Back pain can be devastating to your life and well-being, especially if chronic. This blog post investigates whether is sauna good for back pain.
In the first part of this blog post, I’ll cover the science of back pain. Next up, I show that several mechanisms exist through which saunas help lower back pain. Let’s start with the basics first though:
Acute Back Pain And Chronic Back Pain: Complicated Issue
Back pain is defined as pain that you have across your spine or pain that originates from that spine. Almost everyone has back pain once in a while: you overexert yourself while moving to another place and that muscle soreness feels a little bit too extreme. Or, you sleep on an extremely cheap mattress in a hotel room and the next morning your back simply doesn’t feel 100%.
Many people also have short incidences of back pain, such as temporary pain while lifting too heavy. None of these instances is a real problem. Most back pain, in fact, resolves itself quite quickly (1; 2; 3; 4; 5). Often, there’s an underlying mechanical reason for that back pain that passes with time and the pain goes away.
In fact, a whopping 80% of people have acute back pain somewhere in their lives. Having a painful back is no problem and is similar to feeling down once in a while - not feeling perfect is part of the human condition and nothing to worry about.
Also, acute back pain is easily treated by moving a lot, going through a physical therapist, taking some non-prescription painkillers, and so forth. In this case, nature ensures the condition cures itself.
Some back pain, however, becomes chronic. Officially, back pain becomes “chronic” if it persists for longer than 6 months. Only a very small percentage of acute back pain transitions into chronic back pain.
In such a case, there’s not necessarily an underlying reason but the pain nevertheless persists over longer periods of time. Increasingly, scientific evidence points in the direction of self-care for lower back problems - movement and exercise therapy comes to mind. Evidence is less strong for interventions that don’t put the initiative of the patient at the centre.
When medical professionals cannot pinpoint an underlying reason for the chronic back pain, in such instances, the pain becomes “non-specific”.
Chronic back pain is a huge problem for society though. Back pain in general costs society 166 billion GBP per year in medical costs alone. Also, chronic back pain is the most frequent form of chronic pain diagnosed. And, in turn, chronic pain is a health condition that affects more people than diabetes, heart disease, and cancer combined - and is often very much underappreciated by society at large (6; 7; 8).
In the UK and US, for instance, a fourth to a third of the population suffers from chronic pain at every single moment. Worldwide, the highest estimates are similar.
So what causes chronic pain and chronic back pain, if not an easily identifiable reason? Well, the conditions are multi-factorial - meaning that multiple variables affect the presence of the disease - but psychological and social well-being play a huge role.
You might wonder: “how are saunas going to help me deal with back pain?” In the next section, I’ll explore that option - it turns out infrared sauna help with many of the factors creating back pain in the first place.
