Back pain is now considered one of the most widespread diseases worldwide. Who hasn’t experienced it: stabbing pain or a feeling of stiffness in the back? For many people, back pain brings with it noticeable restrictions in everyday life, work and leisure – and thus has a considerable impact on our quality of life.
Pain comes and goes. We often ignore it as long as we can. Then we try a lot of things and read one or two tips: but most of it, unfortunately, only helps a little or not at all.
Everyday, we see more and more people not taking medications anymore but doing physiotherapy and exercises to help with back pain. Almost for all of them, it seems it helps. But can physiotherapy help us to finally become pain-free?
In general, physical therapy has many positive effects on your body, including:
- Relief or alleviation of pain
- Promoting blood circulation and metabolism
- Improving coordination and flexibility
- Increasing strength and endurance
For acute and chronic back pain, physical therapy can help reduce it and restore your original mobility and resilience. Physical therapy can also help you reduce the risk of back pain recurring.
Physical therapists use a wide range of therapies and techniques to help you with acute back pain or to help you prevent back pain. The way the body works is very complex, so the more influencing factors that can be addressed by a multidisciplinary therapy, the higher the chances of success for lasting freedom from pain.
What kind of back pain does physiotherapy help with?
We almost all know them – the pulsating, stabbing or dull back pain. And when they’re really bad, you almost can’t get up, let alone move. Physiotherapy helps you move through pain and get rid of it naturally.
Physical therapy can help with all these different types of back pain, such as:
Nonspecific back pain – pain where no specific cause or injury can be identified. Possible causes include tension in the back muscles.
Sciatica pain – pain that spreads from the back to the legs. Possible causes include herniated discs.
Back pain due to aging discs – pain caused by degenerative disc disease in the spine.
Spinal stenosis – pressure pain caused by narrowing of the space around the spinal cord.
How do active exercises help with back pain?
In active therapy, you perform movements on your own to heal or prevent discomfort.
Even though you think it is best to avoid exercise when you have back pain, it is very important to stay active. Active exercises can help you maintain or improve mobility and strength in your lower back. This can also take pressure off bones and joints and relieve pain.
Active exercises include:
Endurance training – gets you moving and increases your heart rate. These exercises not only help promote flexibility and strengthen your back, but are also great for increasing your sense of well-being.
Stretching – improves your flexibility and reduces tension. Since many back pains can be traced back to muscular tension and shortening, stretching is an important part of a balanced back therapy. For best results, incorporate the stretching program recommended by your physical therapist into your daily routine. For example, a typical stretching exercise to reduce tension and muscular imbalances in the back is stretching the back of the thighs and back extensors by touching the floor with your hands.
Strengthening exercises – strengthen the core muscles of the abdomen, back and pelvis. Often back pain can be attributed to under-trained or overworked muscles. As a natural reflex, overused muscles can tense and cause back pain. This can be effectively prevented by long-term strengthening of the trunk muscles in particular.
