At Home Tips For Back Pain Relief

There are many components to back pain. If you suffer from back pain it is very important you see a Dr. to identify what is causing your back pain. Having said that, I will now explain about a few of the components that will lead to you having chronic back pain, after that I will give you advice on how  and what you can do about it.

A large portion of all chronic back pain (pain that last more than 3 months), comes from a break down in the disc. We call this disc degeneration. There are several variables that will lead to disc degeneration. The one that I want to talk about in this article is what we call muscle imbalance. This problem is very common and probably the least understood. So I will do my best to explain it.

Muscle imbalances develop often as a result of simple activities. It has a lot to do with the control mechanisms in the nervous system for our muscles, and our daily activities.  You can very often have muscles get too tight, let’s say from sitting too long, and a as a consequence of the tight muscles other muscles can get weaker. This results in muscles going out of balance. It indirectly related to what is called the neuromuscular system. The technical medial term I am talking about is called reciprocal inhibition.   For the sake of simplicity all you really need to know is when muscle go out of balance (reciprocal inhibition) the effect is an increase in load on the disc. The muscle imbalance leads to  more pressure on one side of the disc relative to the other side. This really can be side to side or front to back. The uneven pressure on the disc will lead to a breakdown in the disc we call this disc degeneration, and this can lead to back pain.

The goal of this article is to help you understand back pain and help you identify that there are thing you can do to make yourself better. Now to fix the problems with the muscle imbalance, what you need to do is get the muscle back in balance. I have spent the last 18 years of my life helping people get out of pain and assist in the process of getting muscle back in balance.   To get the muscle back in balance is a 4 part process. This article is about the first part, this is known as the Inhibitory techniques. This is a process that is used to release tension, and/or decrease activity of the overactive neuro myofascial (muscle) tissues in the body. To accomplish this we use a foam roll. This roll is about 3 feet long and 6 inched in diameter. It is like a long foam cylinder. They are soft and have some give to them, they are foam!

This process is designed to do 2 very important things. Number one, to eliminate the effect trigger points will have on the muscles and the body. A trigger point is a portion of the muscle that will get real tight as a result of activities of your life, very often they will be the source of some low level pain. Number two; influence the effect the nerves and nervous system has on the muscles. Part of why you have muscles out of balance is because of the effect the nervous system has on the body.   If you are interested in performing this at home what you would need to do is order a foam roll the cost is roughly $20-30 USD. And start to roll up and down your spine. You want to position the roll at about your mid back. You would position the roll so that the end of the roll is at either elbow. You want to be able t roll up and down. You would be positioned on your back with the roll between your shoulder blades and start to roll up a few inches and down a few inches. If it hurts too much stop doing it.   Do this one time per day for 30-40 seconds gradually going higher and lower this will start to break up some of the trigger points and start to loosen up the muscles allowing the nervous system also to relax the hold it has on the muscles. Again if you have pain you need to see a Dr.

I have released on my website the top ten tips for back pain so if you find this information helpful you will find the top ten tips very helpful.  Yours in spinal health; Dr Jeff Winternheimer.