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Back Pain Health Center

Low Back Pain: What Can You Do? Email a FriendPrint Article Low Back Pain: What Can You Do? Next Article: Skip to Article Content Low Back Pain: What Can You Do? 11 Tips for Back Pain Relief 11 things you can do every day to prevent and lessen back pain. Back Pain Medications Which drugs are used to relieve lower back pain? Back Pain Causes Find out what's causing your back pain and how to treat it. How Exercise Helps Back Pain Preventing and treating back pain with exercise. Back Pain and Narcotic Painkillers What's the risk when you take opioid painkillers for back pain? Alternative Treatments for Back Pain Massage. Yoga. Biofeedback. What works for lower back pain? False Back Pain: Medication and Addiction How can we balance the risk of drug abuse with the suffering caused by untreated back pain? WebMD Feature By R. Morgan Griffin Reviewed By Brunilda Nazario, MD
People living with serious back pain have to sort through a lot of mixed messages about opioid -- or narcotic -- painkillers.
On the one hand, you've heard stories about the seeming epidemic of addiction to these drugs, like OxyContin, Percocet, and Vicodin. All those celebrities checking into rehab for painkiller addiction may give you the impression that the lure of these drugs is irresistible, that we're all just a few pills away from addiction.
But on the other hand, you might have heard that pain is chronically undertreated and many people are suffering needlessly. Which is true?
"They're both true," says Lynn Webster MD, medical director at the Lifetree Clinical Research and Pain Clinic in Salt Lake City. "In this country, we undertreat pain and we underutilize opioid painkillers. But we've also had a serious increase in the misuse and abuse of these drugs."
This leaves many people with chronic back pain -- and often their doctors -- stuck in the middle. On the one hand, people are afraid of the risks of drug abuse and addiction that come with powerful painkillers. On the other, they're suffering from severe and debilitating pain and need some kind of help.
Opioid medicines can save lives. But they can destroy them too. What's an average person with severe back pain supposed to do?
Who Needs Opioid Painkillers?
Here's one piece of good news: most people with back pain don't need these powerful painkillers to begin with.
Many with back pain often just use non-addictive medications like acetaminophen or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Some NSAIDs are sold over the counter, like ibuprofen or naproxen, and others are sold by prescription. Steroids can also be prescribed for back pain due to swelling and inflammation. These drugs do have some risks of their own, but the potential for addiction is not among them.
Even when powerful opioids like Percocet and Vicodin are necessary, many people only need them in the short term. After an acute back injury or surgery, many just use these drugs to ease the pain enough that they can start moving around and begin physical therapy.
But sometimes, the back pain lingers. Chronic back pain can sometimes develop as a result of arthritis or injuries that can't be corrected surgically. In the small percentage of people with chronic and hard-to-treat back pain, a doctor may recommend long-term opioid therapy. Others may get opioid therapy if the side effects of other painkillers -- like NSAIDs -- are too risky.
While some patients and doctors swear by opioids as a treatment for severe chronic back pain, the evidence is not all that strong. One 2007 review in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that while opioids do help with short-term back pain, it's not clear that they help with chronic back pain. A 2007 Cochrane Review found that opioids may not work any better than an NSAID for chronic lower back pain.
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11 Ways to Fight Back Pain Every Day These 11 tips can help you prevent and reduce back pain naturally.

Medications for Lower Back Pain Treatment options, from the over-the-counter to prescription drugs. Causes of Low Back Pain What's behind your back pain -- and what you can do about it. Back Pain and Narcotic Painkillers Can using opioid painkillers put you at risk? Natural Ways to Relieve Back Pain From massage to yoga, find out what works. Back Pain Exercises Exercises you should and shouldn't do when you have back pain.

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