Muscle Strain Of Lower Back

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[edit] Muscle Strain Of Lower Back (Facet Joint Disease)

Treatment Suggestions

In the beginning the back pain can be considerable and the associated inability to engage in most daily activities of life is quite incapacitating. In this initial phase passive treatment modalities such as physiotherapy and chiropractic treatments are very useful to regain a great deal of the range of motion and achieve pain control within a few days or weeks.

Acupuncture treatment is also useful for this purpose. Subsequently the patient needs to start active exercises to prevent muscle atrophy. Patients develop chronic back pain as a result of not going to this second step of rebuilding muscle strength. There is a group of patients who have lower back pain on a recurrent basis because they have developed muscle weakness (due to muscle atrophy) and the weakened muscles tend to get into muscle spasm, which causes more back pain.

Along with this comes perhaps a higher likelihood of straining the facet joints, which are not protected by the weakened back muscles. We have learnt a lot from sports medicine, where a lower back strain in athletes rarely lasts more than a few days or up to 2 or 3 weeks. Deconditioned people often take up to 12 weeks for the same injury to recover from. The "splinting" effect of well trained back muscles will prevent future back strains and injuries.

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References:

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