Physiotherapy for Back Pain

If you’ve ever suffered from back pain of any kind, you know how debilitating it can be. Certainly low back pain may be the worst because your core is compromised, but even mid-back or upper-back pain can be nearly as bad because most movement requires the use of your spine in some capacity or another. Physiotherapy for back pain when done by a trained professional, can achieve amazing results in terms of facilitating your healing and getting you physically sound once again.

Symptoms of any type of back pain can involve:

• aching in your muscles
• sharp or dull pain
• stiffness
• pain that worsens after standing for long periods
• radiating pain
• difficulty standing up straight

Your back refers to the entire length of your body from your neck down to your tailbone. And because your spinal cord emits nerves along it’s length, back pain can have a large number of related issues such as tingling and numbness, pricking sensations, burning sensations, and combinations thereof. These are known as ‘paresthesias’, and can be considered serious or not so serious. Your physiotherapist will be able to tell which conditions they can treat, and which require more extensive assessment.

More commonly, a back issue in one area can lead to issues in other areas if left untreated for long periods, hence the problem with treating this type of pain with only medication. If you simply use drugs to dull your upper back pain, for example, you might then injure your lower back as your body tries to compensate for a body that isn’t walking upright due to injury. Your physiotherapist will be able to not only treat the issue causing you back pain, but will be able to also give you exercises when necessary to help permanently correct your posture and prevent further complications.

Essentially, your treatment in physiotherapy for back pain should involve manual therapy over the use of machines. The benefit of manual therapy is that you are more likely to achieve positive results that have longer lasting effects. Machines in physiotherapist offices enable the physiotherapist to treat more than one patient at a time, but they inhibit the ability of the therapist to give better, lasting healing.

Sometimes it is the manual therapy plus exercise instruction that enables the improved flexibility and pain reduction you’re looking for. Be sure to follow instructions on exercise closely when given, and even write things down and ask lots of questions. You should have some follow up sessions with your physiotherapist as well, to ensure that you are doing the exercises properly and that you are achieving your goals towards pain reduction and improved quality of life.