Back Pain Health Center

You can choose from a number of alternative treatments for your low back pain. Because many of these treatments are new or not yet well researched, they may not be covered by health insurance.

The following complementary treatments are often used for low back pain.

• Massage may reduce low back pain, especially when combined with exercises and back care education.⁴
• Spinal manipulation is likely to help both acute and chronic low back pain in the short-term, but probably no more than other treatments such as physical therapy, exercise, or pain medicine.⁵ While they differ in their training, osteopaths, chiropractors, physiatrists, and specially trained physical therapists can all perform spinal manipulation. Spinal manipulation usually has its greatest impact after one treatment, so multiple treatments are seldom needed.⁶ Learn more about chiropractic and spinal manipulation. One comparison has shown that people who get osteopathic manipulative treatment may need less medicine to control their pain than those who get standard treatment such as pain medicine and physical therapy.⁷ For more information, see:

  Low Back Pain: Should I Have Spinal Manipulation?

• Biofeedback has not been well studied as a treatment for low back pain. But recent research has not shown that biofeedback is effective for controlling low back pain.
• Acupuncture may help decrease pain and increase activity. Some studies showed that acupuncture reduced pain and disability related to back problems more than usual treatment.⁸ Another summary of several studies showed that acupuncture reduced pain and increased the ability to be active for a short time after treatment but not any more than other treatments.⁹
• Acupressure uses pressure on certain points in the body to decrease symptoms. Small studies suggest that acupressure reduces pain and allows a person to be more active.¹⁰
• Relaxation techniques can help reduce muscle tension, stress, and depression.
• Yoga is another way of staying active while also helping with relaxation and stress management. It is not clear whether yoga is more helpful than other activity or treatment for low back pain.¹¹ There are different types of yoga. Talk to your doctor or physical therapist before you start a yoga program.

Here are some other treatment choices to think about:

• Learning about your back:
  • Back school teaches you all about back care, how to stand and sit, and how to move your body in a safer way. It also teaches you how to prevent long-term back problems.
  • A pain management clinic is a place where you can learn how to cope with chronic pain. You also can get treatment there.
• Electric currents:
  • Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) gives brief pulses of electricity to nerve endings in the skin to relieve pain. Although TENS may help some people, there is no evidence that it works.
  • Spinal cord stimulation uses an electrical current to treat chronic pain. A doctor puts an electrical generator under the skin. This device sends pulses through electrodes placed in the spinal canal. There is not strong evidence that it works.¹²
• Other procedures:
  • Intradiscal electrothermic therapy (IDET) gets rid of nerve fibers that have grown from the outer layers of the disc to the inside of the disc.
  • Nerve blocks numb certain nerves.

Experimental treatments