Health blog

Is heat good for back pain?

January 7th, 2019
Is Heat Good for Back Pain?

You may know that there are many physical therapies that can help you with back pain, but you may not know that heat is a good therapy for back pain. Fortunately, our therapy team can help you learn more about the benefits of heat therapy.

Our team at Rehab Access has many physical therapy methods at our disposal, and we’ve been using these tools proudly for almost 20 years to help patients in Gretna and Belle Chasse, Louisiana. We have two primary goals for your therapy at Rehab Access. First, we want to help you heal as much as possible. Second, we want to help you heal in the shortest possible amount of time. The best way that we’ve found to consistently meet these goals is to create a personalized therapy plan that uses different therapy methods for every patient. This is why our personalized therapy plan for you may include heat therapy and help you find out why heat is good for back pain.

Two reasons heat is good for back pain

Our team knows that heat therapy can be helpful for many conditions, but we know that heat is especially good for back pain. While there are many reasons for this, our team typically focuses on two of the reasons when explaining why heat therapy works for back pain.

The first reason we focus on in our explanation to back pain patients is that heat may help relieve muscle tension. Our team can tell you that there are many muscles in your back that help support your spine. We also know that these muscles are what allow your spine to bend and flex as you move. However, you may have lost your ability to move your spine comfortably if you’ve injured one of your back muscles. This is because damaged muscles often become tense when people try to hold them rigid to counteract the pain. Unfortunately, this rigid muscle posture often has the opposite effect of increasing your back pain. Using heat therapy, our team may be able to reduce the tension you have in your back muscles, and this may also help reduce your back pain.

The second reason our team focuses on when explaining heat therapy is that it may help to improve blood flow in your back. We know that blood flow is vital to the structures of your body for many reasons. When it comes to back problems, we often find that people don’t heal as quickly if their blood flow is being restricted. For instance, the tense muscles we already mentioned may also be restricting blood vessels in your back. Our team may be able to help reduce the restriction of your blood vessels and improve blood flow with heat therapy. The improved blood flow may help you heal more quickly by providing your damaged tissues with the oxygen and nutrients they need.

For these two reasons, and others, heat therapy is good for back pain, and our therapy team often uses it in treatment plans for back problems. If you’re ready to find out if heat therapy may benefit you, there’s a simple step you can take.

Contact our team today for more information or to schedule an initial appointment.