Seeking Alternatives for Back Pain Relief
By GRETCHEN REYNOLD This column appears in the July 21 issue of The New York Times Magazine. At last! Some acknowledgement from the mainstream that complementary therapies really can work. If you have never suffered from lingering low back pain, you’re lucky or, more likely, young. Up to 80 percent of us will experience low back pain at some point. And for most, there won’t be an identifiable cause.In the past 10 years, the most popular nonsurgical medical treatment for “chronic, nonspecific” low back pain has been injection therapy, or shots into the lower back of various substances — usually cortisone but also liquid ibuprofen, morphine and vitamin B12. Doctors have been turning to injection therapy at a “disproportionately escalating rate,” according to an overview of back-pain treatments by a team led by Dr. Janna Friedly, a back specialist and an assistant professor of rehabilitation medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle, because it’s relatively easy to administer, less invasive than surgery, can provide some pain relief for a few weeks for some people and is profitable for physicians.To read the full article, click here>>>