted muscles and stiff joints, improving mobility and flexibility
Relieve pain caused by migraines, labor, fibromyalgia, and even cancer
Relax and soften your injured and overused muscles, reducing spasms and cramping
Stimulate your lymph system, which is your body's natural defense against toxic invaders
Reduce recovery time for strenuous workouts and eliminate subsequent pains of the athlete at any level
Provide arthritis pain relief by increasing joint flexibility
Reduce and realign scar tissue after healing has occurred Reduce post-surgery adhesions and edema
Boost your level of alertness and attention
Contribute to shorter labor and reduce tearing for expectant mothers
Decrease symptoms of PMS
Reduce stress, anxiety and depression, and ease insomnia
Neuro-Structural Integration Technique (NST)
If you've never heard of neuro-structural integration technique (NST), then you may be missing out on a simple but effective treatment for your back pain. NST is a gentle and non-invasive technique that stimulates your body's reflexes. Simple movements are done across your muscles, nerves, and connective tissue. These help your neuromuscular system to reset all related tension levels and promote natural healing. It is different from massage and other manipulations that try to force a change it simply resets your body to heal itself. It gives profound and lasting results that you may feel as soon as the second or third session.
NST is safe for everyone. Highly trained athletes, newborns, pregnant women, elderly, and sick individuals who suffer from back pain can find relief using this technology. Get a more in-depth explanation of NST through this article by Michael Nixon Levy, who developed this amazing technique.
Other Strategies to Eliminate Chronic Back Pain (and Other Types of Pain)
In addition to the tips above, I also recommend these simple and natural ways to prevent and relieve back pain:
Get sufficient high-quality, animal-based omega-3 fats. Omega-3 fats are precursors to mediators of inflammation called prostaglandins. One of the best sources of omega-3s is krill oil supplement. The omega-3 fats EPA and DHA contained in krill oil have been found in many animal and clinical studies to have anti-inflammatory properties. Unlike fish oil, krill oil does not pose any toxicity and rancidity to your body, which may only damage your health. It is also far lower on the food chain, making it far less likely to accumulate environmental chemicals and toxins.
Eliminate or radically reduce your intake of grains and sugars, especially fructose. Excessive intake of grains and sugars will elevate your insulin and leptin levels primarily through causing your body to be resistant to them, resulting in the increase of inflammatory prostaglandin production.
Optimize your vitamin D (through regular and appropriate sun exposure) and vitamin K2 levels. These nutrients will help prevent the softening of your bones that can often lead to lower back pain.
As for back pain management, I suggest trying these natural solutions that provide excellent pain relief without any of the health hazards that pain medications often carry:
Astaxanthin This is one of the most effective oil-soluble antioxidants known to man today. Astaxanthin has very potent anti-inflammatory properties. In some cases, it may even be more effective than NSAIDs. You may need to take high doses of this antioxidant (as much as eight milligrams a day), though, to achieve this benefit.
Ginger - This anti-inflammatory herb has pain relief and stomach-settling properties. Steep fresh ginger in boiling water to make a delicious and fragrant tea. Grating and adding it to your vegetable juice is a good idea as well.
Curcumin - This is the primary therapeutic compound found in the spice turmeric. A study of osteoarthritis patients revealed curcumin’s pain relief effects: individuals who added 200 milligrams of curcumin a day to their treatment plan were found to have reduced pain and increased mobility. In fact, over 50 clinical studies have proven curcumin’s potent anti-inflammatory activity. There are also four studies that demonstrated its ability to reduce Tylenol-associated adverse health effects.
Cayenne cream - Also known as capsaicin cream, this is a spice made from dried hot peppers. It alleviates pain by depleting the body's supply of substance P, a chemical component of nerve cells that transmits pain signals to your brain.
Boswellia - Also called boswellin or "Indian frankincense," this herb has been prized for thousands of years for its powerful anti-inflammatory properties. This is one of my personal favorites, as I have seen it work well with many of my rheumatoid arthritis patients.
Bromelain - Found in pineapples, this protein-digesting enzyme is a natural anti-inflammatory. Bromelain can be used in supplement form, but eating fresh pineapple may also be helpful. Most of the bromelain is found within the pineapple’s core, so make sure you leave a little of the pulpy core intact when you eat the fruit.
Cetyl myristoleate (CMO) - An oil found typically in fish and dairy butter, CMO acts as a "joint lubricant" and an anti-inflammatory. I use a topical preparation for myself to relieve ganglion cysts and alleviate mild annoying carpal tunnel syndrome that flares up when I type too much on non-ergonomic keyboards.
Evening Primrose, Black Currant, and Borage Oils The fatty acid gamma linoleic acid (GLA) found in these oils is useful for treating arthritic pain.
I strongly advise you to try these simple but successful back pain relief alternatives. Not only will they treat the underlying causes of back pain, but they can also spare you from additional harm, unlike pharmaceutical or surgical Band-Aids.
Thank You Dr. Mercola
God Bless Everyone & God Bless The United States of America.
Larry Nelson
42 S. Sherwood Dr.
Belton, Tx. 76513
cancercurehere@gmail.com
