Well, the treatment very much depends on the precise cause of the low back pain. Moreover, each patient must be individually evaluated and managed in the context of the underlying background health status and activity level.

As was recently highlighted by research presented at the national meeting of the American College of Rheumatology, a very important aspect of the individual evaluation is the patient's own perception of their particular situation. Researchers from Britain found that those who believed that their symptoms had serious consequences on their lives and that they had, or treatments had, little control over their symptoms were more likely to have a poor outcome. This research points out to physicians the importance of addressing the concerns and perceptions that patients have about their condition during the initial evaluations.

Drugs (such as: Vicodin) or massage therapy are the usefull treatments.

Vicodin relieves pain, but it also has side-effects. It is a very strong drug so you first need a prescription for it anyway. If you do get a prescription for it, you have to be careful not to overdose on it... taking too much can make you start to feel nauseous.

I am about to attend a confrence on active aging and one of the sessions is how to control chronic pain through body awareness... I think this is part of the perception piece you were aluding to. I will let you know more next week.

I need to get a new office chair. I don't think this one agrees with my back.

I read an article about keeping employees happy a couple of years ago that went along the lines of if you have $500 to spend on a desk and a chair, $400 of it should go towards the chair. Considering some of the chairs I've had over the years that makes complete sense to me. I'd be happy with a stack of milk crates if I have a nice chair.

Makes sense... since you sit on the chair it should be the nicer piece of furniture. It sounds funny to begin with that the chair should be the more expensive item though. Having gone through sitting in painful chairs myself, I agree that more money should be spent on the chair. What the desk looks like makes no difference to me either.

I just got back from the conference. The lady that was making the presentation was very knowledgeable in alternative methods. Her name was Elaine Petrone; her method was "The Miracle Ball." Basically what she said is that the body remembers traumatic experiences in the same way it has muscle memory for repeat actions like lifting weights, riding a bicycle and throwing a ball.

She explains that this is why your back never hurt before the first incident, but after that it seems like you could be bending over to get a sheet of paper and your back will go out. The muscles recognize the motion of back when you tweak it a little bit and all of a sudden it spasms because it is trying to protect itself. The pain comes from the brain sending the message to the muscles to tighten up so that no damage can occur to the body.

Her solution is to relax. She says it starts with your breathing and then focuses on body awareness. She claims that focusing on where your body is hurting and begin to relax the muscles around the pain. She says that as adults we have a harder time with releasing our co-contracting muscles and that is why we don't heal up. She said that as children we get hurt, and then go to sleep and our muscles relax and the body has a chance to reset and repair itself. By focusing on relaxing the muscles around the injury it would let more blood flow get to the injured areas and reset itself.

This is not exercise, it's not stretching... it's relaxing. Just focusing on your breathing and allowing your body to ease the tension.

Did this lady give any tips on how to relax? And was she saying that after lots of relaxing your back can potentially be healed?

She gave us some breathing techinques and used a "miracle ball" that is basically like a mini-yoga ball and strategically placed it in certain areas and we were then asked to relax... she says that she has a lot of ex-athletes and people with chronic back pain. She says that a session usually gives about 6 to 8 hours of relief. I am inclined to believe in the original post by Ziggy... If you believe it is going to work... it will work; if you don't... it won't! The body is amazing... sometimes our brain interferes with our ability to adapt and we need a placebo just to allow or body to work without our mind telling it that it cannot!

I once whet to a massage therapist who suggested I do some stretches on a real sized yoga ball. Those stretches actually helped me a lot!

One stretch was just laying with my back on the ball and rolling backwards while feeling the stretch. She said the key was to stay in the position where you feel the stretch for about 5 minutes, because that is how long it takes for the muscles to finally relax. And then of course another key was to do this stretch everyday. After I hurt my back so bad where I could barely walk or sit, stretching on the yoga ball saved me! After a month or two of doing this stretch in the morning and at night, I was finally feeling a lot better.

The other stretch that I did a lot was laying my side on the yoga ball and stretching my sides out.

I have been feeling pain in my head ever since I started using the protein whey.Can any one please guide me is this normal or I a m the only one suffering from this pain.In addition to this also prescribe the remedy that you have applied.

Low back pain is one of the most common presenting complaints, can be extremely debilitating and carries enormous economics costs. In 70% of cases, however, no obvious cause is apparent. In general, treatment for low back pain falls into one of three categories: medications, physical medicine, and surgery. Keep in mind that staying active with your normal activities is the best thing you can do to limit the effects of low back pain on your life.