Sometimes obtaining the kind of treatment you want is difficult, particularly for back pain. Most common treatments like pain medications fail to solve the problem. The common doctor, while highly capable in lots of areas, is not well-equipped to diagnose factors behind back pain. Spinal abnormalities show up on imaging tests, but most back pain cases are due to muscular and biomechanical problems which are less perceptible.
Often, properly diagnosing the foundation of your pain takes a trained eye that may identify dysfunction by observing the way you hold yourself and the way you move. A physical therapist may help you pinpoint why you have your pain, whether it's poor posture, improper body mechanics, muscle imbalance or muscle weakness. Each one of these problems can disrupt spinal and pelvic stability as well as cause muscular pain, knots and spasms.
Unless your back pain presents with certain "red flag" symptoms, such as for example leg pain, weakness and/or numbness or loss of bladder and bowel control, standard protocol would be to wait it out for a month or so. Everyone has back pain at some point, in fact it is often short-lived. For most, though, the pain recurs. For some, it becomes chronic. When you have back pain not attributed to an obvious cause, like a fall, an awkward movement or overexertion, you might have a muscular dysfunction which could result in further pain down the road.
Physicians may be unwilling to refer one to physical therapy for an incident of back pain. Fortunately, in lots of states, you can seek physical therapy with out a referral; this is called immediate access. Many insurance firms will grant reimbursements to patients who forgo the physician's office and head right to a physical therapist. See http://www.apta.org/StateIssues/DirectAccess/ for updated info on direct access by state and changing legislation. Contact your insurance provider to discover their policy on direct access.
Some argue that direct access encourages patients to misdiagnose themselves and overuse care. However, a large-scale study concludes otherwise. The study, conducted by Jane Pendergast, PhD, and director of the Center for Public Health Studies at the University of Iowa et. al., viewed almost 63,000 medical records of patients being treating with physical therapy. About 25% of patients in the study were self-referred. Contrary to the aforementioned arguments against immediate access, the study discovered that self-referred patients had fewer physical therapy visits and lower overall healthcare costs linked to the health concern that physical therapy was sought. Immediate access patients weren't overusing healthcare or overlooking important health issues; they were simply cutting out the middle man. More on this study can be found at http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-10/apta-dat101311.php.
With an increase of studies emerging in support of immediate access and the progress that is made toward this end over the past decade, there's reason to trust that getting the kind of treatment you want will become easier soon. Many hurdles remain in place concerning alternative medicine, but physical therapy is really a natural treatment which has edged its way into mainstream, conventional medicine. Opening access to it'll allow more patients to bypass the route of expensive imaging tests and medications.
Ethereal Paradox might help the body move better and function more efficiently. Assuming you have nagging back pain and so are worried about body mechanics, posture or muscle imbalance, consider seeing a physical therapist.
Industrialized nations have problems with a plague of spinal health problems. The solution is learning whenever you can you start with Back Pain Solutions Online. Repetitive use injuries may lead to improper diagnosis of one's back pain problem. Read more about how to use 7 strategies to reduce back pain that you experienced, right now.