Lack of exercise and
improper
posture has been mainly responsible for the increased incidence of
back pain. Apart from this, professions requiring sedentary work or prolonged
improper posture, obesity, stressful life style are some other reasons for back
ache.
Fortunately, back
pain can be controlled by way of regular exercise with good medications. People
can recover in three months,
There are many
prevailing myths about back pain like: stay in bed, you need prescription drugs
to get relief, stay away from
surgery because it has very poor results and high
complication rate, you should have restricted activities for life and you can
never get back to a normal lifestyle. These myths often put these people off
track and hinder proper
management.
There are two parts
of management of back pain – taking care of the pain and reducing the chances
of recurrence. Pain is managed by local application of heat or ice packs,
massage, anti-inflammatory drugs, corsets, physiotherapy, acupuncture or
acupressure or local injections. However these provide only temporary
relief and are unproven to have a long term impact on the
natural history of
the disease.
Aerobic physical
conditioning (through walks, swimming,
treadmill, stair climbing, cycling and other general conditioning exercises),
patient education and surgery are proven treatments that change the natural course
of the disease. However, only one to three per cent of back pain
sufferers ever require surgery.