Low back pain, especially chronic low back pain has become so prevalent and is by far the most common complaint I get in my office. In fact, in 2020, the World Health Organization found that “low back pain (LBP) affected 619 million people globally and it is estimated that the number of cases will increase to 843 million cases by 2050.” They also found that low back pain is the most common cause of disability worldwide. Now, chiropractors like me or physical therapists can help you with that low back pain but let’s talk about how you can help yourself.

Flare-ups are very common when recovering from pain or an injury. Unfortunately, the healing process isn’t a linear progression. Throughout that process, there are many ups and downs, but that’s okay! It’s easy for us to have a bad day and panic. This leads me to step 1.

For years, every time we get injured we’ve been told to ice it. And now, anytime we get hurt our first reaction is to ice it. Everyone remembers the acronym RICE, which stands for rest, ice, compression, and elevation. But did you know that RICE is outdated and isn’t the best approach to treating injuries? Yes, even the person who came up with RICE said it’s not the best approach. In the past couple of years, we’ve developed a new approach to treating injuries, and guess what? Ice is not on the list.

Pain and injury can be confusing, and when we don’t have a specific mechanism of why we got injured can make it even more confusing.

For these instances, like I like to use a glass/cup analogy.

Imagine you’re a glass of water and you keep dropping rocks in the water until the water level reaches the brim of the glass. At this point, the smallest pebble could cause the glass to overflow. When the glass overflows that’s when we get pain.

We often correlate the pain we feel to tissue damage. But this isn’t true for the most part. Sure, if you break your arm or have a traumatic injury then yes, you did a lot of damage and it hurts like hell. But for non-traumatic injuries, the hurt doesn’t equal harm.