Lumbar Back Pain - Treat the Pain with Ease

Lumbar Pain Relief

Do you feel moderate to severe pain while walking and moving around? If yes, it is time to visit the doctor and seek treatment for lumbar back pain. Pain in your lumbar area can affect your life. You will not be even able to do the normal tasks. Lower back pain is more common in both men and women between the ages of 30 and 50.

While minor back pain goes away within a few days, sometimes the pain can persist for a longer period and leads to serious condition. But you can prevent such a situation by following some simple tips and through proper treatment. Read through the article to learn more about such conditions and how to deal with lumbar back problems effectively.

What do you mean by Lumbar Pain?

There are lots of people suffering from lower back pain. The reason behind this is their lifestyle.  They spend the day sitting in their seats in their office without knowing that this can severely affect their backs creating pressure on their muscles. When you sit idle for a long time, you put pressure on your lumbar spine. Talking more about it, it is a unique structure of interconnecting bones, muscles, etc.[1]

It provides support and flexibility to the body. But this portion of the body is sensitive to injuries, and it can cause a lumbar disc herniation. Such a condition can develop terrible pain in your lower back. It is something that you need to treat the condition as soon as possible. It should be ignored. Knowing the cause and treatment is extremely important.

Causes of Lumbosacral Pain or Lumbar Pain

There are a lot of reasons which can lead to lumbar pain. However, some common lumbosacral pain causes are:

Muscles located in the lower backs can rip or tear, no matter what is their size and strength. This generally happens when there is a sudden application of force to the lower back muscles before they are ready to get into the motion. Along with the blood vessels, the muscles rips can cause bleeding. You may feel the pain after 2 to 3 hours. The common symptoms are a pain, muscle spasms, and swelling.

This is the condition where the ligaments located in the back are overstretched beyond their limits. The alignments will be ripped off and split-down. This is one of the common causes of different lumbar back problems.

This is one of the factors of getting back pain. During the pregnancy period, the woman’s body goes through hormonal and physical changes. During pregnancy time, women are prone to back pain as the baby will grow inside the uterus. If you have a poor posture or incorrect practice of posture, it can affect how your back adjusts as per the changes. The growing fetus will cause pressure and pain in your nerves of the lumbar area.

In such condition, the bone density and strength reduces which causes your bones prone to fractures and more fragile. This generally happens with older people, especially postmenopausal women. During this time, women suffer from massive bone loss, which reduces the strength of the bone. It can develop a fracture in the spine area. Commonly the target of osteoporosis are the vertebrae, wrist, and hip. The bones are prone to fractures if it turns porous and brittle.

Arthritis treated as one of the most common lumbosacral pain causes. It is the condition where the joints are damaged. The joints have cartilages which were torn and worn out, causing pain. The commonly affected areas are lower back or lumbar back, knees, hands, and hips.[2]

Some Common Symptoms of Lumbar Pain

There are a few symptoms that may require immediate medical treatments like:

• Difficulties in passing urine.
• Progressive or severe weakness in the legs.
• A continuous abdominal and lower back pain.

Diagnosis for Lower or Lumbar Pain

When you visit the doctor, first the doctor will carry out some physical examinations to diagnose lumbar disc herniation. The lumbosacral pain causes can lead to various symptoms. The doctor will try to understand the symptoms to prescribe you proper medication. The doctor will look for you:

• Your walking and standability.
• Your spine motion or movement rate.
• Your reflexes and strength of your leg.
• If you are feeling any sensations in your leg.

If physical tests fail to reveal anything, the doctor will ask you for some more tests.

• X-rays of your lumbar area and spine to check the alignment.
• Blood and urine tests.
• MRI scan to check the disks, muscles, ligaments, and nerves of the lumbar area.
• Scanning of bone to detect any abnormalities.
• EMG test to test your nerve conduction.

Effective Treatment for Lower Back or Lumbar Back Pain

Ice is the best to deal with inflammation. Take some ice and apply on your lower back area in the first one to two days after the injury. It will instantly lower the inflammation or pain. There is no doubt that warmth may feel good as it covers up your pain and relaxes the muscles. But sometimes it can inflame the inflammatory processes. However, if you want you can go for heat therapy after 48 hours.

Heat from a warm bath, electric heating pad, or adhesive heat wraps can relax tense muscles. Heat improves the blood flow. Increased blood helps to offer the nutrients and oxygen that muscles require to heal. However, remember to protect your skin while doing heat therapy or else it can damage the tissues.

The spines are meant to move, and they need some stretching and movement. So, even if you have lumbar back pain, try to keep doing your regular work such as walking, cooking, going to work, and more. If you are feeling better with this, you may go for some aerobic exercises such as swimming and bicycling. Keep all the activities in your limit.

When you feel a decrease in your lower back pain, you can start workout to strengthen your back-extensor muscles. When you have a healthy muscle, you will get proper posture and spine alignment. Besides, healthy muscles will give you adequate back support. However, while doing a workout, completely avoid abdominal crunches as they put a lot of pressure on your back and can boost your lumbar back problems.

Don’t sit ideally in just one place or on your chair all day. Get up and stretch your body after every 20 minutes. Most of the people spend a lot of time in their jobs. So, it is important to stand up and stretch backwards. Stretch your legs. You can do yoga to get relief from lower back pain.

It has proved that music therapy can be effective in lower back pain. Music therapy has been used for a long time to treat depression and anxiety. Recently it has found to help relieve the anxiety and depression related to the aching back. Furthermore, music therapy is an inexpensive and risk-free method to treat lumbar back pain.

Gently massaging a tense muscle is a great way to loosen up and relieve the pain. Some studies have proved that massage therapy if combined with traditional treatments can help in:

• Reducing back pain.
• Enhancing the function and movement of your back.
• Reducing the usage of anti-inflammatory drugs.
• Minimize your days in bed.

A lumbar support belt provides great relief and is comfortable for lower back pain. If you have gone through the surgery, using this you can speed up the recovery process. The device dramatically improves the movement and flexibility of the back.

When suffering from lower back pain, the doctor may prescribe stronger medications to lower the lumbar back problems. The doctor may prescribe antidepressants, narcotics like codeine, and anticonvulsant medication which generally used to treat lumbar pain. The condition like sciatica, a nerve pain caused by a bulging disk in the lower back, is quite difficult to treat.

To deal with such great discomfort, you may require to take corticosteroids and anaesthetic injection. It reduces the inflammation. The doctor may use corticosteroids which will be injected under fluoroscopy. It decreases the swelling in the nerve, providing you with great relief.

References

1..https://www.webmd.com/back-pain/features/manage-low-back-pain-home#1

2..https://www.spineuniverse.com/conditions/low-back-pain