Cold vs. heat
Ice or heat? Heat then ice? Or ice then heat?
Exactly when, how, and for how long you should use ice or heat for lower back pain is a source of debate, and there aren’t always hard-and-fast rules.
Back pain will strike up to 80 percent of people at one point in their lives. It’s one of the most common reasons for missing work and the third most frequent reason to see a doctor, after skin problems and arthritis and joint disorders, according to a study in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Low back pain can be short-lived—lasting four to 12 weeks—or chronic, in which it persists for 12 weeks or more, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
There is a laundry list of potential causes of low back pain: advancing age, underlying disease, overdoing it, lifting a heavy object the wrong way, a big fall, or even a minor slip, to name a few. And it can affect many structures in your back, including your vertebrae, joints, muscles, tendons, ligaments, and discs.
(These are signs that your back pain is an emergency.)
The cause of your lower back pain and the structures damaged
Keep reading this article on The Healthy