Lower Back Pain – Brace And Ice

Transcript

So those things, the treatment with brace, ice, anti-inflammatory. You can make a trip down to your local drug store. And what you want is a brace that at least stretches from your ribs down to your hips. Weightlifting belts, too short. So you want something that’s probably about this big, and if you’re six foot four, you’re going to want it bigger than that. Having three stays in it, not a bad idea because what you’re doing is you’re splinting the muscles so that they don’t have to spasm. Even if you’re on vacation or at the beach or hiking in the mountains and the back pain starts, hit the drug store, get a brace. That’s number one step. Number two is icing it. And we find amongst patients that some patients love ice, some patients hate ice. We live here, and I’m talking from Tucson, Arizona, which you may see in some of the background. But the bottom line here is people don’t come to Arizona for the ice. They come for the warmth. So some people will be more responsive to heating pads, but generally ice is better. Think about it, that you’re in the shopping mall and someone’s going to pierce your ears. They don’t put heat packs on your ears. They put ice on your ears. It takes away pain, takes away spasm and easy way of doing that is a simple over the counter kind of thing, you can get some Ziploc storage bags, double bag, about a quarter of an inch of dawn dishwashing detergent. You can make your own ice bags that now you can keep 10 or 12 of them in the freezer and alternate them inside your brace for getting things better.