Many doctors and patients treat their back pain with drugs. Either over-the-counter “pain killers” or prescription medications.
And while they might bring you some immediate relief, patients soon find they must take more and more medication because the pain comes back as soon as the pills wear off.
What many drug companies don’t want you to know
is that their drugs do not cure you of what causes
low back pain.
They just mask the symptoms.
The way drugs work is to disable your brain’s ability to feel the sensation of pain coming from your back. The pain’s still there, you just don’t feel it.
And because you don’t feel the pain, your body has no way to stop you from injuring your back more and more. Pain is your body’s way of saying, “Don’t do that.” But because your body is effectively disabled from protecting you, you will only hurt yourself more by taking more pills.
At the same time you’re increasing the risk of making your pain worse, you’re also putting yourself at risk from a variety of nasty side effects of the most common pain relievers — like damage to your stomach, kidneys and liver.
The same “masking of symptoms” goes for injections. A cortisone shot in your back may deaden your nerves for a short time, but the pain’s still going to be there waiting for you when it wears off. (That’s the main reason why we only recommend and perform spinal injections and prescribe medications while you’re undergoing a program to correct the structural problems associated with your back and neck pain.)
Physical therapy dangers
Once drugs prove ineffective, many doctors and patients turn to physical therapy.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes physical therapy can help tremendously. However, the therapy has to be appropriate for the diagnosis and programmed in the proper order. For instance, we often see patients who come to us after weeks and weeks of physical therapy, yet when we test their back strength, they still test weak.
Bottom line: if a disc injury is present, it has to be addressed before or during a rehabilitation program - and the rehabilitation program must be the right kind and muscle-specific (often using the Spineforce, LPG).
Next step: a visit to the surgeon
Once medications, injections and physical therapy (along with chiropractic, acupuncture and other unsuccessful treatments) prove ineffective in dealing with chronic back pain, primary care doctors often refer patients to surgeons. They’ll often tell you that surgeons can’t promise to cure you and that you may just have to learn to live with some pain for the rest of your life.
As mentioned earlier, back surgery is often the most ineffective form of surgery there is. (Some studies have even declared a success rate of only 47-50%.) So most surgeries result in only temporary relief, or none at all.
Fact is, many times, patients are worse off after surgery than they were before. This is because the nerves that surround the spine are extremely sensitive, and any amount of nerve damage or scar tiss.ue can lead to chronic, possibly severe problems, leading to more pain in the future. In addition, back surgery requires an extremely lengthy recovery period with lost work, heavy bed rest and dramatically reduced mobility. What’s more, the scarring, screws, brackets, and bone fusions that accompany surgery are a reality that few are prepared for until it’s too late.
Of course, sometimes surgery is the only option. But today, surgery has too often become a risky alternative for what is usually a treatable problem with the advent of newer, non-surgical technological solutions.