How To Treat Back Spasms Video

Back spasms can be caused by many problems including discs or repetitive motion. Learn how to treat back spasms in this physical therapy video.

Take Action

Apply ice or heat
Consult a doctor
Rest frequently
Strengthen back muscles

About this Author

Russ Paine is a well-known physical therapist with the Roger Clemens Institute at Memorial Hospital. After getting his degree in physical therapy from Texas Women's University, he trained for several years under David Drez, MD, a renowned surgeon and sports medicine specialist. He has been a rehab consultant for the Houston Rockets, Houston Astros and NASA. He has given hundreds of presentations in his career in the US and abroad, and has published many chapters in text books and papers in peer review journals.

RUSS PAINE: Today, we're going to talk about back spasm and what can cause you to have back spasms and what we do about treatment. Now, there are a lot of different things that can happen to your low back so we're going to keep it fairly basic. But this is obviously your low back musculature. You should have a normal curve in your low back. So you can have back spasm as a result of bending over to lift an object, but what causes you to have a spasm is sort of a mystery sometimes and it's hard to figure out. You can have a disc problem that actually causes you to have a lot of back pain that's treated in a certain way. But just for general information for treating back spasms, the most important thing to do is to try ice application or heat from the injury. Okay? And then if you continue to have pain, you need to consult your physician. Sometimes pain medicine is very helpful in the early stages of back spasm. Sometimes the more you do, the worse it gets, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend a massage, a hands-on massage when you have acute back spasm. Back spasm can be very, very painful, so sometimes even when people come to see me for therapy, I'll have them just go home and rest and take the medicine until they calm down a little bit and then we can start figuring out the puzzle, so back problems are a little bit more difficult to deal with. Sometimes, you can have an SI joint problem. This is your sacroiliac joint here. It's where the ilium bone connects to the sacrum, and it's very important. And we can look at the leg-length differences and treatment there. But the ultimate goal in treating a back problem is to strengthen your back muscles. So treatment of back problems, we do ice or heat application, take medicine. If you have pain that goes down your leg, down your thigh, down your calf, then you really need to see a physician because that could lead to some nerve problems or it could be that you have a herniated disc that's causing compression on the nerves. So isolated back pain is not as worrisome to see a doctor immediately as pain that goes all the way down to your leg.

How to Treat Back Spasms Video

Take Action

About this Author