When you have low back pain, it can be hard to know what to do. You need to be sure that your body is getting the right treatment, and that means knowing how to tell when to see a doctor and when to try to treat it on your own.
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Lying down can help with many types of muscle strains and sprains—it’s a great way to relax the muscles and allow them to heal faster. When you have a muscle strain or sprain, lying down can decrease swelling and inflammation.
But there are still some conditions that don’t improve with rest, like herniated discs, degenerative disc disease or arthritis-type spine conditions like spondylosis or spinal stenosis. If you have one of these conditions, lying down might only temporarily help your pain. You might not feel any better lying down, or maybe lying down makes your pain worse.
Along with lying down periodically, taking short walks can often be helpful. Even with arthritis or degenerative conditions in the lumbar spine, studies have shown tat walking can help relieve low back pain from these conditions. Heat, ice and anti-inflammatory medications also have a role in treating your symptoms and allowing you to perform your daily activities. Working with a physical therapist and performing home exercises the therapist prescribes for you can also be extremely helpful.
And it’s important to pay attention for symptoms that suggest a more serious condition, such as pain that radiates down one leg, numbness, tingling or weakness in the leg
If you’re unsure what type of pain you’re experiencing, it’s always best to seek medical advice from a physical therapist, spine specialist or spine surgeon.
We are looking for 5 patients with low back pain who want to get significantly better in the next 30 days, without cortisone shots, physical therapy, or surgery. Click this link and enter the term ‘Interested’ in the description box to learn more.
