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Traditional Back Pain Treatments
Traditional back pain treatments refer to the time tested medical therapies used by physicians to combat the growing
epidemic of spinal pain
syndromes. Traditional physical medicine still sets the bar when it comes to the final word on
back pain treatment.
Medical science teaches that back pain is the result of
injury,
disease,
congenital
condition or
degenerative
process. The accepted therapy options are all based around this anatomical model of
spinal abnormalities
causing pain. It is no surprise that traditional medicine has very poor treatment results, especially when it comes to
chronic back pain.
Traditional Back Pain Treatments DiagnosisMedical science blames back pain on physical causes. Disc abnormalities, vertebral abnormalities, neurological abnormalities and soft tissue abnormalities are the main conditions held responsible for the wide variety of back ache syndromes. These abnormal spinal conditions might be congenital or the direct result of some neuromuscular/musculoskeletal disease. However, the far more common causes are injury or degenerative processes. Severe spinal injury can definitely cause back pain and related symptoms. Advanced spinal degeneration can also cause pain and associated symptoms. Luckily, physically induced pain usually responds well to appropriate treatment.Medical science generally does not diagnose psychosomatic pain syndromes. This is where medicine fails miserably, since most long term pain syndromes throughout the body are the direct result of a psycho-emotional process, not a physical abnormality. It is this vehement denial of the mind’s ability to inflict physical bodily symptoms that explains why traditional medicine has been so ineffective in its treatment of chronic pain patients. Modalities of Traditional Back Pain TreatmentsThe usual process of treatment followed by physical medicine practitioners starts conservatively and continues in an increasingly drastic and often invasive progression. Once a patient has been diagnosed, treatment will usually begin with conservative measures first. Typically, this includes such methods as: physical therapy, heat and ice, and minor pharmaceutical relief. If these measures fail, stronger drugs might be used, along with spinal injections and possible minor and minimally invasive surgical procedures. If the patient continues to experience symptoms, full back surgery is the usual recommendation.Recommendation on Traditional Back Pain TreatmentsDoctors have earned positions of respect and admiration. They have achieved what few can accomplish through their education, ethics and compassion. Doctors are certainly at the tops of the knowledge and economic food chains. This being said, doctors are not perfect. They are simply products of that extensive, but closed minded and often narrow minded education. Medical school gives doctors the ideas and tools they need to treat physical pain, but only if that pain is indeed the result of a physical cause. Psychosomatic back pain is far more common and is systematically denied and/or misdiagnosed by physicians everyday. It is no surprise that conditions such as lower back pain and fibromyalgia are rampant and ever growing. There are more patients entering treatment each and every day with very few ever finding a real cure. Most do not even find adequate symptomatic relief and suffer in silence. Many who do find relief pay a huge price in the form of disability from un-necessary surgeries or dependency on powerful pain relief drugs. I do not have to overstate the obvious…IT IS TIME FOR A CHANGE. Someday, a more enlightened version of our medical system will certainly look back at us and gasp at our incredible vision and simultaneous shortsightedness. Psychosomatic pain is real. The suffering is real. The cure is not medical. The cure is knowledge…
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