Back Pain and Treatments

Posted by: Curt | Under: 40's/fit, 50's/fit, Diet and Weight Loss, General Fitness, Health, Ladies/fit, Prime/fit, Seniors/fit, Sports, Travel/fit, Youth/fit | (0) Comments

After years of really heavy lifting and a few motorcycle wrecks, I suffer from chronic lower back pain. One of my doctors told me that the only thing people go to a doctor for more often is toothaches. So it is a very common problem but also very painful and limiting. But if you think that they have made real progress treating lower back pain in the past 10 years, think again. MSNBC has an article that explains how little progress has been made even though the cost of treating it has skyrocketed. This seem to the pattern in a lot of medical treatments now. With the advent of MRI’s and other high tech testing comes high prices that don’t necessarily translate into cures. With back pain, it seems that the high tech testing confirms what everyone already knows- that there is a problem. But it doesn’t seem to offer any real help in treatment.

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CHICAGO – The total cost of treating back pain in the United States has risen 65 percent in the past decade, but after all the pricey treatments, many people are still left with an aching back and an increasingly empty wallet, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

They said treating spine problems in the United States costs $85.9 billion a year, rivaling the economic burden of treating cancer, which costs $89 billion.

Higher spending on prescription drugs, more advanced diagnostic tests and more frequent outpatient visits helped drive the increases, as well as greater patient demand for treatment and more use of spinal fusion surgery and instruments, they said.

Yet, for all of the spending, they found people with spine problems actually felt worse.

“Health care expenditures for people with spinal problems have increased substantially — 65 percent since 1997. Within that, we found pharmaceutical expenditures have increased 171 percent,” said Brook Martin of the University of Washington in Seattle, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“If we are spending that much money on spine problems, we would expect to see improvements in the health of the population,” Martin said in a telephone interview.

“What this study shows is we are not seeing commensurate improvements among people with spine problems.”

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So, what is the answer? I think in many cases it comes down to people wanting a cure without having to do anything… The American “give me a pill” mentality. But in my case, the meds help some but not near as much as when coupled with exercise and stretching. Plus, with many of the people suffering from back pain also being overweight, it would help if doctors prescribed diets and well as pain killers and steroids.  I think a good program of diet, exercise and physical tharepy is probably going to be key in helping many back pain sufferers. So if you are in this category, by all means take the anti-inflammatory drugs, but be diligent in stretching and losing the weight that you back has to carry around!