What You Can Do About Your Back Pain

 

When Deanne Bhamgara took a tumble off her electric scooter on a pier in San Diego, she didn’t make much of it at first. The fall left her sore, but she felt only little pain.

But over the next several days, she slowly began to hurt more and more.

"What started as a tingling sensation in my thighs had soon become sensitive to touch,” says Bhamgara, 28. The San Francisco resident later learned that the fall affected her lower back, tailbone, pelvic areas, and her hip joints. In a few days, Bhamgara’s pain had radiated to the rest of her back and to the thighs as well.

Almost all Americans get back problems at one time or another. You might sleep awkwardly or wrench your back while lifting something heavy. Or, like Bhamgara, you might hurt your back in an accident. But often, says physical therapist Eric Robertson, DPT, the culprit is too much sitting and not enough moving.

“We're largely a sedentary society, and so that sedentary lifestyle is the primary thing that we have to work on,” says Robertson, who also is a spokesperson for the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). “So any sort of movement exercise, walking, working with a physical therapist to give you an individualized customized program is a great idea.”

When Bhamgara went to doctors, physical therapists, and chiropractors about what to expect with her recovery, they gave her conflicting opinions. It might take 6-12 weeks, she heard, or it could take a full year before she was back to normal.

“I was mostly in bed after the pain started,” Bhamgara says. She had inflammation on her thighs right up to behind the knees, groin, butt, lower back, and sometimes in her shoulders.

Confused and worried, Bhamgara tried a host of treatments to ease her pain. She went to physical therapy twice a week. She got trigger point massage and acupuncture, which she said helped.

 

 

REAL FULL ARTICLE HERE : https://www.webmd.com/back-pain/features/6-back-pain-tips