Dealing With Chronic Back Pain

Living in this day and age, we get to enjoy all sorts of benefits that our parents and grandparents didn’t have. When someone 100 years ago suffered from chronic back pain, he or she usually had to suffer through it, living with pain day in and day out for life. Today, we’re lucky to have medical solutions that, while they may not get rid of the pain entirely, at least help us cope with it and live normal lives.

The explosion of new medications over the last few decades has helped millions of people deal with chronic back pain, but there is always a downside. There’s still no such thing as a pain medication without side effects, and most pain medications are still addictive. So, if you have chronic back pain, you can benefit from these medications, but, in the long term, you do have to be careful not to become addicted. There are ways to go about this. As always, talk to your doctor about the best options for you, but keep these general options in mind.

Healthy Lifestyle

The best thing you can do to deal with chronic back pain is to exercise regularly and eat a balanced and nutritious diet. You might be surprised by how much relief you can get just by doing yoga, swimming, running, or even just walking for 30 minutes a day. Giving your body a work-out helps to renew and strengthen the muscles around the area that gives you pain.

Also, it’s extremely important to get sufficient sleep, even though this can be extremely difficult for many hard-working people these days. Your body has a certain amount of sleep that it wants to get every night. It’s different for everyone, but for most people it’s in the range of 7-9 hours. If you don’t get this amount of sleep, your body will rebel against you, and this is a major source of chronic back pain.

For some people, chronic pain makes it difficult to sleep. If you’ve had this problem for many weeks in a row, now is the time to see a doctor.

Rotate Medications

One strategy that many people use to deal with chronic back pain is to rotate medications on a regular basis. There are some painkillers that are strongly addictive and can hook people within days of regular use, but there are others that are only addictive after a few weeks or months. With your doctor, you can create a plan involving 4 or 5 different medications. You may take one for 2 or 3 weeks—less time than it takes to become addicted—before switching to another one for 2 or 3 weeks, and so on, so that you’re never on one medication for too long.

Alternatives to Medication

Of course, some people are understandably uncomfortable with relying upon prescription medication for their well-being. Fortunately, there are plenty of herbal medications known to have painkilling properties. Ginseng, Echinacea, St. John’s Wort, and Feverfew are just a few examples. Also, seek physical therapy with a trained therapist, and perhaps consider other alternatives such as homeopathy, aromatherapy, acupuncture, massage, yoga, and meditation. These may not be for everyone, but some people have found them to be very therapeutic for long-term pain.