Is nagging back pain taking the edge off your enjoyment of life? Back pain can limit our activities such as lifting, sport, playing with the kids, walking and all sorts of everyday movements. Sitting can aggravate certain types of back pain and trying to get comfortable in bed can be almost impossible. Living with this pain and restriction can be physically tiring and mentally challenging. Let’s look at how to get rid of back pain.

You have probably tried to stretch out of your pain and took pain killers or anti inflammatory drugs. Or sort out a professional bodywork treatment such as chiropractic or massage but often you only get temporary relief. Why is that? If these treatments had worked you should feel a heightened sense of wellbeing and the confidence to take on any activity that you want right? The reason is that these treatments often treat the symptoms but not the cause of your pain. Working around the painful area can relieve the pressure causing pain but won’t necessarily address why your muscles tightened in the first place.

What is the Cause?

Knowing how to get rid of back pain requires us to look at the whole body, not just the painful area. Back pain is usually caused by muscle imbalances that pull the spine out of alignment and in an effort to maintain proper alignment muscle compensation patterns are formed. These patterns eventually cause stress to appear somewhere in the body as pain over time.

These imbalances can be caused by repetitive actions such as work which involves actions that favour one side of the body. Posture can be another cause, especially sitting postures that tend to shorten front of hip muscles and leg muscles and weaken buttock muscles. Many of us work or spend a lot of time sitting at a computer.

The Solution

A correct diagnosis is the first step towards getting rid of your pain. You have to find and treat the causative muscle imbalances, not just the symptomatic area. There are some good home diagnosis and treatment programs that can show you how to do that yourself.

If you are in a lot of pain you will need to relieve the symptoms first so that you are able to approach the required exercises to correct the muscle imbalances at the root of the problem. Pain killers, heat pads, acupressure and massage are just some of the ways to relieve the symptoms.

Having determined which muscles need strengthening or stretching to re-balance your skeleton and posture you will need to put in a consistent regular effort to gain long lasting pain relief. Don’t be put off by this though as you will be surprised how quickly you start to see results once you are treating the correct muscles. Learning how to get rid of back pain this way will empower you and if your pain starts to come back you will know exactly why and how to treat it before it becomes debilitating.