What to do about back pain?

In almost all cases, back pain is nothing to worry about. It often comes because we sit or turn awkwardly, or lift something a little too heavy for us. Over a week or so, it then slowly goes away. If you go back twenty years, the standard recommendation was that you rest. This is now accepted as wrong. In fact, you need to maintain as normal a lifestyle as possible, staying active and working through the pain. If that pain becomes more than a background distraction, the drug of choice is ultram to relieve the discomfort and allow you to continue moving around. Only if the pain persists or grows more acute should you worry and see your local healthcare provider.

To help you understand this advice, the spine is made up of multiple parts called vertebrae which are held together by muscles and ligaments. To prevent the bones from rubbing together, there are soft discs between each pair of vertebrae which allow flexible movement. Inside the spinal cord are the nerves which carry messages from one part of the body to another. In the most common type of back pain, there is no real underlying disease or disorder. It’s usually a muscular or ligament sprain, or a minor problem with a disc. There are no medical tests to identify where these problems are coming from. A physician cannot “see” which muscles have been stretched a little too far. All that can be said is that something has gone wrong and you now have to adapt the way in which you move to compensate for the difficulty. At such times, ultram is useful to keep you moving. If you rest, the muscles are likely to stiffen and further restrict your movement.

In about 5% of cases, there is a problem with one of the nerves that is pinched or trapped between vertebrae. You know about this almost immediately because the pain is not localized in the back but travels down one leg, giving a sensation of “pins and needles” called sciatica. A part of the cause of the pain may be an inflammation or movement in one of the discs. In either case, a painkiller such as ultram is all that is required as treatment, sometimes combined with a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) or a corticosteroid. The combination with NSAIDs is more often required in the less common cases where the cause of pain is arthritis, i.e. an inflammation of the joints. In less than 1% of cases, there may be problems with the bone itself, an infection or a tumor. These require more than mere painkillers.