One of the ways that we relate to the back pain and provide a treatment plan is by first differentiating if it's acute pain, or if it's chronic pain. acute pain is defined as any back pain that is less than three months. With the appropriate treatment, almost 95% of acute back pain will go away within a few weeks. Of course, it's important to note that all chronic back pain, meaning back pain that happens for more than three months, starts off as acute. But first we're going to talk about acute back pain. If you suffer from acute back pain, and you don't have any of the red flags that we mentioned in the previous video about red flags, there's a very simple treatment plan that you can take before going to see your doctor.

Unless of course you feel or you have suspicion that it's something more serious. I want to stress that this this video lecture and then Course is not a substitute for going to your doctor. And if you suffer from pain and you have a suspicion that it's some type of pathology or something that needs further investigation, please go see your physician. If you have a nonspecific acute back pain, this is the treatment plan that you should take. The treatment plan consists of four simple steps. The first one is physical activity, or physiotherapy, exercise therapy, however you want to call it, there are specific exercises that you can do to strengthen your core, provide supporting muscles that will help relieve your back pain and give you an overall feeling of better health and wellness.

Later on in this course, we're going to show you some of those exercises that you can do and you can find which ones are best for you. If you're already enrolled in some type of yoga class or Pilates class, it's important to mention to your instructor that you have back pain and they should be able to give you targeted exercise sizes to help relieve that pain and strengthen your core muscles. Number two in the in the treatment plan for acute back pain is heat or cold. Now both of these work it's not quite clear which one works better but it might be individually based. So you can try both and see which one works better for you. The basic idea is that you lay on your stomach and you take a towel that's dumped either in hot water or in cold water and you lay that across the painful area of your back for about 15 to 30 minutes.

You can do this once or twice a day and a few times a week it should be effective. Make sure that you see which one is better for you if you prefer hot water or cold water along the on the towel that's being placed on the painful part of your back. Number three in the treatment plan our positions to relieve pain. It's not physical exercise, but it's positions that you can lay in to help your pain be relieved and release some of the tension You're back. Later on in this course we're going to show you in different videos, what type of positions are good for different type of pain. Lastly, and the fourth step to this treatment plan is medication.

It's not by coincidence that we're putting this last because it should not be the first thing that you go to. Medication usually quiets down body's natural responses things, but things that the body is trying to tell you, your medication quite sit down and doesn't let your body tell you. However, in a short period of time, there could be medication that is effective for you. Now, acute back pain should never be associated with opiates. You should only use non steroidal anti inflammatory and things of that sort that your physician can prescribe to you to deal with acute back pain. chronic back pain is a bit of a different story and we'll speak about that in a different different video.

But just understand that opiates are not part of the treatment plan for acute back pain. All right, let's Some of the four step treatment plan that we've laid out here for acute back pain. The first part of the treatment plan is physical therapy or physical therapy. And we're going to touch on that later in future videos. The second part is heat or cold therapy, placing a hot or cold towel on your back for 15 to 30 minutes a day. The third part is position therapy laying in different positions for amount of time.

This is also something that we're going to touch on later on. And lastly, medication. No medication I'm not going to go very deep into because it should be something that it's individually prescribed for you. Depending on which side effects you may or may not want to take the risk of having. And you can do that with your physician. This concludes the video for our treatment plan on acute back pain.

Of course, we're happy to answer any questions, write them down on the board of this course and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.