Muscle relaxants are NOT the answer to your back or neck pain!
Recently we’ve had a couple of patients query muscle relaxants to help calm a muscle spasm. Obviously it not in our scope of practice to prescribe a muscle relaxer but this begs the bigger question of why would you ever want one?
Firstly lets explain why muscles spasm….
Using the analogy of the chicken and the egg;
Did the joint stop moving properly and cause the surrounding muscle to spasm, or did the muscle tighten up and cause the joint to lock up?
In each case, to achieve long term pain relief you want to treat both the joint and the muscular dysfunction. Improper movement, poor posture and repetitive movements are all common scenarios that can cause dysfunction.
Surely it makes more sense to address the underlying issue than attempt to get the muscle to relax with a pill?!
Muscle relaxants don’t just relax the dysfunctional muscle – they cause ALL the muscles in your body to relax, including the ones that create stability along the spine.
Once you take away that stability, you are now expecting those muscles to work properly and engage throughout your daily movements… which they simply can not.
One of the worst things we see is when a patient injures their back, takes a muscle relaxant and rests for hours on the sofa (usually in a poor spinal position). They then try and get up and find they just can’t. This is usually the moment that their unstable spine gives out and they start calling us because they cannot move.
Movement is medicine.
Movement is Elite Performance Therapy’s prescription for every ailment the body may have. Even when your back hurts, you should be able to go for a walk or do some basic core strengthening exercises. If you want to find out the real reason your back hurts, then please call us!
We promise not to just provide relief to the problem, but to keep it from coming back for good.