After suffering from low back pain most of my life and constantly being told by doctors that there wasn't much that could be done about it other than, minimizing my movements, and laying on a heating pad, I decided to look into it myself.
What I found was that the doctors were giving me the wrong advice. First laying on a heating pad, only worsened the inflammation that was causing the low back pain to begin with. Second minimizing my movements did help to keep the pain from getting worse but, did nothing to alleviate it.
When the low back pain is first felt, an ice pack for twenty minutes every two hours or so, helps ease the pain way more than heat. Also, using the correct stretching exercises can help to realign the discs and vertebrae in the lower spinal column which, when out of alignment, pinches the sciatic nerve causing inflammation thus, causing severe low back pain.
The sciatic nerve is the nerve that starts in the very bottom part of the spinal cord and runs down the buttocks all the way to the toes and when pinched or damaged can cause severe pain starting in the lower back and runs down the butt and thighs and can sometimes run all the way down to your toes.
There are many ways the sciatic nerve can become damaged but no matter how it becomes damaged, the damage always causes the nerve to become inflamed. Once you treat the inflammation you will get relief from the pain and the way you treat any kind of inflammation is with cold (ice packs) just as you would for a sprained ankle or wrist.
The other thing that helps me relieve the pain is stretching exercises, designed for spinal extensions or more commonly backward bending, which are often called "McKenzie Extension Exercises." These exercises are designed to strengthen the muscles in the low back which help keep your spinal column in alignment, when one or more of these muscles are weaker than others the spine can become misaligned more easily.
Preforming these exercises regularly has kept me, pain free for quite sometime and it only takes eight to ten minutes a day to stay pain free. So, if you find yourself quite frequently suffering from low back pain due to the sciatic nerve being pinched or damaged quit using heat, try ice packs and look into "The McKenzie Extension Exercises."
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