Prevention is always the best approach, always be very conscious of your posture especially when you are sitting and standing and recognise that diet plays a key role in back pain and sciatica.

Keep your body balanced and flexible with the right exercise program for your level of health and fitness and get regular massage. In general terms most back pain results from an accumulation of stress in the body from physical, emotional or chemical imbalance. This includes a combination of one or more of them. When you overuse an area of your body affected by this stress you cause muscle fatigue or spasm, then irritation. inflammation and pain.

It is important to know yourself well enough, so that you can identify the causes of your stress and learn how to deal with them on a day to day basis.

When you hurt your back don’t waste time and money with treatments that don’t work. If the therapist or doctor knows what they are doing, the results should be fast and lasting, and when you find the right solution follow the program and don’t try to cut corners.

Take a pro-active role in your recovery. For the best results, get a good understanding of what is wrong with your back and seek out the right treatment for YOU. What works for one person doesn’t always work for another.
Look at all your options before you make decisions that are going to cost you your valuable time and money and never think of yourself as incurable.

Mary was a typical 20-year-old who worked as a waitress, went out with friends and enjoyed her lifestyle until a fall at work caused sciatica pain from a bulging disc in her lower back. After numerous visits to the specialist and referrals to physiotherapy she was no better and after nine months was told nothing more could be done for her. She would have to go to a pain management clinic and learn to live with her pain.

Not being content to accept this diagnosis Mary began searching alternative treatments and eventually found a unique form bodywork that concentrated on correcting the imbalances in her muscles that came about because of her fall. The treatment involved one hourly session weekly and follow up exercises for 1 hour a day and after 4 weeks she was significantly better, off all medication and able to keep her discomfort to a minimum with the daily exercises.

Exercise in the past hadn’t worked because they aggravated her pain as the therapy she was receiving didn’t take away her pain before her exercise program started.

In Mary’s case her decision to look elsewhere rather than accept the prognosis from her specialists led her to finding a cure, but many others haven’t been so lucky and their search continues as they spend large amounts of time and money without success. In fact in many cases irritating the pain they started with. Others still, have given up the search and just live with their pain every day.

Up to 80 percent of adults will experience some form of back pain at one or more times in their life and at least 50 percent of them will never find out the cause of their pain. This is probably because 85 percent of back pain can be attributed to muscular causes with only 15 percent able to be diagnosed using an x-ray or scanning equipment. Unfortunately medical specialists rely on these machines to discover the cause of a person’s pain, consequently many of them are left in the dark and are unable to give a confident diagnosis or prognosis.

The commonly spoken myth that most people who get back pain will get better within 6 to 12 weeks regardless of treatment they receive and even with no treatment at all was dispelled by a recent study published in the British Medical Journal. It found that this myth came about as a result of figures based on the doctor’s appointment book.

When the majority of patients go to a doctor for back pain and the treatment does not effectively addressed the problem, the patient naturally does not return for further treatment. This led the doctors to believe the patient was cured when in fact it was found that even after 12 months time had passed only a minority of people reported a full recovery.

Back Pain is not an illness as some believe, rather the result of a physical, emotional or chemical imbalance in the body that has manifested itself as stress. Often due to overuse this results in an area where irritation and inflammation occurs, where a person feels pain.

If left untreated the body starts to compensate which can lead to wear and tear on joints, including the vertebrae, discs, muscles, nerves or ligaments and a weakness in various parts of the body. If the inevitable pressure or tightness is severe or left untreated, a more serious problem can occur, causing pressure on a nerve resulting in acute pain episodes that can last weeks at a time. Find out more about what to do when you get Back Pain or Sciatica by reading your FREE copy of The Bad Back Book,