Tired of Taking Pills? Try These Pill-Free Back Pain Remedies

According to the American Academy of Pain Medicine, an estimated 100 million Americans suffer from chronic pain. This makes it one of the most common chronic health problems in the United States. Just under one-third of all chronic pain sufferers experience chronic back pain.

If you have been relieving your back pain at home by taking over-the-counter medications and experiencing little relief, then read on to learn about how you can relieve your back pain at home without taking pills and how a pain management doctor can help relieve your stubborn back pain with simple pain-relieving injections.

Pain Relief Options at Home

To help relieve mild to moderate back pain at home, try these tips.

Walk the Pain Away

If you are like many people, the last thing you may want to do when your back is aching is engaged in exercise of any type. However, a simple walk outdoors or on a treadmill has been shown in studies to help alleviate back pain. In fact, you may find immediate back pain relief after going for just a 20 to 40 minute walk.
One medical study showed that just going for one walk could reduce lower back pain by 10 to 50 percent immediately. This immediate pain relief is believed to be due to how your body releases more serotonin and endorphins, which are two pain-relieving neurotransmitters, when you perform exercise (even light exercise).
If you walk several times each week, you may experience cumulative pain-relief effects due to how walking strengthens your core and back muscles; strengthening these muscles can help support good spinal alignment to ease some types of back pain.

Try a Lidocaine Cream or Patch

Lidocaine is a numbing agent that has been used in the field of medicine for many years. For example, if your dentist has ever administered a local anesthetic, they likely injected lidocaine in your mouth.
However, topical lidocaine preparations are also available over-the-counter in cream and patch form for back pain relief. Studies have shown that people experiencing lower back pain experienced great pain relief when wearing a lidocaine patch.

Pain Relief Options From a Doctor

If your back pain is more severe or OTC remedies simply do not work for you, then a pain management doctor can offer many pill-free back pain solutions, including the following.

Trigger Point Injections

If your back pain is caused by overly tense or tight muscles, simple trigger point injections may provide you great pain relief. These injections are relatively quick and easy, and during the treatment, your doctor simply injects a numbing agent, such as lidocaine, procaine, or bupivicane, into the tense muscles to provide pain relief. For more severe pain, corticosteroids are often added to the injection solution.
While many people experience long-lasting pain relief after just one trigger point injection, others obtain injections about once a month to help keep pain under control.

Epidural Injections

If your back pain is not caused by tense muscles, but instead sciatica, degenerative disc disease, a compression fracture, or lumbar spinal stenosis, epidural injections may be a better option for you than trigger point injections.
When you receive an epidural injection, a solution of cortisone and a local anesthetic is injected into the area around your spinal cord, called the epidural space. The cortisone has a potent anti-inflammatory effect that can dramatically reduce or even eliminate your back pain.
Cortisone typically takes a few days to begin eliminating back pain, although the injection can cause pain relief that lasts up to several months.
If you experience chronic back pain and are tired of taking OTC pain medications that barely put a dent in your pain or have side affects you cannot tolerate, consider the many pill-free ways to relieve your back pain at home. However, if home remedies are no longer working, then reach out to Central California Pain Management to discuss all of your back pain relief options.