Muscle Relaxants For Back Pain

There is no shortage of choice when it comes to looking for muscle relaxants for back pain, although not all medications are equally effective for all people. This peculiarity of muscle relaxants for back pain makes it very hard for your doctor (and yourself) to choose a medicine that is effective for you quickly. Often, finding effective muscle relaxants for back pain is a fairly long drawn out process of trial and error.

Muscle Relaxants For Back Pain

When most people first get acute low-back pain, they try to self medicate. They may try a few paracetamol tablets or something stronger like Ibuprofen.

Others may try a deep heat cream or alcohol. Some of these will provide some relief for some people, but it is only temporary.

It is important to get relief from your backache while your medical doctor is trying to cure the cause of the pain, because chronic pain from, say, a herniated disc, can lead to loss of sleep, which leads to loss of concentration, which is dangerous.

Prolonged lack of adequate deep sleep is also a recognized cause of clinical depression which is also dangerous.

Your doctor will probably prescribe muscle relaxants for back pain manufactured by the large drugs companies. These fall into two categories: neuromuscular blockers and spasmolytics. The former work by blocking the receptors at the source of the non-specific low back pain and do not work on the central nervous system; the latter stop chronic pain by means of the central nervous system. In everyday parlance, muscle relaxants for back pain usually refer to a spasmolytic drug.

Generally speaking, muscle relaxants for back pain are used to treat low back pain in the short term only and there are frequently side effects. Common side effects from using muscle relaxants for back pain are:

• Drowsiness or dizziness
• Addiction or dependen
• Dry mouth
• Urine retention

The first side effect listed above can be serious if you work at height or drive a vehicle and the last in the list could cause you to get up frequently at night, which will further destroy your sleep pattern.

An alternative to muscle relaxants for back pain in the form of tablets is an injection directly into or very near to the seat of the pain. There are several types of fluids used but they are steroids and / or anaesthetics which will reduce inflammation in that area only.

They are effective for short periods (hours) only and have a 50% success rate. Most doctors would recommend no more that three epidural injections to relieve low back pain per year.

Some people seek alternative, natural muscle relaxant medications for backache, so here are a few that you can try:

• Cayenne Pepper: relieves pain: mix with water and apply to the area. Soak into a flannel, if you like, and leave in it place for an hour.
• Chamomile: muscle relaxant: apply topically
• Licorice: anti-inflammatory: eat
• Valarian: pain relief, anti-inflammatory, pacifier: make tea with it. Be careful as it induces drowsiness.

These are not dangerous herbs per se so you can try mixing them to find a combination of muscle relaxants for back pain that is good for you.

Remember that if you have non-specific low back pain, you are in effect sick and your body will try to restore itself to health. This can have different effects, but one might be that you sleep a lot more.

While it is in repair mode, your body may need extra vitamins, but it will certainly need everything that it should get anyway, so make sure you eat well, even if you do lose your appetite (perhaps due to depression).

Make sure that you get plenty of:

• Calcium (cheese, meat, milk) to repair the bones
• Magnesium: (halibut, tuna, artichokes, figs, bananas, barley and oats) to repair damaged nerve endings
• Potassium: (meats, fish, avocado, banana, melons, sunflower seeds) for muscles and nerves
• Vitamin C: (all citric fruits): anti-oxidants
• Alpha-Lipoic Acid: (green, leafy vegetables and meat) is an anti-oxidant that works with several vitamins like C and E to support the immune system, but it probably affects every organ in the body including the spinal column
• Omega 3 fatty acids: (oily fish): EHA and DHA play powerful anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidizing roles. They are also essential to our nervous systems.

In my acute low back pain management regimen, I personally take 50 mg diclophenac if the pain is really bad, say after a long car journey, but do not take any other pharmaceutical muscle relaxants for back pain.

I also take an Omega 3 supplement and eat lots of fruits (especially bananas and melons); seeds (watermelon and sunflower) and fish.

Three months ago, my backache was so bad that I could not walk for six weeks, but now I can walk about 500 metres (yards).