Back Pain Health Video

Living with back pain makes many everyday activities more painful. Learn common treatments to relieve back pain in this video.

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Take an over the counter analgesic
Use ice inflammation & pain
Perform gentle exercises

About this Author

Dr. Stallworth is board certified in rehabilitation and phsycial medicine. She graduated from Baylor College of Medicine and finished her residency at Baylor. Dr. Stallworth is known for being a superb and compassionate physician that believes in not only health of the body of the mind as well. She currently serves on the board of Centennial Medical Center and is a former board member of the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. She now resides with her family in middle Tennessee.

DR. CATHERINE STALLWORTH, M.D.: Hi I am Dr. Cathy Stallworth and today I'd like to talk to you about back pain. Back pain happens in 8 of every 10 people. And for 1 in 10 of us in the past year we have experienced back pain. Many people want to know what are its causes, when do I need to get worried about this? Well fortunately for most of us back pain is self limited and it is usually caused by muscle spasm but for others it can be caused by arthritis things like scoliosis even tumors and infection. Fortunately those causes are much more rare. Let us talk about for a minute muscle spasm. And I have got here a nice picture of a human body, the muscles. This is the front of the body, the back of the body. And when you have spasms in the low back, it typically occurs in these small muscles that are just underlying this larger muscle called the latissimus dorsi. When this muscle spasm, they cause a lot of pain. What can you do about it? One of the things you can do is take an over-the-counter analgesic. Analgesics that have been proven to work for back pain include things like acetaminophen or Tylenol or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug such as ibuprofen or naproxen. Another thing that I recommend for patient is ice. I like ice for basically three reasons. One is it does decrease the muscle spasm. Another thing is it numbs the back; it makes it more difficult for the nerves to send those pain impulses up to the brain. And the third thing that it does is it decreases inflammation. So I always recommend for my patients taking an analgesic and also using ice. I recommend ice for 30 minutes three times a day and I find that it really helps. It is not comfortable but it will help speed the healing process. Another thing that I recommend is gentle exercises.