Make your back comfortable

To help make the holiday season a little brighter, we thought it would be helpful to provide some ideas on how to treat yourself with some products and activities to make your back more comfortable. Hopefully, you have already found the right combination of factors to ease the pain, but if not here are some ideas to consider:

Sleep comfortably with a good mattress and pillow

There are two main factors that comprise a mattress: support and comfort. For support, choose a mattress that has enough coils to support the natural curves of your back. You may prefer a firmer or softer mattress, depending on your personal preference. For comfort, you may prefer thicker padding on top of the mattress (e.g. a pillow-top), or thinner padding. Everyone is different, and there is no one best mattress.

People with a specific back condition may find that their pain is substantially better with a different sleeping position, mattress, and/or pillow. For example, people with degenerative disc disease often feel most comfortable sleeping on their stomach on a relatively firm mattress, with a flat pillow beneath their hips/stomach to take the stress off their painful lower back. Depending on how you sleep--on your back, side or stomach--you may need a different type of pillow or mattress. See also Choosing the best mattress for low back pain and Pillow support and comfort.

Apply heat therapy for both healing and comfort

Heat application can help provide pain relief through several mechanisms, including dilating the blood vessels, which increases the flow of oxygen and healing nutrients for the damaged tissues, and stimulating the sensory receptors in the skin, which decrease transmissions of pain signals to the brain. And applying heat therapy is so easy to do--a hot water bottle, a hot bath, a heating pad or a commercial heat wrap can all provide benefits. See also The benefits of heat therapy for lower back pain.

Try a massage chair for daily comfort

A gentle massage and/or applying heat to the lower back or neck can do wonders to alleviate everyday stresses and strains in the back. Massage can take a variety or forms, including neuromuscular massage from a licensed massage therapist to help with more serious pain, to a gentle massage to relax in a massage chair. See also Massage chairs for pain relief.

Find a personally appealing exercise program

If you've tried to work out, but it seems to add to the pain or it just doesn't take, don't give up--keep trying new forms of exercise until you find something you like. After all, regular stretching and exercise is the only way for your back to heal and stay healthy. Many types of exercise are beneficial - two forms that provide multiple benefits but you may not have tried yet are Yoga and Pilates. See also Yoga for back problems and Pilates exercise system to promote back health.

Enjoy a massage

If you want to try a non-invasive means to back pain relief, massage therapy is becoming more widely accepted in the medical community as a credible treatment for lower back pain and/or as an adjunct to other treatments. A study conducted at the University of Miami found that: "Massage lessened lower back pain, depression and anxiety, and improved sleep. The massage therapy group also showed improved range of motion and their serotonin and dopamine levels were higher". See also Massage therapy for back pain.

About Spine-health.com

While we usually talk about more in-depth medical topics, sometimes it's good to be reminded of some easy things you can do (or add to your current treatment approach) to help your back and neck feel better. We hope that this newsletter and the information on Spine-health.com help remind you to make your back health a priority during the busy holiday season.

Peter F. Ullrich, Jr., M.D., Medical Director
Stephanie Burke, President
Spine-health.com

About the Spine-health.com Newsletter: Each issue of the Spine-health.com newsletter, SpineNews Update, is written by the founders of Spine-health.com - Peter F. Ullrich, Jr., M.D., Medical Director for Spine-health.com and Stephanie Burke, President of Spine-health.com. The content in the newsletters is not peer reviewed by Spine-health.com’s Medical Advisory Board. The articles to which the Spine-health.com newsletters link have been peer reviewed by members of the Medical Advisory Board.