Biofreeze and the Catch 22 of Back Pain
Researchers estimate that between 2 and 5 million Americans suffer back pain in a typical year. For every 100 members of the American workforce, just under 2% of them receive workers’ compensation for pain in the lower back. Back pain also ranks second among all of the motivations for Americans to seek out medical attention. Devising new methods for treating and ameliorating back pain provides not only the potential to improve the quality of life in our country, but also reduce the amount of money insurance companies pay every year to treat lower back pain. This article addresses the role that Biofreeze can play in reducing this type of pain, and the highly important role that such resources provide to the medical community.
Leon Root, M.D., author of “Oh, My Aching Back,” argues that one of the worst things that you can do for back pain is to cut down on the amount of exercise you get in a typical week. Up to 80 to 90% of back pain occurs as the result of weakened back muscles. The result is a type of downward spiral, or a feedback loop.
A sufferer of back pain will stop exercising because exercising makes their back hurt. This is a perfectly sensible cause and effect relationship, but the problem is this: as their muscles atrophy from the lack of exercise, the pain increases, anyway. The dog has a bad day and kicks the cat. Getting kicked ruins the cat’s day, so the cat kicks the dog back, in turn ruining the dog’s day.
Biofreeze presents an invaluable opportunity for back pain sufferers to short circuit this vicious cycle. A study, published 2008, “Effects of Biofreeze and chiropractic adjustments on acute low back pain: a pilot study,” argues that Biofreeze enhances and lengthens the ameliorative effects that chiropractic treatment can have on patients suffering from pain in their lower backs. The longer the pain itself is reduced, the more likely it is that the sufferer will keep to a healthy regiment of exercise.
The back provides a number of important functions in the human body. Not only does it help keep you standing upright, but it also keeps you balanced. Our backs are built from tough hardware in order to deal with a lifetime of extensive use. To shield your back from overuse as if it were some fragile mechanism ultimately provides the opposite effect than the one you desire. Like any machine, you need to keep it oiled and in good working order by using it on a regular basis. Biofreeze equates to the grease that keeps your back from getting rusty.