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Have you ever suffered from lower back pain? If so, you know how uncomfortable it can be.
Simple everyday chores such as bending, walking, tying shoes and even sleeping can become big challenges for people with lower back pain.
Approximately 80 percent of adults experience back pain at some point in their lives and adults who are overweight are at a greater risk of developing back pain.
Your back has so many hard-working muscles and ligaments that it is easy to experience strain and pain in different areas throughout your life. The sedentary lifestyle is major reason behind the initiation of chronic back pain.
Fortunately, there are a variety of treatment options available for back pain. The conventional treatments include hot packs, exercises, stretching, medications, surgery, steroid injections etc. However, massage therapy has been recognized as a natural treatment to back pain and is becoming more widely accepted, especially with an affordable home massage chair.
Research says that people who are suffering from back pain find relief from massage and soft tissue manipulation than from medication.
Massage can help alleviate muscle spasms which occur when the rib or thoracic joints lose mobility, thereby helping those joints function better. So, getting a massage therapy regularly has been considered a perfect treatment to back pain.
A study published in Pain Medicine by researchers from the University of Kentucky and Indiana University suggests that ‘massage can help individuals with lower back pain. The study looked at 104 individuals with persistent pain. Each person was referred to a professional massage therapist and provided with ten massage sessions over a 12 week period. More than 50 percent of participants reported improvement. Of these, 75 percent noted that they still felt better after 24 weeks.’
In another study, published in Annals of Internal Medicine 2011 it concluded that ‘massage may be effective for treating chronic back pain with benefits lasting at least six months. Researchers examined 401 people that reported chronic back pain. The individuals were divided into three treatment groups: relaxation massage, structural massage and regular physical therapy and pain medication. The patients in the massage group received an hour of weekly therapy for ten weeks. Both massage treatments had significantly greater effects than usual physical therapy.
So if you or your loved one is suffering from back pain that hinders productivity at work and everyday tasks, integrating a regular massage in your healthcare routine is the perfect step forward.
