New guidelines say that doctors should avoid prescribing opioid painkillers for relief of back pain and suggested that before patients try anti-inflammatories or muscle relaxants, they should try alternative therapies like exercise, acupuncture, massage therapy or yoga. It is surprising, some experts in back pain say, how often patients are helped by treatments that are not medical, even by a placebo that patients are told at the start is really a placebo.
Key Takeaways:
- Medicine is not the first choice to treat back pain previously it was
- This change started because of the increasing opioid addictions
- There are 2 types of back pain. They each have different treatments
“Dr. James Weinstein, a back pain specialist and chief executive of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Health System, has some advice for most people with lower back pain: Take two aspirin and don’t call me in the morning.”