Hi there, it’s Dr Jason from Oasis Health Centre and I want to talk to you about back pain and offer up some ways that can help you actually manage it better. Now, everybody knows that chiropractic can help with back pain and the majority of people that come to see us have some kind of back pain and there are some commonalities we usually see and some standard things we recommend that people do and the majority of simple or mechanical back pain is caused by people not moving and exercising enough and if you don’t get your daily requirement of movement in your spine, it becomes inflamed and it becomes sore. So this simple exercise I’m going to show you right now is part of a bigger stretching and movement program that we have for our patients that we get them to do. So it’s really simple, what you need to do is just swing your arms from side to side and I want you to fix your gaze on one single point and we do that so our neck is actually getting rotation as well as the rest of your spine so this simple exercise it actually opens up and creates movement in all the little tiny small joints of your spine from your skull all the way down to your pelvis so do it slowly, do it gently and do it 20 times to each side and you can do this two or three times a day or whenever you’re feeling stiff and sore you’re going to love it. So the next thing we get people to do is actually use ice packs. Now virtually every single person I meet is surprised to hear this and invariably they always ask well I’ve been using heat packs. Why do I need ice? Well remember I said that your joints get inflamed from not moving? And ice is the answer for inflammation. If you put heat on inflammation guess what? That heat actually makes the inflammation bigger. Sure it feels good while the heat pack is on but you may be just making your problem worse. So you can’t hurt yourself really with ice packs and so what I want you to do is take a half pack of frozen peas still in the bag, wrap that up in a damp towel and bap it on your sore spot for a maximum of 10 minutes at a time. Then you could take it off for an hour and you can repeat. You could do that 10 times a day if you like and it’s going to help. Now the third thing we do to help people with back pain is assess the movement of the small joints in their spine. Often at times these joints get stuck because they’re inflamed. And that needs to be addressed and adjusted to break up that movement pattern to get your spine feeling better. Chiropractic is incredibly successful with this. We pioneer this as a profession and it’s so successful. Other health professionals are now using chiropractic techniques. And so one thing I just say here and caution you about back pain, back pain is not a condition or a diagnosis. It’s a symptom and there are many causes of back pain. Now sometimes it goes away on its own. Sometimes you’re going to need professional help. Sometimes the symptom of back pain can be something more serious and more life threatening. So don’t avoid looking into this ok. So there’s some action steps you could take. Go ahead do the exercise, and the ice, and if you need some extra help just reach out to us. Give us a call on 4947 4393, we’d love to have a chat with you and see what we can do. So, if you want to see helpful videos, please like us on facebook, and if you know someone that needs to hear some of these tips and tricks, please tag them as well. Thank you very much and have a great day.