Natural Remedies for the curse of our society - Lower Back Pain
06/11/2005
Rising rates of obesity are increasingly tough on Americans' overloaded backs, a new patient survey finds. Eighty-seven percent of the spine care professionals in the survey agreed that obesity plays a major role in back pain. Doctors report that people are coming in not by dozens but in droves because of back pain caused by their obesity. Source: Health Day News
The medical costs of back pain in this country now exceed $90 billion, with more than $26 billion of that coming from direct treatment of the condition, a new study has found. The most common remedy for this is bed rest and a pain-relieving drug.
More and more doctors are recommending natural remedies like acupuncture that have been known as an effective pain relief remedy in the East for centuries. Acupuncture, herbal remedies and other forms of alternative medicine, once largely dismissed as a leftover fad from the Age of Aquarius, are finding their way into the curricula at traditional medical schools - most recently the University of Pennsylvania.
Doctors at Penn are working with Tai Sophia Institute, an alternative-medicine school in Maryland, on a program to teach medical students about herbal therapies, meditation and other approaches that are increasingly popular with the public but largely outside the realm of mainstream medicine.
"It is gratifying to see this trend towards natural pain relief since many drugs have unwanted side effects," said Judy Cutler, the developer of Naturally Painless, a pain relieving spray made with natural ingredients and formulated along the same principles as acupuncture.