Top 7 Natural And Effective Treatments For Bulging Disc And Back Pain
Have you visited a doctor about your painful bulging disc only to be given pain medications to deal with it? You probably know by now that those can only numb the pain for a while without actually treating your condition. In the end, you’ll only develop reliance to pills, suffer from side-effects, while your pain and bulging disc are getting worst because they’re not being addressed properly. That’s not treatment, that’s more like temporary remedy and while surgery is an option for those with really bad disc problems, surgery may carry risks and complications. Do you really want to get to that point?
Don’t let this be your story, here are some therapeutic options that’ll help you correct your disc problems, relieve the pain, and treat the condition permanently.
1. See A Chiropractor For Spinal Adjustments
There are different causes of bulging disc as well as different types; in order to treat yours accordingly, it’s necessary to get accurate diagnosis first. In that case, chiropractors can provide you that since they specialize in musculoskeletal issues like bulging disc and back pain. Spinal adjustment will be most probably recommended as treatment because it puts your spine back into alignment, relieves pain, and allow your body’s innate ability to heal itself.
2. Visit A Physical Therapist
When you’re suffering from bulging disc and back pain, your movement becomes restricted. Physical therapy will help improve your range of motion, strength, and flexibility. Therapists often use specific exercises and stretches with intensity depending on the patient’s particular condition.
3. Stay Active
Being in pain and having a condition that makes you feel pain every time you move is frustrating. However, it’s crucial that you maintain at least light to moderate daily physical activity even in such condition. This is because; not doing so will only further deteriorate your condition. Staying active actually helps maintain flexibility, strengthen and protect your back, and keep you on your feet more often.
4. Get Enough Sleep And Rest
Sleep and rest allow our body to recover from all the work your muscles, bones, and joints have been put through during the day. So, overworking means taking that opportunity away from your body, this will only result into inflamed, weakened disc and progressing pain.
5. Work On Correcting Your Posture
It would have been great if you spend majority of your day on your feet and moving. But we all know that in today’s lifestyle sitting for extended period of time is the norm. This is the reason why it’s even more crucial to pay attention to your spine more than ever. By making sure you maintain proper posture while you sit, take breaks from every hour of sitting, stretch, and even arrange ergonomic workplace you avoid being in pain all the time.
6. Eat An Anti-Inflammatory Diet
Aside from what you do outside your body, what you put inside your body can either make you feel better or worse. So take your diet seriously. Include more anti-inflammatory foods like leafy greens, healthy fats like olive oil and coconut oil, clean and lean proteins, and fermented foods that contain probiotics.
7. Reduce Pain Using Essential Oils, Massage Therapy, Heat And Acupuncture
Essential Oils—peppermint or lavender oil are known to help you relax, so adding any of these into your hot bath can help penetrate and relax the inflamed area.
Massage Therapy—this helps relax muscles, loosen up tight tissue, increase blood flow and even increase the production of painkilling, calming chemicals, such as endorphins.
Heat—while applying heating pack on painful area can soothe back tightness and inflammation, you should not do this within the first 72 hours that you had the injury. Otherwise, it can just make it worse, you should ice the swollen area during that time and then you follow it up with heating packs.
Acupuncture—this traditional Chinese medicine is known to help unleash the body’s natural flow of energy. In 13 randomized controlled trials with 2,678 patients with chronic back pain, it has been found that acupuncture helped decrease pain intensity and level of disability while improving spinal flexion and quality of life compared to not receiving treatments.
