What works best for low back pain?

If you have back pain it can be frustrating and is not a nice experience. It can stop you doing the things you enjoy and can also be quite worrying. It inevitably will lead you to having a lot of questions. You quite rightly want to know what works best for low back pain. What can you do to help yourself to get better and is there anything you shouldn’t do, that may hinder recovery.

However it can be annoying when you hear contradictory advice. And there are plenty of opinions and advice when it comes to back pain! Who do you believe? What should you do?

In March 2018 a group of leading international researchers published a series of research papers into low back pain. The second of these papers summarised what we know works (and also what doesn’t work) when it comes to low back pain.

The advice is split into 2 parts. Acute back pain (which is back pain that has been present for less that 6 weeks) and Persistent back pain (which is pain that has been present for more than 3 months.

Being a Chiropractor I treat many people who have low back pain and this information is highly valuable to me. So I have read it. In both acute and persistent pain one of the main pillars of effective treatment is education. I have used the information contained in the study and produced  guides for low back pain to help patients with their treatment and recovery.

Attached below is the first of these guides. It is a “5 step guide to help recover from a bout of low back pain that has been present for less that 6 weeks.” It covers advice around  keeping active, work, pain relieving strategies, medication, treatment options and how to prevent a recurrence. It is available for you to download below for free.

New onset low back pain guide- 5 steps to overcome a bout of back pain