Tips on Lower Back Pain

Tips on Lower Back Pain
Hello, I am Dr G.P. Dureja, senior consultant and director at the Delhi pain management centre, in New Delhi.

Today, I am going to discuss a very important topic, Back pain. As we all know, the prevalence of back pain in India is rising tremendously. Not only in younger people, but middle-aged and older people are also suffering from persistent back pain may it be lower back pain or upper back pain.

The causes of back pain are tremendous and numerous. But the most important cause is absolutely you have a back posture and because of our back posture which results in disk collapse which causes pressure on the nerves and results in excruciating lower back pain which radiate to the leg. This is very commonly seen nowadays in younger people who are always having bad postures and are always working beyond their scheduled time, working very hard with no emphasis on their back care.
When we talk about emphasis, I mean that they do not do any exercises, they do not walk, their muscles are all weak and when they sit for a long time in front of their computers, it results in severe back pain. In older people, of course, the common causes are lumber canal stenosis where because of the degenerative changes happening in the spine because of osteoporosis it results in pressing of the nerves or impingement of the nerves and that results in very severe back pain which is relating to the leg and the old people are generally not able to walk because of this.
So as I said, prevention is very important. Once you have been able to find out the cause of the pain which is causing the excruciating pain in the back, we should always look towards treating this and preventing this.
Preventing, we always emphasise on good posture. We always tell the patients how to sit properly, not to bend forward, not to lift weight and please take care of your both upper back and lower back. That means the cervical spine and the lumbar spine. That is why we tell the patients to continuously exercise. There is a set of exercises which you have to do it for 5 minutes a day and that is sufficient for strengthening your back muscles and preventing this severe pain to occur in you and your friends if you can guide them to.

There are various types of treatment available. We call it as a conservative management when a patient can take medicines or just be on rest. And after adequate rest and medicine, when the pain is relieved, he does continuously exercises takes care of his posture, sits properly at his job place and does not do any forward bending or weight-lifting activities. Most of the patients will get relief at this manoeuvre or this conservative treatment and get relief in pain. Of course, there are people who do not get relief in pain because they have a bulging disc which is irritating the nerve and therein the role of a pain physician comes in. A pain physician can help a patient by injecting into the spinal column or in the spinal cord, giving drugs or even doing discectomy by needles and getting rid of the pain, avoiding a certain surgery.
In younger people, we generally tend to avoid surgery and that is the reason interventions in the spine done by pain clinicians are becoming very popular and can help a large number of patients.
After the pain has gone down, we rehabilitate the patient, give them the advice as in how to sit/ how to stand and how to exercise and takes care of the pain completely and patient just has to follow the simple instruction throughout the life.
If you want to consult us at Delhi pain management centre you can contact us through Lybrate and also we can give you an appointment if you want to show any of our consultants here and they will tell you all about how to look after your spine and how to do the exercises.

Thank You.